The staff at Warren County Educational Service Center (ESC) in Lebanon, Ohio, are dedicated to providing safe learning environments for the communities they serve. Warren ESC helps to develop customized programming for at-risk individuals and families within the numerous school districts in and around Warren County. Providing these services requires adaptability and dedication, and it is important to ensure that morale stays high among staff. Warren ESC accomplishes this by using Teacher Rewards within PBIS Rewards to recognize staff members throughout the district.
Warren County Educational Service Center by the Numbers:
Reinforcing Job Expectations
Because Warren ESC provides services to numerous schools, the staff’s roles can be very demanding and tiring in addition to being rewarding. The ESC wanted to encourage staff and reinforce job expectations, much in the same way that the staff reinforces expectations for students.
As an included option in the district’s PBIS Rewards software, Teacher Rewards allows Warren ESC’s staff to apply the same principles to their peers that they do to students. This enables staff to more deeply understand the process of positive reinforcement as it is applied to students. ESC admins felt it was important to model recognition of job and behavior expectations with staff, just as staff are expected to do with students.
Incentives Everyone Wants
Encouragement and recognition can go a long way toward building team morale, but to really ramp up engagement, Warren ESC created a Teacher Rewards store. They are able to use their department budget to fund this store and the funding is reviewed with the ESC fiscal team. The first year, the admin team chose the incentives. After the first year, they surveyed the staff to understand which items they preferred and to get new ideas to add to the staff store.
Since 2021, the ESC’s admin team has refined the offerings in their staff store to include popular items such as pizza parties for the classroom, ESC-branded clothing, portable chargers, and having admins order lunch for individual staff members. Each year, depending on budget and staff feedback, another item is added to the store for variety and to reinforce staff buy-in.
Why Warren County ESC LOVES Teacher Rewards:
- User-friendly
- Easy to update
- Intuitive interface
- Encourages staff
A High Level of Buy-In
As with any initiative, buy-in is crucial to success. Warren ESC’s buy-in rate for their Teacher Rewards initiative is an astounding 94%! When the program began in 2021, supervisors took the lead on giving points to staff. It didn’t take long for staff to begin recommending points for one another. Seeing the hard work and dedication of their peers in the schools created an atmosphere of encouragement throughout the team, and on any given day, at least 15 staff members will recommend each other for points. Additionally, each week admins will award points to staff for attendance.
Of course, accumulating all of these points makes staff want to visit the staff store. Each time the staff store is open, at least half of the staff will redeem an item from the store. Their buy-in into recommending points and using those points for incentives helps to generate engagement for both Teacher Rewards and for using PBIS Rewards for students.
Investing in Engagement, Realizing Results
One of the greatest benefits that Warren ESC has seen with Teacher Rewards is the staff’s understanding of the power of recognition. As they recognize one another for meeting expectations in their roles, they get first-hand exposure to how recognition affects their experience in the classroom. This has resulted in greater staff morale, as well as improved school culture.
Teacher Rewards is an included option within PBIS Rewards, allowing schools and districts to use the same software system to recognize both students and staff. Staff recognition and incentives are separate areas within the software, but the process for acknowledgment is similar to that for students. The system tracks data for staff and student points as well as for the redemption of incentives, giving insights into trends. By having both systems for recognition in one place, schools can streamline positive behavior support and encourage staff morale, quickly and easily.
We’d love to tell you more about Teacher Rewards, PBIS Rewards, and Navigate360’s full suite of solutions for character and culture.