Bee-havior at Vidalia Lower Elementary School has created quite a buzz regionally in education.

The school has become a model for a school-wide positive behavior program that rewards students for their “bees” instead of focusing on the negatives of their actions.

“Be kind, be safe and be ready to learn,” are the three major rules, but the be tree filters down from there. The school has classroom rules, bathroom rules, hallway rules, playground rules and so on. A buzzing bee accompanies all the rule posters hanging around the school.

When teachers, administrators and even cafeteria workers see a child behaving properly they hand out a “bee buck.”

Periodically, classes visit the bee buck store to spend their earnings on toys and goodies.

The Louisiana Department of Education is asking all schools to develop their own positive behavior program. VLES began theirs this school year.

“We had to come up with an idea,” Principal Doris Polk said. “You have to come up with your own plan of action. We decided to do bee bucks.”

And it’s worked.

Second-grader Katlyn McCarver has 110 bee bucks she’s waiting to spend from “saving, listening and being good,” she said.

Her teacher, Sonya Caviness, keeps it simple in her class. She has a box of bee bucks on her desk. When someone is behaving nicely she’ll tell them to go get a buck.

Caviness estimated she probably hands out 15 to 20 bucks a day. Teachers also distribute bucks to students in other classes if they see their good behavior.

“When you praise one, the rest will start to straighten up,” she said.

Last week, VLES was visited by school leaders from Fayette who’d heard about their program and want to start something similar.

VLES also received very high marks from a state review committee that came to evaluate their program earlier this year. They have been named a Department of Education school-wide positive behavior support demonstration site.