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Hoops Madness afflicts Charles City Middle School

  • A table in the fifth-grade learning room features an amazing pile of college swag. Students earn C-Bucks for a chance to win the prizes at a drawing next Wednesday. Press photo by James Grob

  • Jennifer Seehusen stands next to a table in the fifth-grade learning room, which features an amazing pile of college swag. Students earn C-Bucks for a chance to win the prizes at a drawing next Wednesday. Press photo by James Grob

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

March Madness has hit Charles City Middle School.

No, the students aren’t filling out brackets and putting their money down on ball games in the hopes of winning the grand prize.

“Our students earn ‘C-Bucks’ for good behavior,” said Jennifer Seehusen, a fifth-grade teacher. “They earn them when they show great character, effort and citizenship.”

It’s all a part of PBIS —  Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports — a program which comes up with proactive strategies for defining, teaching and supporting appropriate student behaviors to create positive school environments.

Instead of using a piecemeal approach of individual behavioral management plans, a system of positive behavior support for all students within a school is implemented in areas including the classroom and non-classroom settings such as hallways, buses and restrooms.

In other words, the kids get rewarded for being good. They can use the C-bucks they earn as currency to purchase items at “The Comet Cart” on Fridays, toward a classroom goal, or a grade-level incentive.

In addition to these incentives, students also receive recognition for their positive behavior by participating in school-wide celebrations.

That’s where the NCAA Basketball Tournament comes in. The Charles City PBIS team was trying to come up with a March Madness theme.

Seehusen has a few friends and family members who work in college athletic departments. She contacted some of them to see if the colleges would be interested in donating some basketball-related items that could be used as C-Bucks prizes.

The whole thing snowballed from there. Now, on a table in the fifth-grade learning room, there is an amazing pile of college swag.

“It’s kind of like Christmas here at the school when the mail comes every day,” said Seehusen. “We just got a lot of awesome items, and we keep getting more things in the mail.”

Seehusen said she sent emails out to about 70 different colleges, and nearly every one of them sent something, from T-shirts to posters to water bottles — many of them autographed by the coaches and players.

Nearby colleges such as Iowa, Iowa State, Ellsworth, Grand View, Winona State, NIACC and Grinnell participated, as well as nationally-recognized universities such as Syracuse, North Carolina, Villanova and TCU.

“I asked the students which colleges they would like me to email,” Seehusen said. “Nearly everyone responded with something.”

She even showed off a few Charles City Comet basketball posters, signed by all the players on the team this year, as well as four basketball tickets to a Northern Iowa game next season, donated by UNI coach Ben Jacobson.

Students in grades 5-8 will have an opportunity to put all the C-Bucks they’ve earned into a drawing, which will be 1 p.m. next Wednesday, March 28, at an assembly in the middle school gymnasium. Obviously, the more C-Bucks you’ve earned, the better chance you have at winning something.

“Names will be drawn out until all the prizes are gone,” said Seehusen. “This is a way to get kids excited about showing great character here at Charles City.”

Because of NCAA rules, the donated prizes can only be given to students up to eighth grade. High school-age students are not allowed to participate because of the potential that some of them could play college sports and the gifts would violate recruiting rules.

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