BEHAVIOR SUPPORT

“Interesting, relevant, well-planned lessons are the key to holding student attention” Unknown

I don't know if it's because I got caught up in the over-representation of minorities in ED (Emotionally Disturbed) programs back in the day, and I was labeled as having ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) and was in special education for six

Along the way, working as the Behavior Intervention Case Manager (BICM) in Los Angeles for three years and Behavior Probation and Academic Probation case manager in an international school for three years, I have come up with some maxims that help guide me through the process of supporting a student (and ultimately all parties involved) through the process of achieving more pro-social and pro-academic behaviors. ( I also have some random notes on Things I Do in terms of behavior intervention that can be found on this part of the website: HERE )

Here is a list of the top areas (or maxims) that I have found to focus on when working on behavior support:

1) Parent Support is Essential:

Bottom line is, we at the school can only do so much. While a big part of a student’s life is centered around school, when it comes down to it, when they leave at 2:15, or leave on Friday afternoon, our reach is greatly limited. And often times what happens is that a student who is having troubles at school both academically and behaviorally will deal with the consequences at school, but if the parents are inconsistent or not involved at all, and since the student spends a majority of their time away from school, they are not going to change.

An example of this is where I have had students who are on the brink of being kicked out of school, and I am doing everything I can at school (i.e. daily to-do sheets, daily behavior checks, detentions at lunch, after school, Saturday, etc.). This combined with setting up the plans with the parents (i.e. check this form and give this consequence, buy them iPhone if he does blank, etc.). But the parents are not always there. I had one parent whose son was working with me in this capacity, and I had outlined (like 10 points!) for her and her husband what they needed to do at home in order to support the student, and then at one point in November I was talking to the mom and made a reference about how low his grades were, but something made me think she wasn’t clear what I was saying. I asked her if she had seen his grades recently. She said “No”. I asked if she had her password to the online grading system, she said “No”. And I said to myself, “This lady has a son that could be kicked out in January if his grades don’t improve and she isn’t even following my recommendation to check his grades once a week and attach consequences?!”.

This is why I have incorporated certain features into the forms that we use, to spur parents, and I have also made these forms as easy as possible for the parents (and teachers) to fill out. Sometimes as a spedukator, in order to get parents (and teachers) to incorporate some best practices in parenting, you have to set it up for them in ‘forms’ that must be signed and returned to you in order for you to make sure that they are doing their part. Even with these forms I will have parents that begin the process by not abiding by the plans we have set up, signing the form when the child didn’t actually do something, etc. That is okay, it happens. You just have to “catch them” and talk to them, and reiterate how important this process is and that we can’t do it without them.

My first question when I start working with a student with behavior concerns is, “Do you have a smartphone?” Often they do, and who knows what else, and I ask myself, “How can this kid be getting suspensions, failing classes, etc. and still have his smartphone?” But I always feel good that we have a starting point in motivational areas once I link up with the parents and connect the school and the home.

2. Consistency...

…is what has to be running through your head as you work with teachers, parents and students and work with the Behavior Support Plans. This is probably the most important aspect of working with behavior concerns. It is so vital that I can hardly find the words to begin to pontificate. I will just say that this means:

a) When you say that something is going to happen, it happens

b) when you plan that parents will do BLANK, it has to happen, and the means you do what you have to do to make sure that parents are holding down their part (i.e. I routinely catch kids with phones that were supposed to be taken away by looking at the last time they used Whatsapp…then I use Whatsapp to message their parents and ask how the plan is going).

c) If they have Saturday school and it gets canceled because they can’t find a person to do it…step up and do it.

d) Your printer is broken and you are hella busy and you can’t print out their weekly, you do whatever it takes to make sure that they have their weekly. No phone calls home, no binder paper, you stick to the plan and that is that.

To illustrate this idea, I will recount what happened yesterday with a student. To make a long story short, she has a sheet that gets filled out on Fridays with her and I (looking at her agenda, math notebook, etc.), and she takes it home and if there are any negative marks she has consequences at home, and with me the following week. Last week the student didn’t even talk to me about the sheet. This week she did better by coming to me with her agenda and everything, but no sheet. I told her we couldn’t do the check if she didn’t have the sheet. She got really mad, started crying, etc. And I told her that because I know she had a good week, I’m not going to remind dad to check the sheet, but she will have punishment with me next week (break detentions all week, lunch detentions all week, after school for an hour and Saturday school). I felt her, I knew that for a lot of people it wouldn’t make sense. If she had a good week with her grades and agenda, why not just let her pass. Print out a new sheet and be done with it. But for me, and from what I have seen, consistency is one of the biggest things you need to do when dealing with behavior. By opening up little holes of doubt, or chance or whatever you open up the opportunity for your plan to fail and ultimately for the student to fail. By being inconsistent you are opening the floodgates for students to push you, bully you, manipulate you, regress, etc. This goes with parents even moreso because they have to live with the child. But if the student knows what they have to do and know that it has to be done, then they tend to rise to the occasion after time (growing pain time).

3) Progressive Interventions are Key:

- Every intervention has levels of progression. One kid (that I like) mocks me a lot and says, “Next step!!!” every time I take it to the more progressive level of a consequence. It’s always good to have that built into what you are doing with a given student. To be able to sit in a meeting and tell the principal and the parents and counselor (and student) that we are going to do “this” plan, and there are three more levels of intensity, that is a good place to be.

- Students (and other stakeholders) need to see where they are at in the scheme of the progression of interventions and know how it will get more intensive, and how it can get better and what exactly they need to do, and for how long, to make it better.

- So you see this in everything. For example, I have the progression of consequences that outlines what happens at every stage of the consequences, and that is a great thing to have where kids know that a suspension is looming ahead, but they also know that if things go good this week they won’t have any consequences the following week.

-Another example is the weekly. There are various levels of the “weekly”. It can start with just me and the student, just me and the student and certain criteria they must hit, just me and the student and harder criteria, next level can be just me and the student and the parent and consequences at home. If this isn’t working at this point we can jump to the “daily”, and start at the bottom of that (i.e. just turn it in for a few weeks, then just consequences with me on a weekly basis, then consequences at home, then daily consequences…and rewards).

The point is that all parties involved know that things can get more intense, and they know that things can get better (there is a light). And I will say, one of the best parts of this is being able to calmly tell a parent who is hopeless, “If this doesn’t work we will move to the next step, don’t worry, it will work eventually”. That’s the bottom line, it generally works (unless the kid is going to end up getting kicked out of school or sent to an NPS), and we have the tools to make sure that it happens.

4) Make the forms as easy as possible for all parents:

Make it as easy as possible for teachers and parents to do their part of the behavior intervention process. Often parents are busy, working hard, not very organized, going through divorce, et. And both teachers and parents are busy, have other priorities, and are often overwhelmed. So fulfilling their obligation of a Behavior Support Plan (BSP) can just be too much. And if it is too much, they will often disregard it. They might even start with the best of intentions, but in the end, when you have 150 other kids as a teacher, or 2 other kids and a full-time job as a parent, following through with the BSP can be difficult. And if it doesn’t happen, that goes to the previous point of “consistency”. Things won’t be consistent.

To illustrate this idea, I have some students who have a hard time doing homework fill out a daily “To-Do Sheet” ( LINK ). They come to me every afternoon and we sit down and look at the agenda or think about the classes and write down two or three things that they need to do at home tonight. It gets very detailed as they write what resources they need, how long it will take, when they will take breaks, etc. And the key part that makes it easy for the parent to check the homework is the box that says, “How will someone know you are done”. And we get very descriptive (i.e. I will answer questions 1-7 on the worksheet).

So instead of asking parents to check their child’s homework every night, which can be tough when you are busy or you don’t know exactly what they are doing, I have made this sheet as easy as possible. So I am helping the parent do a best practice of parenting by making this sheet a situation where they just have to look at their box, “How will someone know it’s done”, look at the work, and then sign it off. I see this helping students stay on point, be more organized, get more work done, and additionally parents are more engaged and involved.

Another example is with the “Dailies”. I could get more detailed data-wise, but to start, we just have teachers rate the students behavior on a 4-point scale. A 1 or 2 is really bad, and bad. A 3 and 4 is good and really good. So it’s like scoring an essay in a group scoring process. Did they pass or not? Yes? Okay, did they do really good? That way the teacher doesn’t feel bogged down and also the student can get to their next class quicker.

In sum, when you have a form or intervention of any sort, you can really help the teachers and parents buy-in to it if you make it as easy as possible for them to do. You do the footwork, and the prep, and everything else to make it as smooth for the others and great things will come….

5) Students need to know that you care:

When I write that statement I feel like one may look at me like I am one of those Pollyanish spedukators….but I am not. I keep it real, but I also realized that it is important to constantly remind your students you care for two main reasons.

1) As a special educator your role is different than that of many teachers, and your students have a lot more going on than many of their peers. That means you are dealing with struggling readers, reluctant learners, and are also doing behavior support plans, IEPs, collabing with their other teachers, transition, etc. So if you are doing all this stuff, getting all in their business and you don’t explain and show that you are doing it because you care about them and want to see them excel, they are going to only see you as annoying, a hater, etc.

2) Also, many of the students with special needs are not always thinking in the long term, fully comprehending the present, etc. So when you are doing interventions, collabing with the parents, etc., they just often get mad and honestly feel that you have a V for Vendetta if you dig what I'm saying.

So I learned the hard way that if you are consistent with what you do, clear about it, equitable and real talk through why you are doing what you do, my experience is that kids will except the detentions, and phones being taken away by mom, because you have made it clear that you only want to see them make it.

To illustrate this idea, one of my hidden curricular things is that I like to focus on basic skills while at the same time teaching the content (or doing whatever we are doing in the Learning Center). One of the things that I do to that end is that when I am teaching a class, or with certain students in the Learning Center, when they leave something behind they either get 5 minutes detention, or the “next step” in the progression of consequences. So I used to do that and would catch a lot of heat from the students. But once I started the process of explaining why I do everything and explaining that all these things I am doing is making my job harder, but I do it to help them, the students started to respond better and learn to pick up their things. Once I explained that I just don’t want them to leave their keys at Jack in the Box, or leave their phone on the bus, that I am preparing them for this not to happen, the students were like, “Okay, whatever….”, but not angry at me anymore.

So by explaining why you do what you do with behavior and all that, and explaining how it makes your job harder, but you are willing to do it because you care, I think that that is an important component in effectively working with students with behavior concerns.

6) Put the onus on the kids.

Basically the bottom line is that they should be coming to you looking for the tracking form, making sure everything is in the log, etc. You have to set it up so they come at you like that, or otherwise it’s going to be stressful for you, and maybe the kids won’t be as invested in the whole system and it will be less impactful.

I will let the kids ride for awhile. Not bust their chops. Usually the first few weeks of using certain interventions are just getting the student in the habit of talking to their teachers every day to fill the form, talking to me, getting mom to sign it, etc. So for the first few weeks with a student I am texting them reminders, texting the parent, etc. But after two or three weeks I tell the parents to expect the sheet, if they don’t get it, then the child has consequences. The same goes for me. If they go two or three days without giving me the sheet, then get hit with some consequences, it’s on them. Sometimes I might drop a hint, or even tell a kid, but one of my hidden aims is for the student to be responsible in general, so I aim to give them the forms and put the onus on them to take care of what they need to.

7) Baselines and reasonable goals

You have to start at a good point (i.e. a baseline), and make the goals attainable and manageable. For example, “You don’t even have to get good reports on the dailies….just turn them in every day and we will mark the weekly as good and you will get full privileges”. Then you take the time and get the kid in a good rhythm with the basics, get the parent being consistent and clear. If they are getting a 60% on “participation points”, lets shoot for 65, or 70.

This is especially important for situations when the parent is asking too much. Saying something like they want all 80’s from a student who has been getting 60’s their whole high school career. That is where I jump in and say, “ They are getting a 68.7 GPA right now. They said that their goal could be a 75 by the end of the quarter, and then from there we can go up. Is that fair?” Usually parents are cool when you chunk the goal like that.

It kind of goes to some criticisms of No Child Left Behind, people don’t think that “all kids” can be proficient by 2014 (hey! That’s this year 0.o). But all kids can improve (even coming from bad communities Diane Ravitch). That is the goal with the behavior interventions. Catch a kid where he is at in a baseline sense and take them to the next level(s).

8) THE LIGHT (Clarity):

Students (and parents) need to be able to see the light. It has to be very clear what the student will need to do in order to stop a given system or plan that we have in place. An example is that we could stipulate that 8 weeks of good weeklies in a 10 week period will move the student up to “lose” weeklies, less stringent weeklies just with the Resource teacher and not with information about behavior from the regular teachers. By doing this the kids have a tangible goal to shoot for and they won’t feel helpless and powerless.

Conclusion

There are a lot of theories and ways to go about working with behavior, but I feel that the ideas expressed above are mainstays in any program. With parent support, lots of communication, consistency, clear goals and ways to get their, etc., great things can come.

At the end of the day, working with students with challenging behaviors is something that for me is more gratifying than teaching content…I think. I say this because no matter how great your lesson was, or detailed and effective your rubric was, or how well planned and executed your unit was, the results, the visual and real-life results pale in comparison to helping a student control their behavior (and learn replacement behaviors), and to see how much more comfortable and happier they become (i.e. by hitting their goals and being rewarded), how much more successful they can be, how amazed their teachers are, and maybe most importantly, since I was a problem child and still regret all that I put my mom through, the feeling I get knowing that the child’s parents are finally relieved is priceless. To see the tears and frustration and powerlessness turn into a steady level of comfort and pride is probably the main reason that I enjoy focusing on behavior concerns.