“The only behavior teachers can control is their own”

Social and Emotional Responses to Behavior

Mediations (Peer-to-peer, teacher-student, counselor-student, "+teacher)
Focusing on the impact of actions and behavior (as well as unpacking the intentions of actions to find the need that is being communicated in behavior)
Validating phrases (the intentional and purposeful legitimization of the home culture and language of students)
Affirming phrases (the intentional and purposeful effort to reverse the negative stereotypes of non-mainstream cultures and languages portrayed in historical perspectives)
Peace corners (areas that are meant for students to regroup)
Asking students what their capacity is:

Do you have the capacity to participate in a group right now?

(if yes) What will you have to do to contribute?

(if no) Do you need some time to regroup and/or practice before being able to contribute?

Reinforce desired behavior and teach replacement behavior
Avoid addressing behavior in front of the whole class
Student-led conferences (can include parents, support staff, and administrators)

What is VABBing?

In short, VABBing stands for Validating, Afforming, Building, and Bridging. According to scholar Sharroky Hollie, VABBing helps teachers support students to be “situationally appropriate” for an academic culture in the classroom. Further, Hollie defines 4 subcategories of classroom management in which VABBing can be used to support students to be successful at these categories:

1. Ways for responding

2. Ways for discussing

3. Attention signals

4. Movement

VABBing is an extremely important strategy for teachers to incorporate into daily practice because it allows students from a diverse set of cultures to express themselves without feeling that they are being directed to act a certain cultural way. Further, it allows teachers to learn more about the complex and varied ways in which cultures create and communicate information, especially regarding cultures outside of one’s own experience and identity.

Praise is also important because it offers real time feedback to the whole class on expected behavior and performance. Rather than constantly hounding students to perform a certain way, the teacher gives clear expectations and focuses on the students performing well as models of how students can and should be behaving.

Importance of proactive and responsive strategies

Teachers need to be proactive about behavior and misbehavior because "behavior is communication" and it "occurs in patterns". To me, this means that however our students behave, they are communicating a set of needs, wants, beliefs, values and more that can help teachers identify patterns and then plan and respond accordingly.

CLR scholars like Hollie help us realize that student behavior is rooted in a variety of cultures. When teachers can recognize that students come to our classroom with a wide range of cultural behaviors, we can check our biases in an effort to make our pedagogical practices as equitable, inclusive, and transformative as possible.

Responding to Escalating Behavior

Below is an image from a Power Point Presentation on "Responding to Escalating Student Behavior" by the Los Angeles Unified School District. It offers 3 tiers of examples for universal, selected, and targeted supports for students.

3 Methods/Strategies to offer praise that "VABBs" (Validates, Affirms, Builds, and Bridges)

Here are some key component to providing effective praise:

It is perceived as sincere, earned, and truthful
It is specific
It is not directive (Here’s an example of directive praise: “Good writing! Write that legibly every day.”)
It is focused on process, not ability
It is immediate
It is unexpected
It is differentiated because not all students need/desire to be praised in the same ways

Hollie also has us think about avoiding deficit and neutral words and using more positive, affirmative words.

Avoid using deficit words like:

Should
Ought to
Wrong
Fix it
Correctly
Right way/Our way
Your way
The only way

Consider neutral words like:

Understand
Tolerate
Allow
Another chance
Consequence-based
This time
Next time

Focus on validating terms like:

Appreciate
Honor
Value
Love
Respect
Inspired
Moved
Affirm
Connect
Empathize
Can relate
Grateful.

The following strategies are from "Teacher Praise: An Efficient Tool to Motivate Students". A teacher can implement this on day one by asking students (in an interest survey for example) how they like to be praised. The question can be: Do you have a preference on receiving public or private praise? It may also be helpful to have these methods printed out or on a sticky note.

Describing noteworthy behavior

Instead plainly saying "good job", teachers need to identify the actions that students took that warranted the praise. This can be something like "Great job coming into class and starting on the Do Now without me asking you!"

Praise effort not ability

Rather than focusing on how well a student can perform at something, it is better to focus on the amount of effort the student is putting in. This can be something like "I see that you were focusing very hard on this question. I really appreciate that extra effort you put in!"

Match method of praise to student preference

As mentioned above, we should ask students how they like to receive praise. Some students might not have a strong preference, but other definitely will.

Further, we can turn to the Be You campaign and let students know that being engaged does not look the same for everyone. The Be You campaign is "for educators to provide students opportunities to be who they are behaviorally based on the Rings of Culture and the Iceberg of Culture tied to cultural responsiveness." This framework helps teachers create learning activities and environments that allow students to be their authentic selves as they learn and interact with the world.

We can describe to students that the Be You framework is an alternative to the commonly used strategy of SLANT (Sit up, Listen, Ask and Answer questions, Nod your head, and Track the speaker). Some students like to doodle while they listen, and others may have their eyes on you the whole time. Most people fall somewhere in the middle. The way students engage will vary, and that is a beautiful thing!

When thinking how we allow students to participate in class, as well as when we provide praise, we should consider these questions:

When do students have an opportunity to be themselves culturally and linguistically during instruction?
When do teachers, leaders, and support staff validate and affirm students cultural and linguistic selves while they learn?
When do students have opportunities to be who they are without being warned, punished, or penalized?

Addressing Misbehavior

On understanding culturally inappropriate behavior and how it differs from unacceptable behavior

Culturally inappropriate behavior is cultural and linguistic behavior of students that is not situationally appropriate for the context in which it occurs. Teachers have to recognize this and separate it from unacceptable behavior, which is actions and behavior that are disrespectful and intolerant of others.

When you have a cultural lens regarding behavior, you can identify when students are using certain modes of communication that fall outside of your culture and may be deemed as unacceptable by white hegemonic culture. This leads to culturally misunderstandings and miscommunications that often alienate the students and even the teacher in a web of disciplinary/punitive responses to student cultural behavior.

Understanding the context is deeply important because teachers can replicate dominant and punitive models of classroom management if they fail to validate and affirm student culture without giving clear expectations that will build and bridge them to successful behavior in the academic context.

For Communalism, teachers can recognize that students may view their group or class as a community rather than just a collection of individuals. Eye contact is a case by case basis, some cultures of students may demand or expect eye contact when discussing, while others may expect no eye contact especially when talking with a superior (teacher being deemed as a superior, which is cultural as well).

The below methods are by no means the only ones I will use to respond to student misbehavior. If we as a class think about the norms and behavior expectations that are set up for each lesson, then responding to behavior that falls outside of those expectations becomes easier to frame and discuss. As I get to know my students, I can begin to identify which strategies I think are going to be the most effective in responding to specific misbehavior. Norm checks are something I could use in every lesson if I feel it will help teach and reteach expected behaviors. Observation sheets will be a case by case basis, but they can be a great tool to plan how to respond to habitual misbehavior and to come to my colleagues and strategize how we can support students. "The look" is something I feel might work better with younger students, but can also be effective with older students if used sparingly.

Norm checks

When students are consistently engaging in disruptive behavior, such as moving to other tables and distracting others, it could be useful to discuss the norms and behavior expectations that we have already set up. Taking a few minutes to have students reflect on how they feel the class, and themselves, are upholding the norms can be a productive way to address misbehavior, especially if more than a few students are doing it. This also allows students to monitor their own behavior and work towards holding themselves and each other accountable. without me being the catalyst for that.

Students can respond to the question "How well are we following the *insert relevant norm*?" by doing a self-report on notes or handouts, giving a Fist to Five, or discuss among each other.

Daily Observation Record Sheet

Behavior observations

Some students will exhibit the same "misbehavior" over and over. Rather than just pointing out that the behavior is inappropriate, I can observe the student's behavior over the course of a couple class periods in an effort to identify what might be triggering the behavior. As I stated above, "behavior is communication", which also means that behavior is data. A simple technique that can be implemented is a monitoring document that allows me to track student behavior as data. This can give me time to talk with other teachers and see if they are experiencing the same issues with this student.

Above is an example of how the observation record sheet can look.

"The look"

Every student knows "the look" and typically knows what behaviors warrant one. This is a subtle but powerful technique that seems to come naturally to some and take a lot of practice for others. I can explicitly mention this technique with students and let them know that it is something I don't want to use all the time, but that it definitely is useful to let students know that what they are doing is inappropriate.

Posted Class Norms

The norms and behavior expectations that we create as a class should be posted at all times in class. I plan on having at least one anchor chart or poster that has the norms on them for me or students to reference at any given time. It would also be helpful to have a digital copy that I can project on the screen/board if we need to take down the norm anchor chart. Another way to make them more accessible would be to translate the norms into ALL of the languages my students speak.

Culturally infused activities from Hollie's book

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