It's true. I really do have endless patience for my toughest students. (I wish I could say I had that same patience at home with my own 4 children-but I'm working on it!) It doesn't mean that I always have the answers or do the right thing in every situation, but I do have patience and am always able to calmly treat my students with kindness and respect even when their behavior is the complete opposite. How is this possible? It's because of my perspective on
why they are misbehaving in the first place.
Just this week, I have been spending hours trying to problem solve how to handle a challenging student in my classroom. He is extremely disruptive and impulsive. I feel like I can't get in a sentence without him blurting something out. It seems nearly impossible for him to stay in his seat to get any work done (despite preferred seating, positive incentives, extra support). Yesterday, all I could give was give a blank stare at the end of the day when I looked over and saw him getting hand saniziter for (what seemed like) the 15th time and it was pouring like water from his hands-literally dripping on the floor. A moment later I had turned the lights back on (after having them off to signal to my students to listen to bus announcements) and I watched him go over and shut them off. This was after a day where I was collecting baseline data for a new behavior plan I'm going to implement and I had a fresh tally of the number of times he shouted out during lessons. I was very tuned in to his challenging behavior on purpose. Earlier in the year, when my job-share partner and I communicated to his mom about his behavior, her response was "No duh!" Every substitute writes down his name as being a problem. If a specials teacher is going to give me the name of someone who was "off," it will be his. I think it's safe to say, that he exhibits this behavior at home and at school.
So it would be VERY easy for me to see this student as unmotivated or maybe even attention seeking. It would be very easy to think he simply wasn't trying hard enough or lacked the respect he should have. It would be very easy for me to blame the parenting. It would be very easy for me to give him consequences and take away privileges. But I don't. (Well, to be honest, I almost took away some privileges because I was feeling like nothing I was doing was working. But my very knowledagble husband who happens to also be in the profession gave me some much better advice and helped me regain my focus. Hey, we all have our off days:) I didn't lose my patience yesterday despite the day he had. I know that he wouldn't do those things if he knew what to do differently. I know that taking away recess, calling home, moving his clip down, sending him to the office, and taking away privileges isn't going to change his behavior. Instead, I believe it is an opportunity for me to teach him
strategies and skills to do something differently. I believe it is my responsibility to create an environment and behavior plan that will allow him to experience success.
So after collaborating with my husband (okay, him giving me expert advice and me taking notes), I came up with a new plan. I can't tackle everything, so I am focusing our plan on the need for him to raise his hand and not constantly blurt out his every thought. I'm pretty familiar with setting up individual behavior plans and certainly have done my fair share of those. However, my husband reminded me of the need for a couple of components that were missing from my plan.
The first being- baseline data. To be honest, baseline data for behavior is something I have done to satisfy the IAT process, but have rarely felt the need to do it beyond that. So I made a simple tally chart, kept a tally for the number of interruptions per hour throughout the day and also jotted some notes about other behaviors I noticed. It was so helpful! I'm using that data now to make realistic and attainable goals for his self-monitoring chart.
The other simple aspect that I sometimes overlook is to make sure I have a visual reminder of the goal. So I just typed up something quick on Word with a picture of a boy raising his hand and will keep that on his desk.
And, the most valuable piece of advice was to make sure I give him a strategy or replacement behavior. So after looking at my baseline data and information, I noticed that this student is mostly shouting out whenever I'm giving directions or teaching. Most of the time it is relevant to what we are talking about. My husband suggested that I give him a small notebook that he could write or draw what he wanted to say rather than shout it out. Then I would set up a time (or a few) where he could sit with me and share what he wrote/drew in his notebook. BRILLIANT! At first, I was skeptical actually. We discussed since he is so many ADHD characteristics, that then he would be playing with the notebook or not paying attention to what I was saying and just drawing in the notebook. My husband encouraged me to just try it. So we started the notebook and it is working!! It is giving him something to do with that energy and that need to shout out. I can't believe how much less he is interrupting and I'm not even doing the self-monitoring/incentive chart yet. What a great reminder and lesson for me that we need to give our students strategies to replace the "negative" behavior. We can't just expect them to be able to figure it out because we give them a sticker chart. We need to support them and help bridge that gap for them.
I had such a powerful moment today when he couldn't wait to hold up his notebook and show me the first thing he had written down instead of shouting out. We were starting an activity in the teacher intervention portion of our
math rotations. He wrote "I like this." My heart melted. So sweet. I gave him a thumbs up and was beaming inside.
I'm not sure I will be completely successful in the time that I have with him. But that isn't going to stop me from trying. I know he doesn't want to hear an annoyed tone in his teachers' voices. I know that he doesn't want to get in trouble. He is a good kid. He is a good kid that is lacking the skills to do something different. And I'm hoping I can make a difference for him.
This year I also have had some success working with another challenging student new to our district. This student came to our classroom and after working with him for a few weeks, I was convinced that he actually didn't go to kindergarten. It took a bit to get his records, but they did confirm he actually did complete his kindergarten year. I was convinced of this though because he consistently went from 0 on pretests to 90-100%. It baffled me how easily he learned, but how far behind he was. He clearly had some behavior challenges as well. During fall conferences, I learned that although he did go to kindergarten he spent so much time out of class (in the office typically) because his behavior was so extreme he could not remain in the classroom. We of course had him on a behavior plan pretty quickly. The focus has been on positive reinforcement and earning extra privileges. It would have been very easy to kick him out of class, take away every privealge and give consequences. His behavior in the past certainly had been outrageous and he for sure was testing the waters in our classroom. But I believe because we implemented a positive approach, he is doing SO WELL. Not that we never have challenging moments, but he is on a completely different path than he was a year ago.
Why I Have the Patience for Challenging Students
The number one thing that gives me this patience is a core belief I have: Kids do well if they can. Kids that are exhibiting challenging behaviors are doing so because they lack the skills to do otherwise. The way I can help is by teaching them the skills, not punishing them.
This is something that I believe whole heartily and learned from the work of Dr. Ross Greene. Dr. Greene is the author of Lost at School and The Explosive Child. He is the originator of a Collaborative & Proactive Solutions. His work has changed the way I handle discipline in my classroom and shaped my perspective about why certain students can be so challenging. This mindset gives me my endless patience. I am anxiously awaiting his new book which will be released this May. (And no, I am no way affliated with Dr. Greene. He has no idea who I am. I just sincerely have been inspired by his work). You can visit his website
www.livesinthebalance.org for many free resources and information about his approach. There is a "walking tour" for educators and it clearly overview his approach and even has videos. You can find that
here.
I'm not claiming to be an expert in Dr. Green's approach. I was just thinking I would benefit from rereading Lost at School and watching some of the videos. But his principles are certainly what guide my decisions and my interactions with my students.
I started my teaching career in an inner ring suburb and the skills I learned by working with some extremely challenging students and classes there I know have strengthened my ability to work with more challenging students in the suburban district I work in now. Even as a beginning teacher, I had patience for these types of students. I was very aware of the backgrounds and home life of many of my students and I knew that often their behavior was a result of things that were beyond their control. I had compassion. I figured out that talking through issues with students and developing strong relationships with them was far more effective than dishing out consequences. Regardless of a student's home life, it can be easy as a teacher (and a parent actually) to view "misbehavior" as attention seeking, disrespectful, manipulative, or a result of entitlement and/or lack of motivation. I can't say that I've never had these thoughts myself.
My teacher training taught me to have a behavior management system with clear rules, consequences, and rewards. Every year I've taught, I am required to turn this system to my principal. I've always had expectations/rules, consequences, and rewards. For most students, a consistent and structured behavior management system will work. I certainly believe that consequences are a necessary part of life and the classroom and certainly don't feel I "coddle" my students. I tend to prefer a system that gives logical consequences like the Love & Logic program. For me it makes sense to give consequences based on the situation and the individual student and not have an general set of consequences (although because of school expectations, that's usually what I have).
And although I've had several different reward systems, I've also always felt that doing too much with rewards isn't something I'm comfortable with. I don't like to feel obligated to give class money or tokens for every student when they are doing what is expected. I do like to acknowledge and focus on the positive behavior. I am using
brag tags in my classroom this year as a positive way to acknowledge behavior and academic accomplishments. I just recently implemented a chart where students put their clip on a character trait they demonstrated. At the end of the day, I hand out the corresponding brag tags. This works for me for several reasons. I am focusing on the positive. You remember the first time you saw a teacher with some off task students masterfully get everyone right back on task by saying "I like the way so and so is______?" Teachers have been doing this forever. This is so much more effective than moving a clip down. Another reason this works for me is that there is no heichary to the character traits so there is no competion or embarrassment for the students about where their clip is (see my post
here about why I don't use clip up behavior charts). I'm not dangling candy or trinkets in front on them. They simply get acknowledgment and a tag to keep and share with their families. And most importantly, when I move their clip to the character trait chart or hand out a brag tag, I have the opportunity to teach the students. I can spend a few seconds or sometimes a much longer time for class discussion to focus on the trait and the positive behavior. In this way, I'm constantly teaching my students strategies for good behavior. They are seeing and discussing ways to handle difficult situations which has a positive snowball effect in the classroom.
But, what I didn't know as a very young teacher was that no matter which system of consequences and rewards I implemented, it wouldn't work for every student. There are some students that will require a whole different system or approach. I learned and now truly believe that fair doesn't mean equal. I think as teachers, we have accepted that some students require more to succeed academically. We know we need to provide interventions and change what we do for them to experience success. The same is true for behavior challenges. One approach isn't going to work for all. Some students are going to require much more of our time. We need to give each student what they need and that isn't going to be the same for all of our students.
Dr. Greene's research and work has given clarification, structure, and validity to what I've always felt intuitively, but was never able to effectively transfer to my classroom management. I realize this is a great contrast from what many teachers do and what we are expected to do. And if in your classroom, that is working for you and
all of your students, then this approach may not be something you need to consider. But for those of you who have a student or a classroom full of students who nothing seems to be working for, I'd encourage you to consider that perhaps this students would do well if he/she could. Perhaps you can teach them skills and strategies to do something different.
The next time you have a student scribble all over their work, refuse to do an assignment or follow a directive, or flip over a desk in a fit of anger-I'd encourage you to just try a different approach. Shift your mindset. Think to yourself, that if this student had the skills to do something different, they would. Sometimes, yes, it means swallowing your pride and that desire to give a consequence to let the student (or the others watching) know they didn't just get away with something. And yes, it for sure takes far more time and effort. But that student needs and deserves your time and energy.
I have found that this mindset gives me so much more patience, that my classroom environment is much more positive and nurturing, and most importantly those tough students stand a chance at changing their behavior and experiencing school as a positive place to be and learn.
Just like sometimes our students lack the skills and knowledge to do something different, I think teachers can only do the best with what they have been trained to do and the skills they have. It is my hope, that something in this post encourages you to expand your knowledge to other options in dealing with our toughest students.
