Chapter 2

The authors thought that the phrases: positive behavior support and functional behavioral assessment were common terms in maintaining order in our classroom. I guess I just used positive reinforcement all these years. AND I suspect that most special ed teachers have heard these terms but now these are not exclusive terms. Of course, we have known for years that positive behavior support should be proactive and not reactive. The difference I surmised between positive reinforcemnt that I have known and the PBS (above) is the the latter includes effective environments and research-validated practices. Some of the ideal environments fall on us, the educators, to increase the prevention and early intervention skills for the students.Did I say that out loud? If falls first on ME to invervene before the problem behavior is even occuring. They break down the intervention to cover the whole class. The entie positive behavior support pyramid needs to be built from the ground up, including everyone in the class. The other 5 to 15 percent will receive more intensive intervention. There are a good handful of teachers at McClure that already practice PBS and it would do well to observe them if possible. Then we get to my new term. (I have gone all these years without officially knowing this term!) I actually practiced it as I'm sure you have, but maybe you didn't know there was an official title for it: Functional Behavioral Assessment. Basically this is becoming proficient in knowing the funcions of a student's behavior when it happens and why it is happening. They break it down into three concepts: Setting events: What happened in the setting of the student's life that disrupts his education such as visitation with Dad, going on a field trip, coming back from a holiday, etc. Triggering Antecedents: In a sentence it is "the straw that broke the camel's back" The student is already suffering anxiety, etc. and you give him/her one more thing that makes him/her go off the deep end. It could be an an assignment that is too impossible for him, change in the schedule, negative memory, etc. These events will be harder to identify with nonverbals or ESL students. Maintaining Consequences: This one was new to me. This is not giving the student some type of punishment for their bad behavior. I learned that maintaining consequences means what naturally happens after the behavior to what the STUDENT gets out of that bad behavior: Could be attention, something monetary, power, sensory need, communicate feelings, not understanding or to avoid something. The authors explained each of these student consequences in the book. I found out that I have Prader-Willi syndrome...a chromosomal disorder partially characterized by a chronic feeling of hunger. (I'm glad they finally put a name to my affiction) I also found a new-fangled word for not understanding social mores: pragmatics. I used to hear that word all the time when I was young but didn't know it in context. Pragmatics is one of the biggest hurdles in cooperative learning groups and even working in whole class sessions for the student. They want us to think of Functional Behavioral Assessment simply as teachers being the detectives in decifering why the student is acting out and build up the communication code. Considering the function of the behavior will lead to more effective responses. This reminds me a little bit of Ruby Payne's Understanding Poverty. Regarding interventions by the teacher, there are four steps by the educator: Instruction Prevention Reinforcement Undesirable consequences The undesirable consequences cannot be the first step in positive behavior support in our classrooms anymore. These are the basics to the whole book. The authors will get into all of this in the following chapters. Please let me know what new terms you have learned and what best practices you are already using and what has been working. Tell me what is on your mind.