Chapter 5

The phrase "including teaching replacement behavior" caught my attention. It is one thing to acknowledge the problem, to define which of the three from Chapter 4 (can't do, won't do, or unpolished) the student falls under, but the hardest thing for me is finding a replacement behavior that the student will buy into and meet his/her needs. I suppose if these students were actually at the tip of the 3-tiered social instruction pyramid, that would be do-able. Our students at Tulsa Public need to have that ol' pyramid flipped, knowing that the tip of the pyramid would be instruction for the masses and the largest group in our classroom is actually the individualized social instruction group. We are pretty top-heavy at TPS. Individualized instruction conventional wisdom says "Choose your battles. Sometimes the behavior is more about power struggles, etc. and not behavior that is harmful to the other students. (socially physically, emotionally, and academically)They give unnessessary battles in the book that would waste more time to address than continue to teach, without hurting a soul. If a behavior is a something that invites the other students to pick on them, help them with social norms and how he/she could fit in a little easier. Identifying replacement behavior includes: 1. Being positive in what postitive behavior you want them to do as an action. Don't use negatives. 2. The Fair Pair replacement behaviors on page 61 are kind of common sense to any educator I would hope. 3. Acknowledge a child before he/she has to act out negatively because he/she has been ignored. Hey, dig this! Some schools are hiring and training extra personnel who function as individual student mentors. It is called Check and Connect. The website is in the book. Would that not be awesome?????? I'll start the fundraiser to allocate some funds! Their main job would be providing intervention that involves problem solving and social skills development. Do you think that this is what Mr. Adams does? Do you think that another member of the staff would be as effective as the teacher they spend the whole day with or perhaps be better? I think if the person is trained in the human service field, they will know what they are doing and be of great help to free you up to teach. I think many of us already practice the individualized instruction but we never put a name to it. Maybe I need to make sure and use them EVERY time. Look and see. Most of these will look familiar. 1. Individual therapies with the professionally trained: speech, occupational, and counseling. 2. Check-in meetings first thing and throughout the day to establish trust with the child and find out what is going on with the child. 3. Precorrect a behavior or predict that a behavior will occur and practice expected behaviors with the child 4. Tutoring sessions on your own time with the child 5. Teachable moments when the behavior naturally occurs 6. Video modeling - Watching a video of the student engaging in the problem behavior and then evaluating and discussing the behavior. I don't know that I would do this with the whole class. Would you? Would the child be stigmatized or learn from it? I learned of another resource again...go figure. Social Stories. Never heard of them BY THAT NAME. Maybe I used them by another name. Basically they are narratives in the 1st or 3rd person that teach social environments and how to respond in them. You can find one at the back of this book or at www.thegraycenter.org. They were created by Carol Grey in the 1990s for this purpose. 7. I think the key to this next one is not taking breaks but TEACHING the student when it is time to take a break. 8. Use differentiated instruction. Duh!