Last year, I had a student with anger issues who was quick to react negatively to situations where he felt frustrated. For example, he was working with a small group to create an informational poster for a social studies project. He wanted to color the drawing that someone else had sketched, but the original artist wanted to do it. He stood up, balled up his fists, stepped on the paper and stormed out of the room. After this first incident, we talked and discussed some calming techniques and other ways to handle situations that he expressed were frustrating or unfair. In my opinion, this case classified as a challenging behavior because it was about ten weeks into the school year and social, emotional, and behavioral skills had been discussed and reviewed heavily prior to that. “According to Cullinan (2007), most behaviors are learned, and students’ unwanted behaviors can be modified with positive reinforcement and consequences” (Hamlett, 2018, p. 1). I decided to reach out to the family with little success of communication. That day, I came to learn, surprisingly from the child, that his mother was an alcoholic who was very sick with liver issues and currently in the hospital. Now that I knew a probable cause for the behavior, I immediately contacted the school counselor to devise a plan to help this student.
To prioritize intervention steps, not knowing if there was an additional reason for his behavior, I gathered all relevant data: incidents, dates, times, and descriptions of events. Even though this behavior was probably due to circumstances outside of the school setting, the effects seemed to make their way into the educational and common area environments. I knew that I didn’t have control of the circumstances with his mother, but that I could work with him to help him function to the best of his ability, skills that I hope would also be used outside of school. Our counselor worked with me to apply a Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) to determine the best approach to this situation. “FBA consists of a variety of behavior assessment procedures and is characterized by the systematic process of identifying and defining challenging behavior; determining the antecedents that predict the behavior; and, determining the consequences that reinforce behavior” (Young & Martinez, 2016, p. 40).
Two of the most important elements of an effective behavioral plan is organization and communication. After all, it is a plan! “Research indicates that when FBA is used in the schools, positive behavior change is the result” (Young & Martinez, 2016, p. 40). By using data-based research methods to obtain information on the student, a proper plan can be created and tailored to the specific cause of the behavior. In addition, effective communication needs to take place between all parties involved with the plan. Meetings to check progress, counseling sessions, parent communication, and appropriate reinforcement and consequences need to be established and written down, so all parties involved can be held accountable. Creating a plan and formally implementing it should be a process each school should have a blueprint for. As previously mentioned, administering an FBA, meeting with a team, writing a plan, and creating an accountability report are important steps to take to address to a challenging behavior situation.
References
Hamlett, T. (2018). Interventions For Students With Challenging Behaviors. Module 2: Primary Reasons for Challenging Student Behavior. Part 1: Primary Reasons for Challenging Student Behavior.
Hamlett, T. (2018). Interventions For Students With Challenging Behaviors. Module 2: Primary Reasons for Challenging Student Behavior. Part 2: Consistency.
Young, A., & Martinez, R. (2016). Teachers' explanations for challenging behavior in the classroom: What do teachers know about Functional Behavior Assessment? National Teacher Educational Journal, 9(1), 39-46.
No comments:
Post a Comment