How can educators recognize and intervene when student behavior is escalating?
Page 4: Trigger
If calm behavior is not maintained, some students may move out of the Calm Phase and into Phase 2—the Trigger Phase. This phase can happen suddenly and seemingly without warning. Students are often triggered or “set off” by an issue or concern either left unaddressed or inadequately resolved. Triggers can take place within the school environment, outside of school, or a combination of both. As such, a teacher may not have observed a trigger that occurred within a previous classroom, in the hallway, lunchroom, bathroom, or at home. See the table below for some common school-based and non-school-based triggers.
| School-Based Triggers | Non-School-Based Triggers |
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What a Student Looks Like
In the Trigger Phase, some unmet need creates an unresolved problem for the student. This can trigger a behavior that may go unnoticed by the teacher. In this phase, a student may appear:
- Restless
- Frustrated
- Anxious
In this video, note the behaviors that Nora displays during the Trigger Phase (time: 0:17).
Transcript: Trigger Phase
Teacher: Three times zero equals zero. Next, we need to multiply …
[Nora sighs heavily in frustration, rolls her eyes, and crosses her arms.]
Teacher: … three times the digit in the tens place which is four. What do we do next?
[Nora sighs heavily in frustration and makes a noise with her mouth.]
Jordan: Multiply three times four, which is 12.
Teacher: Nice, three times four is 12, and there we go.
Strategies To Implement
Fortunately, teachers can use strategies to prevent behavior from escalating into more serious phases of the acting-out cycle. These strategies can help teachers to anticipate and effectively respond to a student’s trigger(s). When teachers work to prevent or properly address triggers, it is more likely that a student’s challenging behavior will de-escalate, causing them to return to the Calm Phase. However, if a student’s concerns are not properly addressed, it is almost certain that the behavior will escalate, moving to the next phase in the acting-out cycle. The table below includes steps to take, as well as tips teachers can use to address triggers.
| Steps | Tips |
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Precorrection Behavior strategy that entails reminding a student of appropriate behavior before the student can make an error; can be given either to groups of students or to an individual student.
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If strategies used in this phase are successful, the student will return to the Calm Phase. In this video, Mr. Santini intervenes effectively to interrupt the acting-out cycle at the Trigger Phase and helps Nora return to the Calm Phase (time: 0:26)
Transcript: Trigger Phase with De-escalation Strategy
Teacher: Three times zero equals zero. Next, we need to multiply …
[Nora sighs heavily in frustration, rolls her eyes, and crosses her arms.]
Teacher: …three times the digit in the tens place which is four. What do we do next?
[Nora sighs heavily in frustration and makes a noise with her mouth.]
Jordan: Multiply three times four, which is 12.
Teacher: Nice, three times four is 12, and there we go.
Teacher: [To Nora] Hey, it looks like you might be ready to move on. Do you want to pick one of these to work on while I finish with the group? Awesome! Thank you.
In this interview, Kathleen Lane explains how a teacher can work with students (and families) to prevent and address situations that may trigger a student (time: 2:38).
Kathleen Lynne Lane, PhD, BCBA-D, CF-L1
Professor, Department of Special Education
Associate Vice Chancellor for Research
University of Kansas
Transcript: Kathleen Lane, PhD
As we think about triggers, when you have students who appear to be struggling regularly, you might consider connecting with them and perhaps a family member to see how you can best support that student. When it is not possible to work with the student or their family, you might just walk through these steps yourself. There are many non-school-based things that you can’t manage. For example, I may not be able to solve major problems such as financial distress for families, but if I know that a student has not had breakfast, I can make arrangements for the school cafeteria folks to have an extra breakfast available for them. And in this way, that student can come in, eat first thing, so that they can be fed and ready to learn. Similarly, if you have a student that’s constantly truant or tardy, then you can meet with that student and say, “You know, these last three days I’ve noticed you’ve been late every day. Can you tell me a little bit about what’s going on? Is there anything I can do to help you to get to school on time?” And it could be that they’d say something along the lines of, “Well, I don’t have an alarm clock at my house, and nobody will wake me up. And so I get up and I still have to make my lunch and find my clothes and that kind of thing.” So you might think about saying to them something along the lines of, “How can we better handle the night before? What about if you packed your lunch the night before, so that’s ready to go? How would you feel about maybe even laying out your school clothes the night before? So you have everything you need, like your shoes, your socks, and all that kind of stuff.” And thinking through this in a problem-solving fashion, you can help them on the front side so they don’t run into those problems that they’re confronted with first thing in the morning when they wake up. And for students that don’t respond well to schedule changes, there can be another strategy called pre-correcting that happens beforehand. So even when it’s exciting things and sometimes when it’s not exciting things [laughs], you can still use that pre-correction strategy and it could look like this: “Now, remember, this week we’re having an assembly, and while we’re all going to be super excited about being there, it’s super tempting to get loud when we’re excited, but we still have to make sure that we’re keeping things cool and under control.” If you’re at the elementary level, that might look like giving them language to remind them to use their inside voices.
When we think about clarifying the parameters of what you expect before that day gets there, if you’re going on a field trip, we just want to make sure that you have clarified the parameters so that you can keep them safe and really help them to have an enjoyable time wherever you are. If it’s an apple orchard field trip, we certainly don’t want them running out of control because we haven’t thought to tell them what to expect on the day. So the goal here is to anticipate and manage known triggers so that we can interrupt the acting-out cycle before things really get started.
