How can educators recognize and intervene when student behavior is escalating?

Transcript: Acceleration Phase

Teacher: Friends, any other questions before we move on?

Nora: [pushes desk away] I said, this is a waste of my time!

Teacher: That’s an inappropriate way to speak to a teacher. If you don’t get your tone under control, there will be consequences.

[ Johanna Staubitz commentary ]

We see Nora’s behavior escalating further. She is now shouting out at the teacher, who responds in a way that’s completely understandable, which is to let her know that her behavior is unacceptable. And once again he does this somewhat privately, and with a calm tone of voice. And those things are worth replicating. However, he’s not responding in a way that addresses Nora’s problem. He’s just kind of telling her to stop it and so he needs a better strategy, and that’s why we can expect Nora’s behavior to continue to escalate to the next stage.

Transcript: Acceleration Phase with De-escalation Strategy

Nora: [pushes desk away] I said, this is a waste of my time!

Teacher: Hey I can see you feeling frustrated, why don’t you go to the peace corner.

Good job.

[ Johanna Staubitz commentary ]

All right. So here we are with Nora, demonstrating agitation: “I said, this is a waste of my time,” that raised voice. And in this scenario, Mr. Santini again approaches her privately, uses a calm tone of voice. In fact, he sounds empathetic, and says, “Hey, I can see you’re frustrated.” Not only is his tone expressing empathy, but what he says is a recognition of what she might be feeling. And he offers her an out. It’s like if the trigger is this situation where she’s bored and annoyed and wants to move on, he’s saying, “You know what it’s cool, like, go ahead and take a break in the Peace Corner,” which is a nice thing for people to have available in a classroom.

So, in summary, some of the same elements are here that were in his response, you know, that we saw previously— where he kind of failed to de-escalate Nora­­­— which include using a calm tone and speaking privately. But in this case, what he said to Nora was empathetic and matched to the trigger. It was an out, an escape from the situation. Also notice that this tactic of offering a break, or the Peace Corner, is different than the ones Mr. Santini tried when Nora was in the Trigger Phase in our alternate universe and also when she was in the Agitation Phase. In both of those phases, he offered an opportunity for her to move on to the next activity. And, you know, I just want to point this out, because as a student gets closer to Peak, we may want to think about more intense strategies as being the ones we go to. So here a break is more disruptive to the classroom routine and more disruptive to instruction, for Nora, than, for example, going ahead, moving on to the academic activity. But once she gets close to Peak, her, she’s responding emotionally, and he might have a better chance at, you know, de-escalating her before she reaches a crisis level if he kind of goes for something that is a bigger interruption, like a break, or time in the Peace Corner.

Transcript: Kathleen Lane, PhD, BCBA-D

Without any kind of awareness training about the acting-out cycle whatsoever, this is typically the stage when teachers would begin to know for sure that there’s a problem. And this is when the student is trying [laughs] to take you on as a teacher. And oftentimes in this phase of acceleration, the students are trying to engage you in an argument, and it might come across like, “This is so boring,” or, “I can’t believe I have to do this again,” and they’re intentionally trying to provoke you or capture your attention. Your typical response might be to say something like, “You need to do this because I told you this is what needs to be done.” And then you might find yourself engaged in an argument with a seven-year-old. But at this point, it is critical that you not engage in sarcasm that way. And instead, we want to reach deep, and we want to show empathy towards them and find a constructive way to move that conversation forward without embarrassing them. So you might say something like, “I know you’re really upset right now, but I really need you to start these problems.” And maybe your intervention at that point is as simple as taking a highlighter and then underlining the first three problems. And then you can say to them, “When you get done with these first three, go ahead and check them with a partner and I’ll be right back to check on you after that.” Even if they make a comment when you start to walk away, that is still not the ideal time to take them on. You’re giving them an opportunity to save a little face there. And this is one of those situations where you’re going to lose the battle to win the war type of a thing. Because if you attempt to engage them, then you’re likely to propel them into that next stage. And instead, when you start to walk away and they make somewhat of a snide comment, just keep going.

Another thing that will show up during this time is that for many students, they will engage in what’s called partial compliance. So if you tell them to do an assignment, they’ll do it in a very, very sloppy or rushed way and just turn it in and think, “Okay, that’s good enough.” And sometimes as a teacher, this is hard to do, but the ideal response might be to say something like this: “I appreciate your turning that in. However, as I’m looking over this last one, I simply can’t read it. Could you go back and redo just this one so I can make sure that I can give you full credit if this answer is correct.” But if you were to go back to them and say, “I need you to redo this whole thing” at that very moment, you would likely push them over the edge and they may move even further up the acting-out cycle into that peak behavior. So in summary, the best way a teacher can interrupt the acceleration phase is to offer a prompt and then walk away. In other words, make the request known and then give them an opportunity to get back on track. And then as soon as they do get back on track, that’s the time you want to give them immediate acknowledgment or reinforcement. As simple as “I really appreciate you getting back on track, that’s awesome.”

Transcript: Pamela Glenn

I think some of the most common mistakes that new teachers make is getting in a power struggle with a kid. Don’t do it. You’re not going to win. It’s not productive at all. There’s something about knowing when to not speak and let the child get it out. And then wait for the child to have completely depleted themselves [laughs] and then move in. I’ve seen more teachers: Child gets angry, teacher gets angry. And it’s just a spiral of a disaster. My biggest advice is do not get in a power struggle with a child, you’re not going to win. When they are talking and they’re talking back, you’ve set your expectation. That’s when you have to be calm. “This is not the behavior that I expect.” And you’ve got to give them a minute, because if you think about it, when you’re upset, you can’t rationally think through what’s going on to respond in the moment. I know I need a minute to calm down. Especially if they’re in front of their friends, they’ve got to save face. “You need a minute. Go take a minute. I’m not going back in for an argument with you. So just take a minute.” And then afterwards we address, “That’s not how you talk to me.” So, we always address the behavior. Then we look at why were you behaving like that? It’s never a case of “I can throw a chair, and she’s not going to do anything.” We’re going to talk about it. The other thing that I think is also a common mistake that teachers make is we have a lot of preconceived ideas about what a certain type of student is going to do. I think sometimes we’ve already decided in our minds ‘This student is going to do this. I’m going to treat them like this.’ The student’s been treated like that. They lash back and then it’s a never-ending cycle of what is expected or how they’ve been treated. I think everybody just has to judge the child based on who they are in the moment and set the expectation. The children will rise to the expectation if you help them.

Transcript: Janel Brown

As a new teacher coming in, you really cannot take anything personally from your students as far as behavior, lashing out. These kids, they go through so much, and they just don’t know how to express themselves properly. You have to understand your kids’ background, where they’re coming from, what they’re dealing with. Some are dealing with homelessness. Some of them are dealing with not having enough food to eat at home. Dad’s missing, Mom is missing, drugs, just all types of things. The best thing that you can do, as a new teacher coming in, just let a student know that “I’m here for you. If you ever need to talk or anything, I’m not going to force you to talk, but if you ever feel that you want to tell me what’s going on, I’m here to listen. I’ll try my best to do what I need to do to get the help that you need for whatever your issue is.” Just have compassion for the students. If Johnny did something yesterday, don’t hold it against him tomorrow. You give him new grace and new mercies. Just like we get new graces and mercies every day, we have to extend that to our kids as well. Love them. But if you’re constantly just fussing and yelling, and Johnny can’t ever do anything right, this child may be going through this at home. And then at school, which is supposed to be his safe place, he’s getting the same thing. He’s just at a loss. So, yes, grace, mercy, compassion. Don’t take it personal.