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

Transcript: Recovery Phase

Teacher: Hey, let’s talk through what happened earlier. Can we start with your reflection?

Nora: OK.

Teacher: Great! I see that you were frustrated by having to wait to do your math work. It was hard to hear other students ask questions that you already knew the answers to? I can totally understand that, but what did you do?

Nora: I talked out. Then I yelled and I knocked over my chair.

Teacher: I saw that too. How did that work out? How do you feel about the result?

Nora: I feel embarrassed, and I wish I hadn’t done it.

Teacher: I know. What do you think about what you could do the next time? Give me some ideas, I can help you.

Nora: Maybe I could ask to work ahead?

Teacher: Nice. That’s a super idea. How about I find some challenging activities for you to keep at your desk just for times like this?

Nora: OK.

Teacher: Also remember you always have the option to go to the Peace Corner and use the activities over there.

Nora: OK.

Teacher: Great. Now, here’s the thing: whenever a student shows any unsafe behavior in the classroom the teacher needs to call home and write an office referral. OK, I just want to make sure you’re aware of that so it’s not a surprise. You have any questions about that?

Nora: No. I get it.

Teacher: Great! Before we move on, is there anything else you need or want me to know? Anything thing else that I could help make you wait better the next time?

Nora: I don’t know. I’m always waiting for adults to help other kids so they can help me.

Teacher: That’s right. You have a baby sister.

Nora: Yeah. She gets all the attention.

Teacher: I’m sorry to hear that. That must be pretty hard. If you ever want to talk about that we totally can.

Nora: OK.

Teacher: How are you feeling now?

Nora: I feel a little bit embarrassed, but I’m feeling a lot better.

Teacher: That’s totally understandable. I’m glad you’re feeling better, and I just want you to know, I’m very glad to have you in my class.

Nora: Thank you.

Transcript: Kathleen Lane, PhD

During the recovery phase, generally, schools will have a debriefing form that allows them an opportunity to have a structure to walk through this problem-solving process with the student, to take a quick look at what just happened, what could be done differently so that it can be prevented next time. And we can think about this as a debriefing activity. Now, hopefully, when you’re sitting down to do this debrief with the student during this time, you’ve been successful in giving them an independent activity that they can do, and the rest of the class is back on track because we do not want all eyes on the student. At this time, the teacher can go back to the student and say, “I know that was really uncomfortable and I’m feeling uncomfortable too with what just happened. But we’re at a time now where we need to talk through it so we can do things better the next time.” If you don’t know what that trigger was, you might say something like, “It seemed to me I didn’t even feel like I saw this coming. I just looked over and I saw you doing this. Can you tell me what happened before that?” And basically what you’re doing in this moment is talking with the student to figure out why did this happen? What set the stage for this to even take place? And the goal is not to blame anybody, but the goal is to learn from it so that we can prevent this from happening again in the future. And it might be something as simple as “When you gave that last answer in class and you said I was wrong, it totally embarrassed me in front of all my friends and I just didn’t feel like doing anything like that. And the more I thought about it, the more frustrated I got because I really felt like you called me out in front of my friends.”

And it may be that the teacher totally missed that and didn’t even realize saying “No that’s not quite right” was offensive to that student or was humiliating in some way. So with that new information together, that teacher and that student can come up with an action plan. And it literally could be as simple as maybe the student needs a little more time to think about questions so that they can have a chance to come up with the right answer ahead of time.

So you might come up with something like, “Tomorrow, I’m going to ask you a question in our discussion section, and I want you to think about this. And if you want to bounce your ideas off some of your friends or check with me before class starts, I’m happy to do that.” Or you might even say, over the course of a normal conversation, “Hey, Jesse, I’m going to want to get your opinion on something in just a second, but I’m going to go ahead over here and check in with Alexis to get her thoughts first.” And that little interaction gives Jesse an opportunity to think for a couple of seconds. “All right, she’s going to ask me a question and I know this is going to be okay.” Do some positive self-talk. For some students, it’s just really, really hard [laughs] to get corrective feedback or be told that they did something wrong or said something wrong, and it feels much more personal than it was intended to come across. So for those students, you might come over and say, “Hey, I know you’re finishing up your writing activity right now and I’m going to come back in just a couple minutes, and then we’re going to edit your paper together just for capitals and periods. So if you would, take a quick look at it and I’ll be right back.”

So that lets them know I’m about to give you some feedback and then it gives them a chance to double-check themselves so that they can be ready to hear what you have to say. So essentially, this debriefing session gives us a chance to learn about what went wrong from both people’s perspective and come up with a new approach for moving forward the next time. It is not to blame. It is to learn.

Transcript: Gloria Campbell-Whatley, EdD

Now in the Recovery Phase, restorative discipline or restorative justice is very important. Restorative justice or restorative discipline is a way that you can fix whatever wrong that you have done. So you get a chance to look at your behavior, view the behavior, and then correct it. And then you begin to talk about, okay, this is something that you did. It wasn’t right. Now, let’s correct it. What can I do to correct it? And that’s very different from “I’m suspending you, get out of the door, go to in-class suspension.” There is no restoration. And that restoration is important to the student to fix that offense. So you fought in the cafeteria and you slung some food over here, so you go in the cafeteria and you do some duty, you wipe down tables, you sweep or clean it up. You’re still there, you’re not suspended, it leaves you still as part of the class. You’re not thrown out. You are going to fix what you did. And then you begin to handle things in a different way when you are about to commit an offense. You’ll handle it in another way because you fixed it. So you know that there’s another way to handle it. It really works well in that Recovery Phase.