How can educators modify a student’s behavior?

Transcript: Johanna Staubitz, PhD, BCBA-D

Attention

If a student is seeking attention, it is really important to build a relationship and offer opportunities for connection to reduce the need for them to resort to interfering behavior to access it. So what we really need to be doing is spending time with our students and learning about them and their individual needs and preferences and then use that knowledge to enhance connection in a really authentic way. The way we do this really depends on age. But I think we can boil it down to a few things, including follow their lead and interests; join in with them if they are engaging in some leisure activity; if they’re reading a favorite book, you can engage with that; maybe join them in watching a video about a favorite topic; learn about those topics; engage with them on their interests; play basketball with them. And as you do all of these things, try interacting with them in different ways. For example, if you’re playing basketball, a lot of us tend to resort to self-deprecation to elevate the student’s skill, like, “You’re so much better at this than I am. Wow! You’re so good. I’m so bad!” But that can actually come off as a transparent attempt to make them feel good. So be authentic. Maybe you show up as a worthy adversary, but also be responsive to what the child communicates both verbally and non-verbally to sort of dial that in.

Another thing to think about is trying out different ways to recognize them or support them and help them. And observe their reactions to see which approaches seem to be the best fit for that individual student. For example, not everybody enjoys or benefits from overt praise. Or maybe some students do. But when that happens, while they’re really engaged in an activity, it can throw them off. And we want to pay attention and notice those things and really try to customize the way we interact with students based on what we’ve learned about them.

Finally, affirmations and acknowledgments—which are different from praise—can be really helpful. So praise involves your perspective or your opinion, your evaluation of them: “Good job! Great job! I love how you do that!” That’s really more about you than the student, whereas affirming or acknowledging them is simply highlighting or underscoring something that they are doing that you know they care about. For example, if a student’s really proud of their art, and you’ve learned that about them because you’ve taken the time to get to know them, you might say something like, “Wow! I could tell by your face that you were really in the flow while you were drawing.” And that helps the student take pride in what they’re doing and feel seen.

Transcript: Johanna Staubitz, PhD, BCBA-D

Access to Items or Activities

When students are seeking access to items or activities, we can help them better communicate their wants and needs and learn to delay gratification. First is recognizing when you have something you need to communicate or that there is a need that is present. And so, teaching students about how antecedents and consequences impact their behavior, and helping them identify and begin to recognize their own triggers and signs that they’re triggered, can be really helpful. For example, once a student has acknowledged a trigger—like being told no if they’ve requested access to a preferred item—you can also ask them, “What are some of the first signs in your body that tell you you’re getting upset?”

Many students can tell you that they notice a feeling in their stomach or they clench their fists or their face scrunches up, and we can teach them that these things are all cues that they have an unmet need. And then we teach them, “When you notice that, do something about it. Here’s what you can do.” And we teach the communication skill. And this goes for all functions, really. Once that communication skill is mastered, then you can tackle delaying gratification.

Along with everything else that you’re teaching, you should discuss it thoroughly with the student. You want to try to get them to identify because if they hear themselves say it, they’re more likely to buy in than if they hear you say it. So if you can get them to identify why it benefits them to learn to wait, that’s a really good first step. And if you have taken the time to really get to know your student and understand what’s important to them, you can bring that in here. How does a student’s particular value or wish regarding enjoying some item or activity play into them learning this skill? “Hey, if you learn to wait for it, you’re actually going to get more uninterrupted time in that activity later on.” So you’re helping them see that exchange between the smaller, sooner reward and the larger, later reward. And of course, this can’t all be verbal conversation. Practice is really important, and so that’s when after you have discussed it and helped the student sort of generate a rationale that’s related to what they care about, then give it a try, role-play it before introducing practice trials in the classroom in natural opportunities.

Transcript: Johanna Staubitz, PhD, BCBA-D

Escape

A balance of challenge and rest is important for all of us. When we have too much work and not enough rest or play, we experience something that goes beyond that good or effective level of stress that keeps us motivated. For our students, a lack of balance between challenge and rest can mean interfering behavior because that’s what creates the opportunity to rest, so to speak, to take a break so they come back renewed, ideally. But of course, interfering behavior isn’t a productive or effective way to achieve that balance.

The first step is to talk with the student about an appropriate balance between challenge and rest: “It’s okay to feel a little challenged by the work. But if it’s a hardship, that’s different and speak up about it. And it’s also okay—even if it is the right level of challenge and you’re working hard on it—to notice that you need a break and take it and come back to it better prepared to learn for having taken a break.”

Next, we have to teach to skill deficits to lessen the challenge of the work if the work really is a hardship for a student because they’re missing some skills. Ideally, this means teaching skills that actually are on the student’s instructional level and doing that first before you’re tackling maybe a grade-level standard. And that helps because that means the other skills they need to tackle move from frustration to instructional level as a product of having learned those prerequisite skills. Then they have less need for rest.

But regardless of the level of the difficulty of work, if interfering behavior is what that student has learned to do (what’s helped them cope in the past with things being out of balance), we need to teach a break request and routine for a break. And it’s important to be very consistent with that so the student has a history of asking for it and getting it.

Simply having that experience of asking for breaks and getting them means there’s more choice in the instructional environment, and so there’s less of a likelihood of a power struggle. It also means the student is practicing discriminating “Do I or don’t I need a break so that I can come back to work with a better shot at learning?”

Also, having that experience with taking breaks and then coming back to learning refreshed is really important. That’s how students learn that it’s worth it to ask for the break instead of using interfering behavior to get one.

Transcript: Bettie Ray Butler, PhD

The benefits that come from having function-based interventions in place is that it enhances learning for that individual student, which will increase engagement and participation in the learning process. It’s seeing the student in their humanness. Giving the student the benefit of the doubt that with the proper intervention, that whatever behaviors have presented themselves that appear to be challenging, they can be replaced with behaviors that acclimate them to a learning environment and increase their opportunities to learn.

The focus is placed on the behavior and not necessarily the student. It is individualized because no two students are the same. They may present the same behavior, but they are not the same person. And what causes the behavior for one student may be very different than what causes the behavior for another student.

Also, it reduces the risk of punitive forms of punishment. There’s oftentimes what we call “zero tolerance policies,” where behaviors appear and the immediate response without understanding the function of that behavior is to exclude those students from the learning environment. I’ve heard teachers talk about this from the perspective of “It’s the greater good. It’s okay to remove one student that has challenging behaviors because we’re trying to preserve the learning environment for the rest of the students.” But unfortunately, if we’re looking at this through a culturally responsive lens, the exclusion of one student is never good and it is never to the benefit of the larger group, especially when the exclusion then subsequently necessitates punitive forms of punishment, for example, out-of-school suspension or expulsion.

But the function-based interventions, it acts as this intervening factor that could potentially disrupt exclusion from the learning environment for students who are having challenges in the classroom space.