Behaviour Management

1. Student teachers arrive with clear ideas about discipline and behaviour management, brainstorm / thought shower these, and identify ones that work (awareness of current ideas e.g. ’super-nanny’ etc.)

2. Key-note lectures on behaviour management and initial responses to inappropriate AND appropriate behaviour (i.e. reflection on rewards and sanctions) and circle-time/citizenship

3. Using case studies/scenario and asking for reflections and responses. It is important to have appropriate responses to support these discussions, can be as part of electronic or VLE communication with student teachers sharing experiences

4. Alternative approaches to behaviour management e.g. seeing behaviour as developmental, a cognitive approach

5. Consideration of how the learning environment and approaches to learning might be producing inappropriate behaviour (e.g. boredom, inappropriate level of work) addressed by using worksheet examples for student teachers and reflection on how they feel

6. Examination of the role through modelling and role play of others in the classroom, team teaching, support teachers, TAs, CAs, LSAs, volunteer parents etc.

7. Planning together what student teachers will do to enable children to know what they expect in terms of behaviour on the first day

Teacher As Communicator

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What would you do if you were the teacher? What would you do if you were the school psychologist?

Of course, in reality, I would collect information from the kid’s cumulative folder to see if this behavior is historical or new, observe him in other classes, interview his teacher to get a sense of the frequency, intensity, and duration of these types of incidents, and obtain information from the family if there are any recent stressors in the student’s life or ongoing disabilities that may be triggering his reaction. For the purpose of this post, let’s assume this is a brand new problem that only occurs with this teacher and there are no other external factors causing the behavior. It’s never that simple, but let’s pretend. It’s fun.

Now here’s what I observed. My framework is a Functional Behavior Analysis—basically that every student’s behavior serves some function. If you look at the reason a student may be acting out, it’s usually to get something or escape something. The way you figure out the function is to observe the sequence of events—the Antecedent (what happens before), the Behavior (what the student does) and the Consequence (what happens? What does the student get or get out of?). It’s often called the A-B-C model among school psychologists.

The Battle of Teacher vs. Student

Aha! After many painful hours of searching YouTube for awful teacher-student interactions, I found a clip to illustrate how I might do an observation and consult with the teacher. This is a clip from a mockumentary (fake documentary) in England of a teacher-student interaction gone awry. It isn’t that far off from some teacher-student interactions I’ve observed. And if you are reading my blog from work or around small children, you may want to turn down the volume! I apologize in advance for the cursing. But it’s not that uncommon in these interactions, so it stays.

Good Parents Are Experts on Their Children, but They Keep an Open Mind to Learning More About Their Child From Educators.

Farber knows from experience that no parent likes to hear their child is having trouble. “I’ve been in a position too many times where I had to tell a parent harsh news, such as, your child is autistic.” But the reaction of the parent is just as important as the teacher’s observations. What you as a parent do with the information will affect how your child is treated.

When a teacher tells you of concerning behavior in your child that you haven’t witnessed, be prepared to ask for proof. Farber suggests, “Ask for practical, concrete data and specifics. You also want information about this over a course of time. And, as a parent, you want to be able to observe the behavior too. I ask parents to come in and observe–where the parents can see the kid but the kid can’t see the parents. At some schools, there’s not a way for parents to observe except in the classroom being seen by their child.If that’s not an option, perhaps invite another professional in child development to observe. It would be well worth the money to have them come in and observe and form their own opinion. You’re collecting data, that’s more information, and information about your child is always valuable.”

Teacher’s Say: Your Child Does Not Necessarily Act the Same at School as He Does at Home

Let’s say you’re hearing that little Johnny is behaving in certain ways at school that you can’t even imagine him doing at home. Is this cause for concern? Do you believe what you’re hearing? Chances are good the teachers are seeing a different side of Johnny you don’t get to see.

Farber relays, “Kids are always different at home than they are at school and a parent will always know their child in a very different way than a teacher for very obvious reasons. Parents will say to me, ‘I can’t believe that my child ate that at school because they never eat that at home or I can’t believe my kid shoved someone on the playground because they never do that at the park’…Well, children mimic other children and they learn in good ways and bad ways from their peers. Children are inspired to do things by their peers that they wouldn’t normally do because in essence a lot of children want to have that sameness that other children do, they want to know how they’re the same as the next kid.”

Farber goes on to say, “The best of all worlds is when we bridge the gap between home and school in a collaborative model and that’s one of the keys to success at school, particularly for very young children. I see it as a jigsaw puzzle—the parents have 950 pieces of the 1000 piece puzzle of their child and the teacher only has 50—but you still need those pieces to put the puzzle of the child together.”

Teachers Should Respect Each Individual Child and Each Individual Family.

Prior to enrollment, a first sign of quality care is how a teacher or school admissions director talks to prospective parents. Pay attention to the feeling you have about a school and its teachers from day one. If it’s not a 100% good feeling, continue looking at other schools. “Don’t put your kid anywhere where you don’t have respect and trust in the educators,” says Farber.

Without being unreasonable, parents should feel their particular child’s needs are being honored. If the needs of the class as a group always supercede individual needs, this practice will tune out important requirements of some children.

“If you’re going to have an impact on the child and the family, a teacher and a school need to honor and respect where that child and family is coming from. No family is the same, nor should they be. Conversations about a child’s needs can be a waste of everyone’s time if the initial approach isn’t handled with compassion and lots of care. If there is a challenging issue, communication should always carry a tone and feeling of we’re all in this together.

“Do you believe that the teacher likes and cares for your child? Parents can usually sense when somebody likes their kid and knows their kid, even if that person is saying something that the parent doesn’t want to hear” says Farber.

Teacher vs. Parent: Who Knows Your Child’s Needs Best?

Over the course of your child’s elementary education, you’ll have teachers you like and those you won’t. Just like your child, you’ll prefer some of his educators over others.

But in this triangle relationship between parents, children, and teachers, both parents and teachers hopefully have the same ultimate goal in mind—the wellbeing of the child. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Beginning at the preschool level, parents need to know what to expect from teachers in order to facilitate the most positive experience for their children.

Glam.com spoke with Dawn Farber, the current Director of Early Education at Beit Ha Yeladim Preschool in Santa Barbara, California and a former behavior specialist for the Santa Barbara Department of Education, to get her insight. Farber revealed 5 key considerations for parent/teacher harmony and a successful school experience for your child.

Teacher vs. Computer. Where Educators Stand in the Technology Revolution

Instructional technology and the World Wide Web offer powerful teaching resources that provide educators with a limitless wealth of information and shared professional practices. My teaching partner and I spent four years infusing instructional technology and online resources into our interdisciplinary curriculum. After four years of adjustments and developments to our teaching philosophy, we arrived at a middle ground where we continued using our constructivist teaching philosophy to create meaningful learning experiences for our students, giving them the opportunity to learn sophisticated computer and research skills.

Our team-teaching philosophy creates student-centered learning environments; encourages a “constructivist” (Lynch 1997) approach to learning; and implements interdisciplinary lessons, projects and inquiry-based labs. Our middle school employs a full-inclusion classroom model, and we are successful in creating differential lesson plans for students with Individual Education Plans and/or Section 504 Behavioral Plans. Our teaching team encourages students to use the Harvard Medical School style of note taking. This style of note taking requires students to locate new information from different textbooks and scholarly resources, collaborate with one another to put the new information in their own words, and graphically organize the information in designs that assist their understanding of the new material.

Our students are required to create collages and posters that demonstrate their comprehension of the new material. These hands-on learning experiences give students the opportunity to build upon their previous knowledge, exchange information and construct new knowledge. Students are then assessed using authentic methods, such as learning journals, reading and writing portfolios, as well as more traditional grading procedures, such as multiple-choice and essay tests. The major objective of our teaching philosophy is for students to practice higher-order thinking skills in addition to their basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills.