A Teaching Aside!

So I have just finished reading a book that I bought over the course of the school year but never found the time to read until now. It brought up some good ideas that I would like to touch on. Mostly so you all go and read the book.

The book is Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges Are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them by Ross Greene, Ph.D. (Amazon Link – note, purchasing from this link results in Amazon giving a donation to the National Fragile X Society). This is the same author of The Explosive Child for anyone that has read that one (well worth it in my opinion). Also, give Dr. Greene’s website a visit, it is worth the trip just for the free resources (I am using his comics in this post, for example).

What struck me most was the Collaborative and Proactive Solution model (CPS) that Dr. Greene promotes is surprisingly similar to the method I came to a few years back when teaching autistic students (Previous Post). I will leave the nuts and bolts of how to do the steps associated with the CPS model to a reading of Greene’s book. I am going to focus on the assumptions the model is based on and why I find them both effective and optimistic, as well as why I am implementing them as soon as I have the opportunity.

The CPS model was designed for a general education environment. I, however, think it is better suited for a special education environment, not as a behavioral management tool, but rather as a teaching tool to teach social and adaptive skills to kids that are woefully lacking in that instruction.

Super fast how to do CPS

For this, I will quickly bullet-point how to do what Dr. Greene calls Plan B. Plan A is the teacher imposing their will on the student (this does not work, see below). Plan B is the way we develop relationships with the student and collaboratively problem solve. Plan B is best done before everything hits the fan.

It can work in emergency situations, but it will have to be repeated when everyone calms down.

Teacher and student meet at mutually agreed upon time (read, not during the student’s recess ) Teacher asks student what is up (over and over and over again until they get a real answer) Teacher honestly empathizes with student response Teacher expresses their concerns Student empathizes with teacher concerns Student leads discussion for developing a mutually beneficial solution

) Teacher and student work together to implement plan

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

I can attest. This works. Really well. It takes a lot of work. The teacher has to humble themselves. So does the student. But this works.

Why do I like this model?

It does not oversimplify behavior, or solutions

I like this model because it does not focus on the environmental cause of the behavior. As such, CPS does not depend on applying reinforcers or punishers to change the environment and thus change behaviors. It rather depends on seeking out the unsolved problem or difficulty the student is having. Even better, it suggests we do so collaboratively with the child having a hard time.

I will explain this below, but in brief it is better to ask the student what unsolved problems they have that are causing them to behave the way they are than to assume we already know the answer and unilaterally impose our overly simplistic solutions. If we, as adults impose our solutions, the kids will work against us and we will find ourselves engaged in a power struggle.

And, here is a hint to new teachers out there, as a teacher, you will always lose a power struggle against a child. Always! Kids do not fight fair and they have no reason to. They are scared. They are trying to survive something they do not understand. It is a lost cause, so give up on that right now.

Furthermore, if you power struggle with a kid you deserve to lose. It is never okay to interpret a child’s behavior as an us vs. them situation. It is also never okay to assume the student is doing something intentionally to either bother or to get revenge on the teacher. There is a deeper reason than that. There always is.

It empowers kids to develop their own solutions

To oversimplify, the CPS model is a method whereby a teacher (or any adult for that matter) works collaboratively with a student or child to come up with a solution to the problem. This is in stark contrast to the majority of systems whereby adults impose their will on students and dictate behavior. This leads to power struggles (see above) and a generally negative vibe in the classroom.

When an adult demands change from a student and unilaterally holds them to it, the student only succeeds in frustrating the teacher. This perpetuates a cycle wherein the student and the teacher escalate each other until bad things happen; often the student being suspended, expelled, or being highly controlled in the classroom. All of these endpoints violate the basic need for safety that all children have.

This cycle will, over time, transform a mildly challenging student into one that needs a behavioral unit in order to function since they have lost the ability to trust in a classroom setting.

When a student volunteers an honest solution to their own problem and their teacher compassionately supports them, the student can achieve success. The teacher does have to keep up their end of the deal, but in general the student does all of the hard work. All they need is support and a little guidance.

Of these two options, which is preferable: A student spiraling out of control in a classroom and taking the teacher with them, or a student taking the reins of their own education and life and taking control?

I can tell you which one I like more as a teacher. It is the same one I prefer as a compassionate person.

It does not assume behavior is intentional

The basic premise of this model is that kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges lack important thinking skills. If a child is showing maladaptive behaviors, getting your goat, or generally being disruptive, it is because the student does not know how to be “good”. They have to be taught. Or, as Greene phrases it, When the demands being placed on a kid exceed [their] capacity to respond adaptively is when maladaptive behaviors are going to occur.

Put another way (and Chapter 2 of the book is dedicated to this description), kids do well if they can. It is not a matter of whether they want to be good. It is whether they have the ability. Greene’s philosophy that kids do well if they can suggest that if a kid could do well, they would do well. Even for a tough kid, being good is always preferable to not being good. It is less stressful, rewards and other desirable thing are more often available, and it is just plain easier.

So, the way we help a student with behavioral problems is to find out what skills they lack and what is getting in the way of the student being successful. In other words, find out why they can’t do something and work with them to develop a solution so they can do that something.

It eliminates adults designing narratives about “hard” students

The assumptions of this model provide a nice prohibition of certain labels we place on students to excuse ourselves as teachers from helping them:

They just want attention

They just want their own way

They are manipulating us

They are not motivated

They are making bad choices

Their parents are incompetent disciplinarians

They have a bad attitude

They have a mental illness

Their brother was the same way

They are just autistic

What do these explanations all have in common? They are stories we are imposing upon behavior to describe it. We are trying to make our lives easier, not the student’s. We are adding a narrative to justify our decisions, not to dispassionately describe a student’s behavior. We are tagging kids with a story that fits our narratives, but does not contribute anything helpful to an interaction with the kid. Also, these all are very negatively valenced statements that blame the child for something. When we make these types of statements we are very prone to slide into diagnostic language that stigmatizes the student.

These types of statements also serve primarily to justify the course of action we as the adults have already decided upon. If we are inclined to refer a student to the office than we are going to use terms like: difficult, disobedient, disrespectful, willful, etc. We use some of the same terms for referring students for special education, but we often include, they can’t help it, they are just never going to be able to get it, etc. Lots of, they can’t or other disabling terminology. This language makes us as adults feel better, but does nothing to help a child succeed, in fact it serves a better function as an anchor to progress rather than an engine.

It forces teachers to dig into the actual why of a behavior, not the stereotypical, restricted ABA explanations

Here is are options from the book of alternative things we can say instead. Specifically we can list the skills we see lagging in the child (I cherry-picked autism relevant options).

The student appears to show:

Difficulty handling transitions

Difficulty doing things in a logical sequence

Difficulty persisting in challenging tasks

Poor sense of time and time management

Difficulty maintaining focus

Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem

Difficulty expressing concerns, needs, or thoughts in words

Difficulty managing emotional response to frustration

Difficulty deviating from rules or routines

Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, novelty

Difficulty shifting from original idea, plan, or solution

Difficulty attending to and/or accurately interpreting social cues/poor perception of social nuances

Difficulty seeking attention in appropriate ways

Sensory-Motor difficulties

What do these all have in common? They are objective descriptions of behaviors. There is no positive or negative valence to these descriptions. They are just labels of behaviors we can address. Lastly, there are no diagnoses present when we dispassionately and objectively describe behavior.

I like this because I am trained in both behaviorism as well as cognition. In fact, we always joked by the end of my academic scientific career I was a rat/mouse neuropsychologist. In my experience, it is easy to attribute behavior to the environment and change the environment to change behavior, but that solves nothing. In fact, such an analysis barely scratches the surface of behavior.

Many times, antecedent or environmental manipulation just kicks the problem down the road. The problem or difficulty the student is having has not been solved, just sidestepped. The CPS model and approach demands we engage with the cognition of a child, by which I mean we interact with what the kid is thinking and feeling, not just the behavioral output we see. Explaining behaviors in terms of what difficulties or challenges the student may face, which begs us to ask, “Why are they doing that? What do they need to not have to do that anymore”. These are the correct questions (See an earlier post of mine on this very topic).

It does not suggest difficult students be medicated or given diagnoses

Another reason I like this model is because it can be used either with or without medication. I have earlier stated that I believe medication is best used when it is a means to allowing an individual to access the behavioral support they need to overcome their challenges rather than as a means to alter behavior in itself (Post Here).

Greene goes into potential difficulties that arise when we as adults look at kids, tell a story about how we perceive their behavior (the first list above), and then medicate them. The challenging behaviors remain, so long as the basic skills the child lacks are not taught. The behaviors may just wax and wane a bit with each new intervention.

To express my bias, I do see a value in a valid medical diagnosis to help inform knowledgable professionals on how to help an individual, but we far too often focus on pathologizing behavior and labelling kids rather than helping them in the educational setting (e.g., claiming “They are autistic so they just cannot do appropriate social behavior” when the student has never actually been taught “typical” from “atypical” social interactions). Dr. Greene and I share a very important assumption: Irrespective to diagnosis, we can help kids. We can engage them, and we can help them learn.

This book specifically addresses weaknesses of most classwide discipline systems

A great behavioral aside in the book that struck me involved behavioral management systems in classrooms. Multiple stories are told about teachers that rely on the school-wide PBiS systems and assistant principals use to dole out discipline, referring students for harsh discipline because, “someone has to be tough on them or they will never learn”. This is not a helpful philosophy and long-term only serves to injure the child and irritate the assistant principal.

Similar stories are told about ticket systems that are modified response cost paradigms. Students start the week with 10 tickets and lose tickets for misbehavior. The good kids that don’t need a class-wide behavioral system end the week with 10, the kids that need help reliably end up with 1-2 at the most…and we assume their consistent failure to thrive means our system is working (I wrote about this earlier).

What struck me was the statement (said over and over throughout the book) along the lines that students that behave well in class, do so because they have the skills to do so. Students that behave poorly in class, behave poorly because they lack the skills to behave well. And the disciplinary systems we as teachers set up using PBiS, Class Dojo, Classroom economy systems, etc. are not sufficient to meet these students’ needs. Many times even explicitly positive systems are manipulative at best until we teach our students much needed social and behavioral skills.

Greene states as follows in the book (In Chapter 7-emphasis mine):

But many [students] are placed in special education classrooms because no one in general education has the wherewithal to pinpoint and teach their lagging skills and work toward resolving their unsolved problems. Many special education classrooms rely heavily on consequence-based programs that, as you now know, don’t teach skills or solve problems, and may actually exacerbate the kids’ difficulties.

…

In many of the settings in which the CPS model has been implemented-general and special education schools, inpatient psychiatric units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities-adults came to the awareness that it was the application of the contingency management program that was setting kids off moat often and causing many serious challenging behavior. They recognized that both adults and kids were far more focused on rewards and punishments than on the problems that needed to be solved. They learned that providing structure and maintaining order in a classroom has a lot more to do with solving problems than rewards and punishments.

The CPS model is optimistic

The final reason I like this model is that it is truly optimistic. It is based on the premise that all students can succeed, we just have to work with them. We have to engage the students in a dialogue, be truly empathetic to their needs and desires, share our own, and work collaboratively to reach a mutually beneficial solution. Students with autism can engage with the CPS model (I have seen it). Students with Tourette’s can engage with this model (again, I have seen it). Students with emotional disturbances can succeed in this model (yet again…). Severely intellectually disabled students can be successful (you guessed it), if only we take the time to get off our high horse and help them.

Is this model realistic for special education?

I believe this model is very realistic for a special education classroom. I think special education needs the CPS model as a vehicle for teaching valuable behavioral, social, and adaptive skills in a manner that will actually help the student learn them.

I have found in my last few years of teaching that the majority of problems I have encountered with students came down to a sensory overload and they just shut down or else came down to the student just not understanding what was going on and how to act accordingly. In my classroom a few years ago, I started having conversations with my more difficult students to help them understand how others were seeing their behaviors. What I learned was that they often knew what they were doing and that others did not like it, but they had a reason for doing it. And more often than not they thought it was a darn good reason. And it very often was a good reason when I took the time to empathize with their point of view.

When these students expressed their reasons, I could easily have interpreted them in terms of ABA definitions, that of behaviors fulfilling needs for escape/avoidance, attention, or sensory seeking. However, as I have written about before (Link), I chose to dig a little bit deeper and see how the students were interpreting their own behaviors. I often found an avoidance behavior was not avoiding the work, but rather they were avoiding being embarrassed by not knowing how to answer the questions and feeling like everyone knows that they are dumb and cannot do the assignment.

Often times, actually, attention seeking fulfilled this same actual need. They were trying to get adult attention so that they could get the adult to do the work for them, and thus avoid embarrassment.

Now, when I was going all of this, I had no idea what this CPS model was. It just seemed the logical move to take since the students I was working with were having significant problems existing in more traditional classroom management systems. I favored social and emotional development as a method with the end goal of having student engage in self refection and behavioral self-regulation so much as they were capable. As such, we had to have a lot of discussions about incremental progress and how we can work toward our own goals. Since I let the students make their own goals, they were very motivated to achieve them.

So now what

Now, I am going to pursue any training I do with general education and special education teachers differently. I no longer have to teach my own weird ways of doing things built over decades of dealing with my brother and his peers in the autism community. I can approach teachers with an evidence-based method and ask them to use it. Barring that, I can and will use it myself to help the more challenging and difficult students succeed. Perhaps even help them get out of special education and into the general education classroom.