Case Study on Challenging Behavior: Power Point Presentation

Attached is my power point presentation. I will upload my paper next week with sources to validate my belief on classroom management, as well as more samples of student work and progress.

Wetherby_CaseStudy_part1

Wetherby_CaseStudy_part2

Frustration

I am sad that I don’t have much more time to work with my case study student. I am also frustrated because I do not feel that she has made much progress since coming to our school at the start of this semester. I feel as though I am partially to blame because I have been unable to motivate her to reach her goal. I am frustrated at the other students in my classroom who taunt and tease her (behind teachers’ backs) because she is on a “plan” and therefore she hates fifth grade and wants to go back to fourth. “I’m never gonna belong here. I hate it!” she has said repeatedly. That makes me feel as though I have not done enough.

Does she know what a goal is? Does she understand that she has to put in hard work in order to reach the goal? It seemed to me as though she did when we started this behavior plan. We talked and she wrote reflections and she seemed to enjoy it. Then she started forgetting to have it signed and even though she helped decide her “reward” at the end of each week, she did not seem to care if she did not reach her goal for that week (and therefore did not get the reward).

I want to use positive interventions in my classroom in the future but I also need to be assured that they can work. Perhaps the design of this one should be changed or perhaps it takes a while to have child UNLEARN the learned helplessness. Hopefully this last week and a half with her will be beneficial and I will have some positive news in the next post I believe that all students can be motivated to learn and that all students can be successful, but I am learning through this case study that all students are unique.

Promoting Social Competence

For this week’s reading, I chose “Collaboration to Promote Social Competence for Students With Mild Disabilities in the General Classroom: A Structure for Providing Social Support” by Hedda Meadan and Lisa Monda-Amaya. This article held my interest right away because it relates to my case study student, and the continuous efforts by many people to create a socially inclusive learning environment for her while also fostering social competence so that she can attain social skills in her everyday interactions with others. I teach in a very diverse classroom and I agree with the authors that the social skills construct involves social interaction, prosocial skills, and social-cognitive skills. The following quote helped me distinguish social skills from social competence and how both are relevant for this student:

“Social skills are behaviors that must be taught, learned, and performed whereas social competence represents judgments or evaluations of these behaviors within and across situations” (pg 160).

In targeting the general classroom, these authors gave some great advice for structuring the learning environment to (a) promote a socially accepting place, (b) increase social competence in ALL students, and (c) proactively prevent or positively address socially inappropriate behaviors or issues of social difficulties.

I love diagrams, and the one within this chapter looked like a 3-tier cake. The bottom layer (and the largest one with the most structure) emphasized the overall classroom community, which is the foundation needed to structure the environment. Next is the second layer, which consists of the specific and explicit classroom strategies and curriculum for providing examples of and promoting social competence. The third layer involves targeted individual interventions. I am at the third layer with my case study student, which is why the individualized behavior plan was formed for her.

Peer relationships are important, and researchers have found correlations between peer relationships in childhood and later life adjustment. I am trying my hardest to help my student, but I am still trying to figure out if her problem is what the authors state as the three distinguished types of social skills deficits:

(1) ACQUISITION deficits: not knowing or not being able to figure out which behaviors are appropriate for certain situations (“can’t do”)
(2) PERFORMANCE deficits: not performing the appropriate behavior given the situation, which could be a motivation issue (“won’t do)
(3) FLUENCY deficits: not performaning the appropriate behavior due to the lack of expose to sufficient models of social behavior (“don’t do well”)

There are times with my case study student in which I feel as though she has not been provided with clear examples of how to respond to others (playground, comments) or how to interact with others in order to get a task accomplished (group projects, pair share, etc). These are the times I feel sorry for her and I attempt to go over the situation with her and relate it to something she may be familiar with. Often times, those “experiences” come from what she saw on TV. A CHILD’S EXPERIENCES ARE MOSTLY FROM TV. That is disturbing to me. There are other times when I speak to her about her behavior and she acts as though it is an acqusition deficit, in which she cannot distingish between what is appropriate and what is not. She might reply with “I didn’t know” or try to make an excuse. Often times when I am the most frustrated is when it is the performance deficit, and I know she can put more effort into something but she is not motivated to do so. I have been trying to find other ways to promote that in the classroom. I also try to highlight her strengths, to her and when other classmates are around so that they also understand that she has several strengths that may not always be visible due to her deficits that people often see first. I appreciated the authors recognizing that it takes educators a LONG time to work with students individually, and when we’re trying to work on social skills along with academic and cognitive skills, it never seems as though there are enough hours in the day!

A classroom is “not just a place where we feel connected and supported, but… a solid base from which we move out into the world” (pg 161). I want all my students to feel accepted and worthwhile, not only in the eyes of their teachers but also in the eyes of their peers. Fostering social competence is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be! Also, I feel as though it was much easier for me to help guide students with socially acceptable behaviors when I student taught in 2nd grade as opposed to 5th grade. I am often surprised at the way students treat others and when I have my own classroom, creating a positive classroom environment will be my first step. Most educators suggest setting up behavior management first but this is equally as important.

PS. If you can think of any other ways to help foster her social competence and social skills, PLEASE let me know Thanks!!

Newsweek article: “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers”

Interesting article on educators. There are definitely points to agree with and to disagree with in this article. The article states that “in no other profession are workers so insulated from accountability.” What do you think?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/234590

update on case study

Note: Last week was spring break so this reflection is based on the student’s behavior from the week before last.

My student’s behavior did not earn her a reward on Friday, and I think a large part of that had to do with a combination of factors: She often forgets to ask teachers to sign her paper at the end of a class period, she has a difficult time adjusting to the new class settings when the class switches to a new teacher, and she tends to act out more when a break is coming up or when she is really excited about something going on in her life for the coming weekend.

I sat down on Friday to talk with her about how she met her goal for signatures a few days during the week, but did not meet her goal enough to earn her the reward on Friday. We reviewed what went well on the days she met her goal and what did not go as well on the days she did not meet her goal. I encouraged her to use what worked well during the week after break so that she could meet her goal because I want to be able to reward her positive behavior. Even after talking through these things, she comes up with excuses in order to place the blame on teachers and other students as the reasons to why she did not receive signatures. It is frustrating that she will not hold herself accountable.

On my part, I think it would help her if I sat down with her at the end of every day to talk about what went well and what could be improved for the next day. If we talk about each day THAT day instead of all 5 days at the end of the week, she may continue that positive behavior the following day. It’s worth a shot, but I also have to teach a whole class so it will be difficult to put aside that much time to talk about it every day. I would try to do it at lunch but she usually has to make up work then that she did not complete or I’m helping other students at that time.

I feel like there are so many things to work on with this student and at this point I am learning that working with her on ONE thing at a time will help her focus more on that behavior, but still does not seem to change her behavior much in class. Even though I only have a month left with her, I am optimistic that we can work together to figure out what we can BOTH do to ensure her success in the classroom. Ideally, we would have done this in August and September of the school year, but (as previously mentioned) she came to this school in February. She requires so much extra attention but hopefully this behavior plan is helping her!

The week before a break…

seems to be the most exhausting week for a teacher. The teacher(s) and students alike are more than ready for a break, and often times students are unable to express that excitment in the most appropriate ways. This past week I had several referrals, multiple behavior forms, and plenty of whole group discussions on ways to treat others by following the three school expectations: to be kind, responsible, and respectful.

I am hoping that I do not have to start all over with behavior management when students come back from break. Hopefully a short reminder of the expectations and of the “compliment box” on my desk will encourage students to act appropriately. I certainly learned A LOT about behavior management this past week at school with fifth graders and I truly hope that I am able to take that experience with me for increased knowledge next year in my own classroom!

This next week: SPRING BREAK (with which I equate SLEEPING IN, playing with my dogs, and shopping)!

Reflection on BIP

The BIP that I have implemented is beginning to indicate that when this student is working toward a goal, she is more aware of her behavior inside and outside of the classroom. She is working on following school expectations by staying in her seat and raising her hand, completing her work, and being respectful to others. She is supposed to have each teacher sign at the end of the class period if she has not had more than 2 warnings for that particular expectation. The goal this past week was to get about half of the signatures (15/33) from the teachers. She got exactly 15, but some teachers were more lenient than others. On Friday, she received extra computer time as her reward, as well as lunch with the teachers. The pattern from the past few weeks has been that she struggles on Monday and Friday, but she does well Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Starting this week we are going to increase the goal from 15 to 18 signatures, and see if assigning her roles in the classroom continue to help her excel. I am still trying to figure out why she gets upset when a student says something mean to her, and yet she shouts insults from across the room several times throughout the school day? It does not seem to add up; I feel like I need to protect her from others and I feel like I need to protect others from her. It’s a strange situation. (An example is that she is required to walk with the teacher in the hallway due to the info on her IEP, so the other students call her a “baby” but then at other times during the day she will use foul language to other students so it goes both ways with being disrespectful.)

I have also decided to implement a “compliment” box in my classroom for all the students to use. Each time a student notices another student going out of his or her way to do something kind for another student, then he or she should put the name and the act of kindness on a sheet of paper and drop it in the box. Those students are recognized at the end of the week and awarded a choice of a pencil or eraser by the teacher.

Challenging Behavior: Article

First and foremost, this article was immensely insightful with regard to tracking and developing positive interventions for challenging behavior, and I plan on using these practices in this classroom and in my future classrooms.

Whenever friends and strangers ask me about student teaching, I always give the same response: I love teaching children, but behavior management is so challenging. Most days when I come home exhausted, it’s because I don’t understand why I have to remind fifth graders the schools rules that they learned in kindergarten. I think part of that is that fact that ten year olds do not see a twenty-one year old as a teacher. They always ask me about college and UNC, and they want me to play basketball with them during recess or sit with them at lunch, but when it comes to respect, they do not treat me like a teacher. It’s obvious that behavior management starts on DAY 1 in the classroom, and I definitely believe that, but even though I have been firm since the first day, it is so much harder for me to gain respect from the students than it was for the classroom teacher.
With that said, there are undoubtedly some students who require more interventions than others. I have learned that specific behavior plans tailored to an individual’s strengths and needs, as well as moving one step at a time, are integral in the success of the student and of the classroom as a cooperative learning community. I have also challenged myself to remind myself of the child’s strengths when he or she exhibits misbehavior in class. As I was reading through the article, I noticed that my student who presents the biggest challenge in the classroom fits into several of the described categories:

- Social skills deficits
- Noncompliance
- Apathy toward school work
- Disruptiveness
- Temper Tantrums
- Inattention

How many times in this child’s life will she be cast away by peers? How many times will she be told her work is not good enough? How many times will she feel inadequate? Consequences make students feel inadequate or separated from others. The first time I had this student fill out the school’s behavior form in order to take responsibility for her actions and to talk through what she did that was inappropriate, she cried and then she simply wrote on her paper, “Dear mom, I hate this place. I do not belong.” That feeling tore me apart. I never want a student to feel as though he or she is not a part of the classroom community. I need to be the one to encourage her to attain goals that although may be easily accessible for other students, are not for her.

Students need to see their teacher actively and consistently using positive reinforcement as opposed to negative reinforcement and punishment. I have tried to come up with various ways to implement positive reinforcement. For instance, when students write their weekly blogs, I choose 3-4 students who have done a great job, and they choose an item from “Ms. Wetherby’s School Supplies Kit.” When students do not follow expectations, however, they may be punished, such as by completing their homework during their lunch period. When my student with behavior problems decided to make the choice of disregarding all school expectations for the day (not raising her hand, touching others, talking in the hallway, not completing class work, etc) I told her that she would be staying in the classroom during lunch to complete her work. I don’t think I have seen a bigger grin in my entire life. I played into her trick. She loves to gain attention from adults, and I realized in that instant that I was actually rewarding her for not following the rules. As much as I wanted her to get work done during lunch, all she cared about was receiving attention. I could not believe that I had just practiced negative reinforcement. On Monday, I am starting a behavior tracking form with this student so that she receives a signature from the teacher after every subject if she has followed the specific expectations listed on the form. At the end of the week, if she has met the goal that we have discussed together, then she will receive something. I believe having her work toward a goal is going to be much more effective than just punishing her every time she refuses to follow expectations.

update on project

The project is going well so far and I have learned that finding a solution to a child’s behavior management is not as easy as it seems. My student, in particular, is a sweet girl but has a lot of progress to make before she is ready for middle school. What works for her is not what works for the rest of the class, and I am trying to find a balance between being consistent so that all students have the same expectations and consequences, but also fair to her since I know she requires more attention and warnings than the other students her age… hopefully I can develop a plan to help her track her own behavior. I think that is the first step… allowing her to take responsibility for her own behavior. Typically when she knows she has not followed the rules, she “breaks down” and closes herself off to others instead of talking about her actions. I also want to start giving her “jobs” so that she feels validated. She has been the line leader currently but even in that position she manages to not follow the expectations. I’m interested in and dedicated to finding a solution before the end of the school year!

Classroom Management Plan: Salend, Ch. 7

“[A good plan is]… consistent with teacher demands and academic expectations… must promote their learning and socialization with peers…”

A comprehensive and balanced classroom management plan (including the behavior plans and intervention plans) is essential to the desirable results of the teacher(s) and the students within a classroom. The management plan serves to encourage students to exert positive behavior, which is correlated with effective instruction and a higher learning capacity. The plans involve “innovated, motivating, differentiated teaching practices and instructional accommodations” (Salend 3) which sounds a lot easier than it is to implement, especially on a consistent basis. I especially liked the ABC analysis questions because (from personal experience and from listening to teachers) the background information of the student truly helps those involved cerate the right plan. The antecedents of the behavior are also addressed.

One of the motivating aspects of this plan is the school-wide positive behavioral support system, which should also be followed in the classroom. Through my experience as a student teacher, I have seen the positive behavioral support system implemented very well (such as through a COUPON method in which a whole class receives a coupon for good behavior in the hallways, at specials, etc) but it has not been as consistent (especially for the upper grades) as it needs to be in order to gain more enthusiasm and compliance from the students. Often I feel that the only way certain students will follow the rules and expectations is by taking away recess time, and I do not want to resort to punishment if the behavioral practices can be avoided through positive reinforcement. The relationships that are built and sustained through the plan are key to making it successful!

As the article mentioned, the collaboration between teachers, assistants, specialists, and administration is imperative in order to set and to reach a goal so that everyone is on the same page and can share strategies and skills that would work with individual students. A one-size-fits-all perspective is inefficient and therefore multiple ideas can be brought to the table for discussion and analysis. In my placement, the EC specialist, literacy specialist, and others have been extremely dedicated to working with teachers to develop plans for exceptional children, and these children have really taken a liking to the plans. The fifth grade students even get a say in how their individual plans are constructed which gives the students accountability from the start.

Remember: the most important thing in planning is to be PROACTIVE!!