The Art & Science of Changing Behavior

The number one intention of giving students consequences is to hopefully change their behavior. It’s safe to say no one has ever assigned a consequence without the goal of the student coming out of the consequence with a changed behavior. With that said, our problem at the moment is that many of our students’ behavior don’t change for the better after they’ve completed the assigned consequences. Whether you suspend students, in-school or out-of-school, for one, five or even ten days, the results are typically the same. They come back into the school or the classroom with the same disruptive behavior that resulted in their removal. Changing behavior requires intentionality, persistence and patience which isn’t an easy process. This training focuses on providing participants with a logical understanding about how behavior changes and the creative process for how to change behavior.

This training will provide participants with:

  • how they can transform traditional consequences into frameworks that intentionally work to change student behavior while maintaining the structure of traditional consequences

  • how to ask the right questions that are intuitive and encourage students to genuinely reflect about their behavior

  • how to incorporate Structured Days, facilitate Restorative Circles and develop Accountability Projects that work together towards changing students' behaviors

  • how to incorporate the necessary stakeholders (i.e., teacher, parents, community members, etc.) in the school’s community to support efforts in changing the adverse behavior of some students

WHAT TO EXPECT

FOCUS #1: TRANSFORMING TRADITIONAL CONSEQUENCES
It’s unrealistic and counterproductive to remove traditional consequences such as in-school suspension and forms of detention from schools. The issue isn’t whether they should exist but rather how to make them effective when they are necessary. When a student’s behavior is jeopardizing the integrity of the learning environment, they need to be temporarily removed from the learning environment. With that said, removing disruptive students from the learning environment is a short-term and surface level solution that, in many cases, perpetuates deeper problems. It temporarily makes us feel comfortable that something was done to address the problem but often leads to further frustration once the students return to the learning environment. The reason why many of our disruptive students’ behavior rarely change is because we rarely work to change their behavior. We assume that the punishment alone will change their behavior but the only way to change their behavior is to identify the root causes and actively work on the behavior. Many of our current traditional consequences naturally provide the structure that is necessary to allow us to work on challenging student behavior. We simply need to reimagine how these traditional consequences should look if we want better outcomes.

FOCUS #2: ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
​If you think about it, how receptive are you to unsolicited advice from an authority figure? The honest answer for most people is not too receptive. In most cases when people give advice, they are genuinely sharing their perspective to help another person. But in so many cases, advice falls on deaf ears because the person receiving the advice isn’t receptive. It’s mind-boggling to most when they give someone what they believe is good advice, but the person’s response becomes defensive or defiant. Ironically, when the advice giver becomes the receiver, they often find themselves not too receptive either. The reason for this is people typically don’t like being told when they might be doing something wrong. A changed behavior is a personal choice that cannot be forced upon someone. The intention of the advice giver isn’t the problem in most cases. The real problem is that the greatest challenge is the delivery. As the advice giver, we believe we are teaching when we share our advice, but the advice receiver feels they are being preached to. Nobody likes to be preached to and the result is people either get defensive or shut down. If a changed behavior is a personal choice, personal reflection is required.

One of the best strategies to assist with guiding someone down the path of personal reflection is asking the right questions. Most people are familiar with the common questions used in Restorative Practices, such as what happened, what were you thinking of at the time, who has been affected by what you have done, and what do you think you need to do to make things right? These are great examples of foundational questions, but they cannot be used as a script. If the goal is a changed behavior, there must be a conscious effort to customize questions that encourage personal reflection. Asking the right questions is the practice of asking intuitive questions that enables a person to be reflective rather than defensive.

FOCUS #3: ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECTS
”Busy Work” is one of the most counterproductive things we assign students in education. It’s typically assigned to students with punitive intentions to pass time when a student is serving a consequence. Busy works comes in many forms such as make-up work, a written apology, or reflection sheets. For example, we place students in in-school suspension and provide them with assignments to work on from their teachers. The idea behind this is that the student will be able to keep up with the instruction that is taking place in the classrooms while they serve their punishment. But too often, that isn’t how it works. The greatest flaw of ISS is that it is virtually impossible to replicate the learning environment you are removing the student from. We convince ourselves that we are still educating these students by providing them with work from their teachers and by having a staff member in the room, usually a paraprofessional, to “teach” them as needed. While well intentioned, the assigning of “busy work” in these instances doesn’t yield us the results we are looking for and, in some cases, it does more harm than good.

A changed behavior is a personal choice that is usually derived from developing an understanding of how your behavior impacted others and how others’ behavior impacted you. If our goal is a changed behavior, the best use of time is to provide students with an assignment that leads them down the path of personal reflection. Accountability Projects are individualized research projects assigned to students specifically designed to help students to develop an understanding of how their behavior impacts others as well as themselves.