Supporting students who have frequent behavioural difficulties.

“Widen the space of your tent, extend the curtains of your home, do not hold back! Lengthen your ropes, make your tent-pegs firm.” Isaiah 54:2

Students who have frequent behavioural difficulties, e.g. mood swings, problems maintaining relationships, can in general be supported by:

o keeping the routine predictable;

o keeping the seating / grouping arrangements supportive at an interpersonal level;

o shadowing the students inconspicuously, and articulating authentic encouraging comments, phrases and giving a smile at the right time;

o developing mutually understood signals for when a student should stop a behaviour or needs help (look for early patterns in the data showing such and such a behaviour usually escalates so the student can be supported in bridling their emotion). This is especially applicable to preventing aggressive students from hurting others, the benefit stabilises everyone’s sense of security;

o remembering the teacher is helping the student to build character. The student requires modelling and authentic comments that they can attribute to the teacher as caring about them as well as feedback from someone they esteem: and yes that’s the teacher;

o reflecting on the base needs of students to belong and learn, as well as to exercise their own personal power. Such provision should be embedded in the pedagogy;

o providing a space and a ‘calming box’ or calming activities with sensory materials and if possible soothing music;

o timetabling creative art as it helps students who have internal barriers to work through issues. The provision of regular art lessons, creative writing, playing music or even listening appreciatively to music will over a period of time help students to have the life skills to moderate their emotions - allowing regulated expression of their inner connections;

o allowing the withdrawn student to watch safely from a distance, part of a successful re-entry can be established by the student getting time to observe the modeling other students are providing;

o creating a couple of soft cozy options for quiet reading, think about the interior decorating details: given what we have make something possible;

o reading ‘angry’ books and discussing the issues individually and with the group. In reciprocal reading groups make sure you as the teacher are a part of the discussions when sections concerning anger are being discussed;

o modelling coping strategies. Highly emotional students are usually dealing with many issues or a major one (at home, at school or on the bus) and are becoming aggressive at a point when they are overwhelmed;

o being sure to give the quiet students in class as much attention as the extroverted and the aggressive student, it’s fair and serves as an ongoing learning experience for the attention seekers;

o remembering the ABC in student data gathering, sometimes it can be useful to respectfully name and communicate the identified feeling to the student so they might begin to understand and learn other options;

o planning decisions based on behavioural data (who/where/when/what) and the behavioural analysis (ABC):

A antecedent (what happened in the minute before or the day before)

B the behaviour (the exact behaviour, e.g. not ‘defiant’ but he told the teacher to “ >>>” or refused to do the work because … )

C consequences refer to the events that immediately follow the occurrence of the student’s challenging behaviour. Examples of consequences include the attention paid by an adult in response to the behaviour, as well as the activities and objects the student either escapes or has access to as the result of the behaviour, i.e. look for patterns.