Tag: teaching

Process as Counterweight to Reactivity in Schools

murrayof

A blog entry about why organization, structure, and process is so important – without mention of Tolkien’s ents. 

Think of process as the antidote to reactivity. 

Reactivity is always available. It doesn’t require any planning or preparation. The student’s habitual stress response is set off. They act out. This sets off the teacher’s habitual stress response. The teacher’s reaction could be an in-the-moment response that they later regret. Or, maybe their reaction is deciding that this student simply can’t be educated in this setting.

A meeting is called. -Teachers, counselors, and administrators gather in some combination. The gathering is a reaction, so the reactivity continues.

This is meeting student reactivity with staff reactivity. This is the opposite of meeting reactivity with process. Reactivity is logistically easy, emotionally difficult, and ineffective at improving any student’s or teacher’s school experience.

Process receives reactivity and slows it down. Process moves at its own pace. The process receives the intense initial distress, slows it down, and disperses it amongst the collaborative adult team. Reactivity arrives at any time, and this uncertainty fuels anxiety. Process is predictable, and your staff’s consistency will earn a sense of security.

What does process look like? 

Process in this context consists primarily of three things:

  1. Regular, scheduled meetings.
  2. Clear expectations about communication.
  3. Clear decision-making processes.

We do see some of these structures taking root in school districts, with regular data meetings and processes for determining interventions for students. However, I don’t reliably see these structures where they are needed most – in programs designed to support students with significant social, emotional, and behavioral challenges.

The elements listed above are all worth talking about at length and in detail. Here, I will touch upon each very briefly.

Regular, scheduled meetings – These dictate the pace. Knowing there is a regular time to discuss and sort out challenges has a tremendous stabilizing effect on the staff. A staff member may be in a reactive space and feel that an issue needs to be resolved right away. With a dependable meeting time, -say, on a Tuesday – they will just have to hold tight until Tuesday, when everyone will get together and talk about the issue along with other concerns. In the meantime, everyone involved has a little time to stop, think, and adjust to the pace of the process.

Clear expectations about communication – The way that information is shared should be routine, clear, and understood by everyone on staff. There should not be any guesswork in determining whether and whom to share information with. Leaving these routines and expectations unclear is a recipe for interpersonal trouble. A lack of clarity adds extra burdens on staff who must not only confront a difficult situation, but also figure out whether, and whom with, to share information about it.

Clear decision-making processes – Disagreement among staff is inevitable. Disagreement among staff is also functional. A staff in constant agreement is not much use to each other in terms of deepening understanding, seeing from multiple perspectives, and rich collaboration. But disagreement is also uncomfortable. We have varying degrees of tolerance for it. Having a process for decision-making is a relief to interpersonal discomfort. When everyone has had a chance to say their piece and the conversation has stopped developing, we can move on to the decision-making process, and then on to the next concern.

Reactivity lives at the core of human nature while establishing and maintaining these structures and processes goes against some basic human tendencies, and there lies the challenge.

If we meet regularly, we will have more difficult conversations and disagreements. People tend to avoid difficult conversations and disagreements. So, many people would prefer not to meet. You may find that meetings are regularly missed, and people start to arrive late, or that meetings end early. If someone does not assume the role of maintaining the meeting and holding expectations about attendance and timeliness, these phenomena will almost certainly develop.

Similarly, staff may avoid communicating about something that they know will be contentious and difficult to talk about. The temptation may be to keep it to one’s self, or to tell only the most sympathetic ear. And lastly, people don’t naturally rely on established processes to make decisions. People tend to revert to more habitual and less organized group patterns, and groups often get stuck there.

The effort required to establish and maintain organized processes is worthwhile. Regular meetings and processes will provide practice in confronting challenges and lead to a greater sense of predictability and security, which will reduce anxiety. This predictability and increased security will infuse the staff’s work with students, and create a better learning environment. It will also decrease staff burnout and turnover, greatly benefiting program staff and students.

Informing Students About Observations: My Unpopular Opinion

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Here’s my unpopular opinion: Students of any age in schools should be notified about formal observations. 

Student observations are a common and important evaluation method in special education. Observations are part of nearly every initial special education evaluation process, as well as many other processes including general progress measurement, re-evals, and as part of placement considerations.

My opinion rests on a few fundamental beliefs:

It is respectful and ethical to inform any person that they are being observed. It is a gesture of respect that most people would appreciate, regardless of whether they are minors.

It is best to maintain a classroom where any and every visitor is identified. A classroom, even a large classroom, is a defined and close group that spends an enormous amount of time together. All non-members who enter the space are noticed by most of the students. -And some students wonder, speculate, and worry about the purpose and intentions of visitors. All the members of the classroom group deserve an introduction of visitors and a brief explanation of their purpose. In my classroom, the student being observed will be aware of the specific purpose of the visitor. Depending on circumstances and the privacy preferences of that student and their parents, it may be appropriate to tell the class that the visitor is here to “see the classroom”. -A truth that respects privacy concerns.

The third fundamental belief I will share is a bit more complex to explain. I often hear the concern that knowledge of the observation might impact the student’s performance during the observation. This is true. We can’t easily measure or correct for the impact of knowledge of the observation on the student’s performance. But we also can’t easily measure or correct for the impact of having an unusual and unexplained person in the room observing. Given these two possibilities, I’d much rather choose the option in which people receive respectful communication.

In research involving minors, the relevant concepts are informed consent and informed assent. In research, it is best practice to obtain informed assent from minors along with informed consent from their guardians. In some cases researchers record the minor’s informed dissent along with their guardian’s informed consent. School observations should be treated with the same respect. A student’s dissent to being observed is valuable information to record in one’s observation, should it go forward.

I recommend informing the student about any upcoming observation some days in advance, and reminding them about it each day leading up to the observation. If the observer is unfamiliar to the student and there is an opportunity to have an introduction before the day of observation, I would recommend that as well. If that is not possible, sharing a picture of the observer will help decrease the uncertainty. I recommend that you simply treat the student with at least the same respect that we understand most people would appreciate being treated with under similar circumstances.

What Kind of Teacher Doesn’t Know the Answers?

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spoiler: sometimes not knowing the answers is what makes an educator great

The Constrained Psychology of Educators Part I

I’ve had time to observe many of the psychological pitfalls of being an educator in K-12 schools. The effect is one of constraint, where educators experience a limited scope of what is possible in the classroom. 

My work has been primarily with students in special education programs due to significant social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, and their educators. The intensity of the issues presented by these students bring school culture concerns into clearer focus, but many of these issues are pervasive throughout schools.

The layers of these constraining problems are built on a foundational idea about school: teachers have all the answers. What a reassuring idea! In some parts of school life, it’s true. Your second-grade math teacher has in fact memorized the multiplication tables, and more. 

It can be largely true in more complicated situations as well. Your special education teacher may be able to administer assessments and know quite confidently what reading intervention is likely to be effective. Special education teachers are often amazing.

And then we encounter a student who is really struggling emotionally. This emotional distress is showing up in their behavior and interfering with their access to education, and to some degree even interfering with other students’ access to education. The usual incentives and disincentives for “good student behavior” are ineffective. We have reached a point where we educators no longer know the answers. 

This is a frightening crossroads for many, cutting to the heart of the teacher identity. What kind of teacher doesn’t know the answers?

Blocking out this troubling question, educators seek quick answers, hoping to return to their regular knowledgeable position as quickly as possible. Someone administer an FBA! (Functional Behavioral Assessment) 

Educators are increasingly taught that the answers lie in data. Let me be clear, data is a fundamentally good thing – more information is better than less. But, educators fall prey to the comforting illusion of easy and understandable answers. They feel the pressure of the expectation to be an expert, and an expert teacher (or school counselor) must know the answers. Welcome to perfect storm conditions for imposter phenomenon. 

Children, their families, and classroom groups are complicated. An individual child can’t entirely account for their behavior, thoughts, and feelings. -Nor can we do it on their behalf. We can’t even entirely account for our own behavior! Have you ever done something you intended not to do, or not done something you intended to? Why do you keep doing that?

However, we can move toward deeper understanding together. Part of what Laura Balogh and I advocate for in our book The Therapeutic Inclusion Program is shifting the classroom culture toward curiosity, wonder, and collaboration. We can think about it together. The more we do that, the more we will understand, but we still won’t know all the answers.