Real Talk for Real Teachers #7 - Behavior Intervention Plans That Create Success

0:00 [Music] welcome to real talk for real teachers I'm dr. Becky Beaton the creator of conscious discipline an expert in education child development and a lifelong teacher and learner for those listening who are not aware of conscious discipline it is a comprehensive self-regulation program that integrates social-emotional learning climate and discipline in general it provides adults

0:33 and children with the skills to be disciplined enough to set and achieve goals conscious enough to know when you're off track and connected enough to others so you're willing to persevere so what are real teachers real teachers work in education and often have children of their own who struggle in the same system real teachers at times seem to be more effective with other people's children than with their own and real teachers at times have moments

1:04 when they feel like a failure as a parent just like all other parents do and yet real teachers show up day after day in the workplace to give their heart and soul to others real talk for real teachers is a growing community of loving professionals who seek to love themselves as much as they love others today we're going to be talking about academic and behavioral plans and conscious discipline and boy am I excited to have this topic it's an

1:34 excellent one for many of the questions I get today often I hear people all the time saying can conscious discipline work with PBIS and I think it's time to set that record straight first and foremost it's common sense to know that positive behaviors that come from adults and children make a successful school so if everybody's off-the-top out of control then our schools are going to fail and just like reading math science and art positive behaviors are a set of

2:04 skills that can and must be taught so what is PBIS positive behavior intervention and supports is a proactive approach here that proactive approach to establishing the behavioral supports and social culture needed for all students in a school to achieve social emotional and academic success it is not let me repeat PBS is not a program with specified set of

2:37 instructions it is a framework or an approach that came about to foster changes in school-wide discipline practices the powers to be recognized that schools focused mainly on reacting to student behavior by implementing punishment strategies such as reprimands loss of privileges office referral suspensions and expulsions and research decades decades decades oh did I say decades has indicated these punishment

3:08 strategies are ineffective so PBIS and conscious discipline have the same goal moving from punishing hurtful behaviors to teaching helpful behaviors it's important that we all realize that the PBIS framework now again I said framework the PBIS approach does not provide or require schools to use specific practices it just asked us to include the following and I'm going to give you what it asked us to do and

3:40 I'm going to show you how conscious discipline does all those one it says use respectful non-punitive oriented interventions well that's what we're all about that's what the seven skills and the seven powers do that's what we do completely conscious discipline is about moving from rewards and punishments to self-regulation the second thing it requires a focus on skill teaching that's all we do all upset moments all conflicts every moment of every day is a

4:10 teaching moment with conscious discipline every time a child is excited sad angry teaching moment every time they push hit name-call do their work finish their work achieve phenomenal things teaching moment it also says third make sure it's evidence-based and we are evidence-based by SAMSHA and on the national registry the fourth thing it says it you need to have an availability of a continuum of intervention that meet the needs of all students we certainly have that we divide them into

4:41 brain States and if you're in this state we'll help here's a continuum of skills that will move you to this state and move you to the next state and if those skills in that state don't work in a large group we go make the group smaller make it one-on-one we have a continuum of interventions the fifth thing is it has ongoing assessment of student needs first we're in partnership with deca for assessment we have rubrics to help

5:05 teachers and students move along and every interaction every interaction in conscious discipline is an assessment when you reach out to agreed a child and their head drops to the floor we're assessing when we're teaching reading and a child pushes their papers to the side and their eyebrows go up we're assessing every interaction is an assessment and every interaction is an intervention and the last thing it asked

5:38 in PB is that we are data based decision making a decision driven by data and as I just said every moment is a piece of data that drives the next decision so although the PBIS framework itself does not stipulate specific practices here's what happens in the translations like that whisper game we used to play you know the federal government whispers to the state the state whispers to the local district the district whispers to somebody so this is what happens it gets

6:08 confusing because some PBIS school districts or school trainers may guide schools towards specific practices or social-emotional learning so the law doesn't state anything specific except what I shared with you practitioners and their interpretation may say well we've got to reward good behavior with tangible stuff so we just don't use the stuff we use internal motivation and

6:42 social reinforcers so as you can see schools adopting conscious discipline can use the P is framework to ensure systemic decision-making and schools adopting PBIS can use conscious discipline to meet the PBIS goal of supporting positive behavior in school culture there you have it the final word and this as they say in the game that's my final answer so today we are talking with Fran Rubio cats now Fran has been a teacher for 21

7:14 years she taught in elementary schools grades K through 6 she's taught general science grades 5 through 9 so she's kind of covered gamut here she's a certified conscious discipline instructor and is our social media manager here at conscious discipline and we now have and I this might be a couple days old so friends on the line she'll correct us as she when she comes we have 99 thousand plus on Facebook thanks to Fran and I think when she started we had two

7:41 thousand so this is she's a communicative wizard and she's the founder of the learning loft and a passionate mother of two beautiful boys and she's known to many parents as Freni 911 Fran to realtalk with real teachers Thank You Becky and tell us a little bit now you're the founder of the learning loft how exciting is this so tell us tell everybody listening about the learning loft and what's going on with

8:12 that okay so I have been a classroom teacher for many years and as when I decided to leave the classroom I was practicing conscious discipline in my classroom and it was being asked by a lot of people to come talk to their schools and their teachers about conscious discipline or different groups of parents and at one point I knew that I had to make a choice if I was going to pursue doing all these things just in my

8:39 classroom or if I was going to leave the classroom and I did leave the classroom and I missed it terribly and when I took on the beautiful position that I have is the social media encouraged or I call myself of conscious discipline beautiful I knew that I didn't want to get out of practice about what I'm talking about with people daily because of people Becky that are reaching out to us from all over the world and I know

9:09 that tomorrow you're going to be leaving for Africa and so we at when we when I have this responsibility to talk about how conscious discipline is showing up to the whole world I need to still be practicing it so I have this little Center it's my little safe place I have 22 children that I work with and they come here after school a lot of the children not all have either a learning difference a behavior difference and

9:40 attention difference and notice I say difference because I don't believe in disabilities I think all of us show up to this world in a unique way and it's our job as parents and teachers to learn how to notice how with these little people work and help them learn the skills to be their very best selves and when they come here we have a school family model they walk in it's their aftercare but they still have the first

10:06 thing they come they do is their shmatte routine our shmatte is our shoe mat and there is a visual representation of everything that is expected about where you put your shoes where you put your socks and you better go get your stinky foot spray that's way the way we keep everybody's noses safe and then you get the inside the learning loft but from there it is their structure and theirs nurture and it's all the different things that we have set up in all of our

10:37 books I love creating the school family that's one of our books for really thinking about how we're going to put together our emotionally intelligent structures there's great how-to sections and if you go on to our website and I know you know this but I'm telling everybody who's listening we have something called Schubert's school we used to just have Schubert's classroom now we have his school it also has a room in there for our little ones Sophie

11:10 is there now she is our four people who are working with birth through three years old there are so many suggestions pictures videos how to create different things and so many times when we have questions of course come and put them on our Facebook tweet them out to us but if you go to our website which is a wealth of free knowledge go check out Schubert school because you're going to get so many

11:41 answers and then some and you know interesting because you helped with this pretty soon helped you did a lot with this we're gonna have so sue Bert's home so Schubert's home is all laid out and planned and you'll see you can do the same thing with Schubert school is you can go to Schubert home and see what there's happening inside his house in regard to conscious discipline so now what do you do with these kids at the

12:08 learning loft so what we do is we make an individualized education plan for every single kid that comes here and just like you're talking about PBIS here in I'm in Broward County and in Broward County we use RTI response to intervention and that's another framework or approach that we can be aligned with very easily and we actually have an entire guide on our website

12:39 about how we do align with conscious discipline and we create social emotional and academic goals for every single child whether they need it or not whether they have a plan like this at their own school whether they're qualify for exceptional education or not we honor every child's learning style and their learning strengths and we caught we always we always help our children

13:10 recognize their strengths we look for what may be a struggle and we help them turn in those into stretches because we also practice yoga here and I've and we tell the children the way that you become flexible the way that you can grow is by stretching so we pick something that may be a little more difficult for us right now and I say right now because nothing has to ever be permanent and we decide how we're going

13:42 to make that a stretch how will we become more flexible in that area and the children actually help us create those goals oh man I love that I mean first of all the whole the whole thing you're doing I love but struggle in to stretch now that's a take home right there you know I'm having a little struggle with this jaunt to Africa in doing an international keynote so it certainly is stretching me but right now

14:10 I'm stuck in the struggle so I'm needle to be a little more flexible in my mind and stretch it to accommodate these extra opportunities so okay so now let's take it step by step so do you have an actual child or a story and I know that your boys had some differences in schools and stuff is that how you kind of got into this yes so when I started my teaching career I actually worked in a middle school that was for children

14:39 that had been previously incarcerated or have not culturally assimilated so we were getting children from Guantanamo Bay we were was down in miami-dade County we were getting children that had been detained at the chrome Detention Center and we were helping them we were like a stepping stone back into the public school system so when I had children I thought who is going to be a better mother than me my first one

15:14 really threw me for a loop he as we said as you have titled the book so appropriately was easy to love but difficult to discipline from the get-go and I really didn't know what to do and because before ever having my child I kind of said I had a very charmed life my parents really sheltered me I didn't have a lot of now I realize I did have a lot of opportunity to grow and learn from natural consequences but boy

15:46 oh boy did I get a quick lesson and how thankful and grateful I am to that I had conscious discipline to lead the way because starting from the time my oldest was about 15 months old I could start to see that there were some differences and I became reactive I did not know how to respond to this little guy so fortunately for me one of my childhood friends her name is Mindy Becker and

16:17 she's us she's a master instructor with us and conscious disciplined she she used to have a business called auntie em to the rescue and auntie em came over and she said she was just going to observe me working with my son who at the time now was at about two years old and already had become an identified landshark and for those of you who don't know what a landshark is it's a toddler that bites and if you're the if you're

16:52 the parent of a land shark you are also treated like you are scary and bad and a lot of people don't want you around and that actually really throws you further into the lower brain states where it is exactly yeah it becomes so much more difficult to respond and access our wiser parts of ourself so when Mindy came that first day and she was watching me work with Alex when she was done I was like did

17:23 you see it did you get it all did you did you see when he did this did you see that and she just looked at me and she's like you know because you're my friend I get to put it out to you like this she's like girl it's not him it's you listen he's having some stuff she's like but you are like you're just a nut oh my gosh what are we gonna do with me then

17:46 and I just really I love that what are we gonna do with me that's a great line too what are we gonna do with me then and that's where my journey began and she said I'm gonna start teaching you how to respond and the first thing she taught me to do is be a star and I have to tell you at the time that my son started showing that he was having differences and I was very reactive it

18:13 did and I was not feeling accepted by other parents at the school and then of course I had my own family who only out of their love and from their heart but basically was telling me it's all my fault because I'm doing everything wrong you put that all into combination and you tell somebody to try and take a deep breath it was really hard to find the oxygen and then she taught me how to start affirming to myself I am safe I am

18:47 calm keep breathing I can handle this and I have to tell you this really interesting thing and it still happens now when I really get into that red part of my brain when I'm in my survival State my my inner voice starts saying to me you are safe you are calm keep breathing you can handle this and I know when I'm starting to shift up and that elevator is moving up back to the top floor to that green part because all of

19:17 a sudden that internal dialogue goes to I am safe I am calm keep breathing I can handle this wow wow and my guess is that over these years you're not struggling with that inner critical voice is hard it's just now more of a voice that just supports you along the way is that true Fran yes I have a much more supportive inner voice and so you know anybody that knows

19:48 me I often talk to my about my father who is the most delicious wonderful man on earth who has provided me the most beautiful life and he happens to have a critical voice with a Cuban accent so when I start to feel critical of myself there is his voice I talked to myself with this Cuban accent I'm like wait wait no no rewind let's rewind that and it's funny because I'm even learning how to give that voice a different a different

20:21 side so we're in the past when I felt like I made a mistake or didn't know how to handle something where my inner voice might have said like what are you stupid or something now I say pussycat you can handle this that's beautiful that's beautiful okay let's shift back now let's go back to the how you do this ie P at your learning loft as kind of a framework for those listening to use conscious

20:53 discipline and you know of course other resources will just focus on the behaviors now and and how you kind of go about that process that they might could replicate and find some success from absolutely so like guys mentioned on our website we have an RTI guide I download and print an RTI guide from our website every time I work with a new family and the one of the big highlights in that

21:27 guide is on page 7 of that guide and it talks about wanted behavior and unwanted behavior so in my practice what I've learned to notice because is to see what is that unwanted behavior but then we have to focus on what we want to have happen and what we want the children to do which is from the power of it of attention which is the skill of assertiveness and from there I can then

21:59 identify what is the behavior that I want and I think that a lot of times we get stuck were like but that he's doing this but she's doing this ok great yay you identified I wouldn't unwanted behavior let's breathe let's affirm let's do our active calming and now let's make a shift and focus on that wanted behavior then I think about what would be a Tier one intervention Tier one interventions are interventions that are for all of the

22:31 children if they're in your class or if what would any child that comes into your classroom into your school it's how you're going to handle them it's the structures you set up the language of safety that you're going to use all of those things are your tier one interventions so then I think about does this child need a tier 2 intervention to make a shift in tier 2 interventions or more interventions for small groups 15 to 20 percent of the

23:00 children may need a tier 2 intervention and we create a tier 2 intervention and I'm going to give you a specific example soon so just stick with me for a second and then a tier 3 intervention is something for maybe one to three maybe five percent of the population may need and it's more of a very individualized one-on-one intervention so I'll give you an example alrighty I went into a school and I asked to like a fly on the wall

23:32 and the observation that I made is that when the class was singing and dancing to music the little boy that I was there watching he was able to stay engaged for the beginning of each song approximately 15 to 20 seconds and then he would stop singing and dancing and he'd start shouting that hurts my ears that hurts my ears and so the unwanted behavior that I helped the teacher define using the

24:02 safety of language is there's a lack of participation and then there's disruption and so we then talked about well what is the wanted behavior and we realized is we want to help this child learn to self-regulate when he's feeling overstimulated and we also knew at that point that the child would need additional assistance so if you looked at the behavior plan under the unwanted behavior it would say lack of participation and disruption and then

24:34 the wanted behavior that corresponds what that would be child needs additional assistance in learning how to self-regulate behavior so then we talked about what are the strategies we're going to use to teach the wanted behavior so first we looked at what would be the universal wide Tier one strategies to teach this and these are all listed on our guide but we put adults remember that disruptive students are just disconnected students another

25:07 tier one universal strategy is that adult needs to shift from reactive procedures to proactive strategies and another Tier one universal intervention is that that that we're going to teach the child stress reduction techniques because in a conscious discipline school family learning stress reduction techniques as part of it our daily practice a tier 2 intervention that we put into place and this school was you

25:39 was still using rewards and Punishment but they made an exception when I talked to them about this tier 2 intervention I asked them not to initiate any more tangible incentives such as token economies because that's just not going to work for this little guy it's about his brain state it's about feeling not safe and not connected it's not about him trying to earn a trip to the treasure box those things were just not even in his on his radar because he was

26:12 in a place where he felt so overwhelmed and so overstimulated and I even put in the report that these rewards will undermine the long-term goal of permanent behavior change and I asked to use positive social reinforcement such as hugs and high-fives pinkie hugs tying together meaning reading with the teacher eat lunch with the teacher etc and encouragement for student success and then a tier 3 intervention is that

26:43 we incorporated because you know the environment that we create is part of the universal intervention but this child really needed some very specific things that he could do to help him regulate in the environment so we had to make some changes to the environment we were able to put certain these things they look like tennis balls on the bottom of the chair so they wouldn't make these horrible squeaking noises when he pulled it out from his desk

27:15 because that was happening off and it was very startling to him um yeah we we yep and we also had when he goes to his safe when he goes to the safe place and I help them create a safe place which for those of you are listening who are not yet familiar with our approach a safe place is a non-punitive area where children can go use these self-regulation skills and distress disengaging techniques that that we teach them at other times calm times

27:45 happy times throughout the day so when he became very stimulated he always had the right to choose to pass on something and he would go into the safe place and he could listen put on some noise-cancelling headphones and that and he was able to recharge himself from that and you know children want to do the right thing people get really nervous Oh what if the other kids want to do that and oh what if you know he

28:12 never comes out of the safe place we have all these what-ifs that stem from our own fear and that is where we have to put ourselves and we got to check ourselves before we wreck or selves we got to breathe and remember that if we truly start to build a school family the children will almost celebrate that that child is going to get what he needs in that moment and they'll understand that that will come back around for them when

28:40 they need that support and they will well that is beautiful so you've stepped us through the whole thing and and for our listeners I'm going to sum this up and you add to it Fran if we need to so I'm gonna give you some immediately you can do this tips for tomorrow so the first thing I heard you say is in regard to these behavior plans just go to the website and download the form I mean that's our

29:08 first step and then look over that form and I think the second thing that you really pointed out that is vital for our listeners is to identify what the unwanted behavior is not all of them at one time but what's this particular unwanted behavior and then say okay now what does the what do you want the child to do and then you're gonna break that down into for that child to do that for that child to stay participating for

29:33 that child to stay engaged during circle time or singing that child's going to need additional resources environmental or prompts from the teacher to be successful so we make those lists so these are called our interventions what can we do with this child is that corrective I got it you got it so far and I am gonna add something good as we start to make that list we must consider the overall developmental question being asked by the child and the child is not going to

30:04 be like this is what I want or this is what I need we're going to know that question because we're going to see the behaviors and the behaviors are communicating to us the brain state that the child may be in so we have to determine is this child asking am i safe is this child asking am i loved or is this child asking what can I learn from this and that that's very important that's huge and one thing I want to add

30:34 then we'll just keep adding you and I be auditioning problem one thing that's important to understand if the child does not have a person now by a person you know we can think Grey's Anatomy who's your person but just someone that they can count on and they can trust and they feel well just basically count honorable and trustworthy if they don't have a person none of these interventions that we've tried will work because as Fran just pointed out the

31:02 child am i safe no am I love no so we can't start at the top what can I learn from this and often we do start at the top here's the skills we need and we forget just what you said and I created this thing just forgot it so thank you friend and so that's what state of a end we've got to answer that then we make our interventions to accommodate that child and then we decide is this a universal

31:29 one that all kids need if you're not doing conscious discipline is that a tier 2 where I can do it in a small group or does that child need one-on-one to make these changes and accommodate his differences to our differences and make a successful win-win mm-hm and so here comes the adding machine I'm adding a little more go ahead a bad way so once we make this plan the next thing that is very important is to understand

32:03 who is going to be doing what who is going to create maybe you need additional additional visual aids for the check for this implementation plan who's making them who's going to do that we also need to understand how we will start to track behaviors to see if our embed of our intervention is working we recommend that you track for at least six weeks and six consistent weeks right now we just had a storm heat down here

32:35 in Florida and it's guest yesterday was the first day back to school in seven school days and it's almost like everybody's had to start from scratch so if there was anybody that was already implementing an intervention plan my I would encourage them to start from scratch at this point and like you were saying at the very beginning of this podcast Becky you said that every action is the way that we collect data and every interaction is an

33:09 intervention so we let's be really mindful of what the actions are collect that data think about those developmental questions so that we can create an interaction that is intervention worthy and then let's decide how are we going to track those things we and there's all different ways to track things and different programs and different approaches have their different methods so if you're looking at three out of

33:41 five times the child will go to the safe place unprompted or maybe we're looking at the number of the frequency rate of aggressive behaviors over a six-week period daily we have to understand how we're going to define that so that we can really measure where the difference is because we want to know what's working we don't want to measure because we want to say look he didn't change or she didn't change we want to know that

34:11 our interventions we're meeting the child's needs and then if the data proves that the intervention strategies are not working what is the next step what is our protocol going to be and one of the things that keep adding so this is another plus one it sounds like we're going on a date here Fran you're gonna be my plus one so when we look at what we're counting it's very important because what you focus on you get more

34:37 off so I encourage people to count the wanted behavior what was the increase so if we are looking at a seeing a reduction in aggression we're going to be looking at the numbers of times the child says move please or may I have a turn or whatever the situation that provokes that triggers that child's aggression so count your wanted behaviors so that you can see they're increasing increasing increasing and they generally will increase exponentially so it starts off a little

35:09 slow in your counting and then BAM and that's why the six weeks period is a good length of time to see that exponential growth and to let that skill become internalized because it takes so much practice to make a nerve neural path in the brain okay so now let's go into and tell us just update us all Fran on on you do as our social media and how can people know us find us and just tell us

35:38 about all you do with our social media I will tell you about that gladly so our Facebook community has become like you said 99 thousand plus people strong and it started at maybe 2000 and when we started not everybody was open to teaching a different skill as a mean of means of discipline and so some people didn't really know what we were talking about but as the word of

36:10 conscious discipline spreads and as people learn how they can start incorporating our framework into their framework people are trying are getting curious and they want to have a place where they can ask questions where they can celebrate their successes where they can say you know what I had an oopsie think I can do about this and this is what our community has become as our community

36:41 started to get stronger not only did we increase the amount of people in it but the amount of people that are participating in our conversations is really unbelievable we had 41 people add their insight and ask questions recently on one thing that we put out where in the past we would maybe have a person like it or a couple people write something but 41 people to say you know

37:14 what I'm going to contribute to this conversation and then those conversations end up being other conversations and if anybody's ever been to a Summer Institute RCD one we find ways to connect with each other we have pictures up on a board and we use a piece of yarn once we realize how we make a connection and our social media platforms have become an extension of that how we continue those

37:44 connection and conversations once we leave our learning communities well so we have this huge massive friends and family board out there that seems to me working because I remember back in the day you put up a post never big oh well that's not right this is how you're supposed to do it I mean they were it was mostly an argument as opposed to a conversation and and I've seen that myself and that transition from a argument to a

38:10 conversation is so beautiful and thank you so much friend for grabbing hold of that and helping it grow and be that beautiful conversation where people get insights and information and contribute and give back thank you and I just want to mention that a lot of school districts are on Twitter and that is something in the last year and a half to two years that's really exploded and we're over 7,000 people strong in our Twitter community and people are posting

38:42 daily from their school's their classrooms their cafeterias their playgrounds their school buses showing us how conscious discipline is showing up for them in their daily lives at their schools so that's always that's also a wonderful resource Wow you know I keep trying to get on that Twitter thing I'm gonna have to my gosh and I'm just blessed you're in my life because I'm so

39:12 unhappy but I'm gonna give it a go I've got two accounts that one of them's got to work for me all right I'll let you keep being the wizard at what you do and and I'll cover the rest of the social media stuff cards it sounds like a deal so with that friend we're gonna we're gonna end and I want to thank you so so much for all your wisdom all your skills and don't forget all our social

39:37 media Fran has just told you about it I'm going to commit to Twitter so your people out there listening what are you going to commit to you heard a lot of information today and Fran is always available and she works very hard to meet the needs of all our learning community so I want to thank you Fran and for the people listening for those listening and I'm speaking for Fran and myself and all the conscious disciplined family until next time I

40:06 wish you were [Music] for more episodes on realtalk with real teachers by dr. becky bailey visit consciousdiscipline.com forward slash podcasts you can also subscribe to this podcast on itunes stitcher or your favorite pod