The Teaching Behavior Together Podcast

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Today we're going to be talking about how to incorporate behavioral and social emotional learning skills into your classroom in really fun ways. The very first strategy I have for you for incorporating behavioral and social emotional learning skills in your classroom in a fun way would be to incorporate it into your morning meetings. If you already have morning meetings set up, set aside three to five minutes where you can incorporate some behavioral and social emotional learning targets. The easiest way to do this is have your students model different coping strategies that they engage in. It's really fun to have them submit different coping strategies they engage in in some sort of box or jar and then you randomly pull one out and whoever submitted that gets to model it for the entire class and then the entire class gets a chance to practice. It's really easy to incorporate this type of strategy within your morning meeting because you already have the routine of your morning meeting this is just something you can add at the end really quickly or maybe in the middle to break up the different things that you do during your morning meeting. It is a great way to get in that social emotional learning right at the beginning of the day. Another strategy you can use would be to incorporate some social emotional learning games with in your stations or rotations. So if you already have stations or rotations set up in your classroom maybe you do them three times a week or you do them everyday you can easily incorporate some social emotional learning games into those stations or rotations. Now you're probably thinking what social emotional learning games are out there for me to incorporate? Well I have a bundle for you on teacherspayteachers that includes several different social emotional learning games that you can easily incorporate into your stations or rotations. Some examples of games included in that resource would be some tic tac toe activities, various memory games, emotions dominos, I-spy worksheets, and color by emotions worksheets. All of these different activities and games are great for stations and rotations. They have students working together or independently depending on how you have it set up. If they are working together you're also building in those collaborative working skills and teaching additional social emotional learning skills. Lastly, another great way to work in social emotional learning skills into your classroom would be to incorporate some different read alouds that address different SEL skills. I did an entire episode on my top four behavioral social emotional learning read alouds to have for your classroom check out episode 61 to hear all about my favorites. Resources Discussed in this Episode Social Emotional Learning Games Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Today we're going to be talking about one simple strategy you can implement in your classroom tomorrow to start seeing a decrease in disruptive behaviors. This simple strategy is called proximity and what it looks like is continually moving around the room while you are teaching. I know this sounds super simple, how can just moving around the room decrease disruptive behavior? But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Think about a time you were at a professional development or maybe a staff meeting and you had a text message and you checked your phone. If your principal or whoever was leading that PD walked over to you, you probably would put your phone away. this is the principle of proximity. So what could this look like in your classroom? Essentially all you have to do is walk around your classroom while you're delivering content or students are engaging in different activities either independently or collaboratively with each other. Yep it's that simple all you have to do is walk around your classroom and continue to circulate. If a student is engaging in disruptive behavior you might want to hang near that spot a little bit longer and allow them the chance to engage in that appropriate behavior. Being in close proximity allows you to do two really important things and the first is probably the most important. First, it allows you to provide direct reinforcement, praise, or acknowledgement for engaging in that appropriate behavior when that student starts engaging in that appropriate behavior. Because you're in really close proximity you're able to give that feedback really quickly. This also allows you to provide a really quiet redirection towards an appropriate behavior or a prompt towards appropriate behavior. This gives the student an idea of what they should be doing and then once they start engaging in that appropriate behavior you're in close proximity and can provide that reinforcement, praise, or acknowledgement. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast, today we are going to chat about dealing with tantrums. Tantrums can be rough in the classroom, they can really disrupt the lesson you are teaching as well as trigger other student behavior. Here are some of my go to strategies when dealing with tantrums. My first tip when dealing with a tantrum is to ask the child what they need. I would say something like “tell me (or whatever form of communication they use) what you need.” And wait. It might take a little bit of time, but I give the wait time necessary for them to process what I asked and identify what they need. At times they may not be able to identify what they need because they do not know what they need. It might seem like forever, because minutes during a tantrum, are like extra long minutes, but giving wait time can increase the likelihood you will get a response. If we keep asking questions and prompting, it might delay the student being able to tell us what they need. You might also ask something like “do you need a break or a walk?” if you think that would be more appropriate for the student. Give them a chance to identify what they need and allow them access. Next, if I have to give directions, I keep them as short as possible and I include what I want the student to do within the direction. I might say something like, I need you to walk over here.” Or something similar to that. If I am giving directions it is to keep the student safe. Maybe the tantrum is happening in the hallway and a class is about to come in from lunch, I want to maintain the safety and dignity of that student so I might direct them to a different location. If you give long or complicated directions the student probably will not be able to process them and it probably won’t help the tantrum, it might even make it worse. Keep verbal directives to a minimum as they require the student to process information which is challenging to do when they are elevated. Lastly, I model regulation strategies. Essentially you want to co-regulate with the student. Demonstrate some go to regulation strategies and wait it out with them. I know this can be really challenging, again minutes during a tantrum seem really long. Modeling a strategy can help students engage in that strategy and hopefully allow them to calm down their body. We want our students to be able to return to a state of calmness no matter how long that takes. Of course we want it to be sooner than later, but sometimes these things just take a while. As a bonus time, teaching regulation strategies when students are calm is the best way to ensure they will have tools in their tool box to engage in strategy that will allow them to be successful at calming themselves. I highly suggest teaching and working on self-regulation on a regular basis in your classroom. If you need a calm down kit, there is a free one in the description of this podcast, download it today and set up a calm down corner tomorrow in your classroom. As always, I love it when you share with me how these tips work in your classroom over on Instagram. Let me know if your kids are loving the calm down kit! Chat with your soon. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Calm Down Kit Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Today we are going to talk about what to do in situations where a student presents with some challenging behavior and the recommendation that you are receiving from others within the building is to build a relationship with that student. This can be a really challenging situation to be in. When you are looking for support from other personnel within the building and you're continually getting that same recommendation of building a relationship with a student, it can be really frustrating. So first let's talk about the importance of relationships within a school setting. Relationships are the foundation for everything. Building relationships with your students and within your classroom by creating that positive classroom climate is essential to success within your classroom. It is definitely the foundation that we build off of when challenging behaviors present. The very first thing to do is document all of the interventions that you have in place. This can be easily done through just a checklist of general interventions that you have set up in your classroom such as antecedent strategies that you incorporate into your classroom, relationship building strategies, and any strategies that you use to create that positive classroom environment and climate. The next thing I would do is advocate for more support. and what I mean by additional support would be a Tier 2 level intervention or tier three if that's appropriate based on the challenging behavior that you're experiencing. it is important to remember that Tier 2 level interventions are typically done in a small group format and that this often can take place either in the classroom or take place out of the classroom. The last thing I would do would be to advocate for feasible interventions to be implemented within your classroom. After you've documented your interventions and advocated for Tier 2 or tier 3 level support that involves explicitly teaching skills that our student might be lagging in order for them to engage in appropriate behavior in your classroom, I would then ask for assistance in implementing those interventions feasibly within your classroom. Don't be afraid to ask for support or ask for someone to come in and provide assistance or model what it could look like in your classroom. this shows that you're open to implementing different interventions and you're also open to additional support from other personnel within your building. I really hope this episode was helpful, try out some of these strategies let me know how they work for you over on Instagram at teaching behavior together and have a great rest of your day. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast, today we are going to chat about some of my favorite SEL read alouds. These are must haves for your classroom bookshelves. All of the books will be linked in the description of this podcast. You will be using my amazon affiliate link so I do benefit monetarily from your purchase if you choose to use that link. The first book or really book set is the Little Spot of Emotions book set. This is an 8 book series with books about happiness, kindness, anger, sadness, etc. The books are great when you are introducing emotions and can be an essential addition to a classroom library. The next book set would be the Worry Woos. These are a series of books about emotions and provide students with strategies for managing those emotions. They also come with plush toys that could be a great addition to your classroom. These books are super fun and engaging for all of your students. I also highly recommend the Kids Book About books. You can pick from so many topic areas like empathy, anxiety, sharing, etc. You can look through all of the topics and pick which ones you are interested in. The books are great for some of the more challenging topics to talk about with your students as they provide the language needed to talk about these topics. My fourth recommendation would be the What Should Darla or What Should Danny Do books. These are books about decision making and power of choices. The books come with multiple stories making them perfect for a series within your classroom. I have included links for all of these books in the description below. Little Spot Books https://www.dianealber.com/ Worry Woos https://www.worrywoos.com/ A Kids Book About https://akidsco.com/ What Should Danny Do https://www.whatshoulddannydo.com/ Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Today we are going to be talking all about power struggles. We’ve all been there, in the middle of a power struggle wondering how we got there in the first place. I know we have all been there, but on the off chance you have never been in a power struggle, they are basically any instance in which you have an unproductive back and forth with a student. This can look like you asking a student to do something and them responding with no and you two go back and forth without any progress toward a desired outcome. They are not a great place to be. The best strategy is to avoid getting in a power struggle in the first place, and here are my three go to strategies to do this successfully. First, take a problem solving approach and invite the student to problem solve with you. For example, if you are asking the student to transition from area to another and they do not want to you might say “hey (insert student name) it is time for small group, what are your thoughts on how we can get there?” It might take a little while, and often does, but you can help guide the student through a problem solving approach and agreeing to a solution together. Basically you are helping the student by providing some structure and choice to engage in the appropriate/requested behavior. Let’s walk through another example, say you work with older students and you have to keep reminding them to put their phones away. You might say something like “hey everyone, I don’t want to have to keep reminding you to put your phones away, how can we solve this?” Listen to all of their ideas and come up with a collaborative plan together. You might be surprised with some of the ideas they come up with. I have seen this work on both the individual and group level. The key is, when you think you might enter a power struggle, invite the student to help problem solve a solution. Another strategy would be to provide a non verbal prompt. This can be a written prompt on a post it or maybe a gestural prompt or a signal to the student. Either way, if you are engage in nonverbal behavior, the student is less likely to produce a verbal response back. Therefore, avoiding a power struggle. This might look like putting a post it on a student’s desk that says “we are working on our math, you can play your game at lunch.” All too often when we give verbal prompts we invite that verbal response back and it might not lead us in a good direction. The last strategy also involves how we deliver prompts as well. One strategy that can work well is to prompt around the behavior. What I mean by that is when you are prompting, avoid including the undesired behavior in the prompt. Often when we include the undesired behavior in the prompt students feel called out, criticized and become defensive. If we prompt around the behavior and include the behavior we want to see, this could help us avoid a power struggle. For example instead of saying stop talking across the room to your friend you might say “hey I don’t want you to miss this, let’s flip to this page so we can stay on track, you can talk to your friend later. This might not be the way you are used to prompting and whenever you can include the desired behavior you are much more likely to see success. I would give it a try and come up with some common prompts you give and reword them to prompt around the undesired behavior. This might help increase your use of the prompts in the future and avoid those power struggles. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hi friends and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. I am so glad you joined us for this chat about the 4:1 praise ratio strategy. This is a pretty common strategy used or discussed within schools, however, it is really challenging to carry out. Today we are going to talk about some feasible ways to master this strategy and increase those desired behaviors within your classroom. Ok, the 4:1 praise ratio strategy, for those that are unfamiliar, basically states that we should provide 4 positive interactions for every 1 corrective/redirective interaction. Some research says 5:1 some says 12:1. Whatever research you are reading, they all say we need to provide more praise or positive interactions than corrective/redirective/negative interactions when we are working with our students. My first suggestion would be to download a repeat timer app on your phone. There are a ton of free ones, they are usually work out timers that notify you on an interval you set. I set my interval to like 3 minutes but this can change depending on how long my lesson is, so set it to an interval that works best for you. I keep mine on vibrate, put it in my pocket, and use it as a tactile prompt to provide reinforcement. This does not guarantee I hit the 4:1 ratio, but it serves a prompt for me to deliver praise or engage in a positive interaction. Therefore, I do not go through the whole lesson and completely forget to acknowledge the positive. Another strategy I have used is post it praise. I included this in episode 55, but here is a quick recap. Before class I jot down a couple of praise statements I might give to the students. These might be general praise statements, like great work staying on task, or more specific praise statements related to the activity you are working on, such as nice job completing that puzzle. I would say, I write down maybe 10 and pass them out as we go through the activity. This way I already have my praise ready to go the post its serve as a reminder for me to give out that praise. Again, this does not guarantee I hit that 4:1 ratio, but it increases the likelihood I will be giving out that praise. Ready for the next strategy-this one is pretty simple. Go back to the basics and praise or acknowledge what you see and hear. A lot of times when I am working with teachers, they tell me they do not know what to acknowledge. I always tell them to start with what they see or hear. It might sound silly, but the more you practice this the better you will get at delivering praise. You will start to notice all the things you students are doing well and provide praise for that. You can say something like “I heard you using kind words with a friend, nice job.” “I noticed you worked really hard when we were in groups, great work.” Using the phrase “I noticed, or I heard” can help guide your praise or positive interactions. Lastly, every time you provide a redirection or correction let that serve as a prompt to yourself that you need to deliver a praise statement. This will get you to a 1:1 ratio which is a great place to start. Then you can slowly increase the amount of praise you are giving over time. With this strategy you are basically using yourself as the prompt. If it helps, for a couple of days, tally the praise statements and redirections you give in your classroom or have a teacher friend come in and observe you and tally. This will give you an idea of where you are and can help you set goals related to your praise goals! Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hi friends and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Last episode we talked about increasing engagement in your classroom. Today we are going to be talking about increasing work completion. I have one simple strategy for you to try in your classroom that we will chat about in today’s episode. Before I do that, if you have not already downloaded my free behavior intervention guide with 20 pages of strategies and examples of how to use those strategies in your classroom (across grade levels) use the link in the description of this podcast to do that right now! Ok, friends, onto the strategy: often times when students are working independently or in groups on a task they can get a little off task. This is pretty normal, and we want to support our students in developing skills to maintain engagement and get back on task if they need that support. Have you ever heard of a pomodoro technique? Maybe you have used this when writing lesson plans or IEPs. If you haven’t here is a basic explanation. You set a timer for 25 minutes, turn off all distractions and work for that entire period. You identify a goal for the tasks you want to get done, say for example, write the profile section for an IEP, or get your math lesson planned for next week. You only do the tasks you designated for those 25 minutes, no checking emails, or running to grab a snack. When the timer goes off you get a five minute break and repeat. If you haven’t tried it, I highly suggest it, the strategy has been shown to increase work production immensely. You can use this same type of strategy for your students. You can do this is a couple of different ways. If you are working with younger students you might set some predetermined goals for a work period. Let’s say you are giving your class 30 minutes to create a story strip in a group. Maybe the story strip has 5 parts. You might set a timer for 8 minutes and let them know they should be done with the first two parts in that 8 minutes, let them have a short break, and repeat. This helps students remain on task and prevents some off task behavior like side conversations from occurring. Additionally, it demonstrates goal setting and working to meet a goal. If you are working with older students you might give them the overall time period, say 60 minutes to work on a science lab. You can let them know every 15 minutes a timer will go and they will get a short break. Have them identify where they want to be as a group at every 15 minute time marker so they can develop those time management skills. This strategy also works great for independent work. Basically you are asking students to set mini goals and providing structures and supports via a timer and short breaks to foster work completion. We are hitting on a lot of social emotional learning targets with this strategy such as self-management, goal setting, time management, accountability, and if you have your students working in groups, collaboration skills! Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hello everyone and welcome the this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast! I am so excited you are joining us today for this chat about increasing class participation. This is one of my favorite topics and I am going to share three of my go to strategies when we are trying to increase participation. All of these strategies fall under the umbrella of active student responding opportunities. These strategies are great for whole class or small group lessons where you are checking for understanding prior to a task or experiential activity. The first strategy I have for you is called response cards. Response cards can take a variety of forms, I am going to talk about a couple of the more popular ones and you can tweak those to make them feasible for your classroom. The most popular form of response cards is white boards and dry erase markers. I like to either laminate or insert paper into those page protectors and have students use that as the white board. This can be more cost effective and you should be able to find those materials easily. When using response cards, you pose a question or problem and students answer or complete that problem. When you give the signal, students raise their boards. You glance around the classroom and gauge understanding. If the majority of the class was correct you move on, if you noticed the class has mixed answers or the majority missed the answer, you review that content. This allows for minute by minute feedback on the understanding of the lesson. This way you can determine if the whole class understands a concept instead of just the student that raised their hand. Another way to do this would be to print out ABCD cards and have multiple choice questions for students to answer. They would just hold up the letter that represented their answer. If you want to go even simpler, you can have students use the ASL alphabet and hold up their hands with the answers. All of these modes of answers are referred to response cards. This is an evidenced based strategy that has been shown to increase participation in the classroom immensely. Ok, moving onto to the next strategy, choral responding. This is another great strategy for increasing participation. If students know they will have to respond they are more likely to pay attention, formulate a response, and engage with the content. This is a pretty simple strategy to use, all you have to do is ask a question, give a signal, and tell all of your students to respond. You can listen for the general understanding of the concept you are teaching. Again, this is a great way to determine if you need to reteach a concept or review something with your class. Lastly, there is a strategy called number heads. This strategy involves pairing students up into small groups. You will have the students count off within their group. For example, if you have groups of five, students will count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and each person will have a number. During your lesson or at the end of your lesson you pose a question that the group will answer to demonstrate their understanding. You can either call out a number for the whole class and the student with that number in each group share’s the answer for the group, or you can visit groups individually and call on different numbers to share. This strategy is great if you want to increase collaborative opportunities in your class and has been shown to improve academic performance and collaborative skills amongst your students. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Today we are going to be talking about redirecting behavior. This can be tricky in the classroom. Often times what I see when we are redirecting behavior is the potential for power struggles. Does this sound familiar “(insert student name), stop talking while I am talking And we get the response-I wasn’t talking. Or “insert student name, please put your phone away-It’s just one text, why are you getting upset?” Or insert student name “We can’t hit our peers-he hit me first.” All of these are defensive responses. And can lead to further conversation that is often unproductive. It doesn’t feel good when we are redirected. It often puts our students on the defense as well. If you are experiencing these types of responses to the redirections you give, here is the strategy I have for you: prompt around the behavior. I know this might go against what you learned about prompting, but hear me out first. What I mean by prompting around the behavior is avoiding including the behavior of concern in your prompt. For example, with our prompt that sounded like “stop talking while I am talking-I might say something like “I don’t want you to miss this, let’s be quiet so you can hear me.” This prompt tells the student what we want them to do “be quiet” and avoids highlighting the behavior of concern. Here’s another example, instead of put your phone away you might say “now is a great time to take notes on what I have on the board.” Again, this give the student an idea of what you want them to be doing instead of being on the phone. Yes telling them to put the phone away is another example of telling them what you want them to do, but this also tells them what you want them to do instead of being on the phone. Ok, let’s do our last example: instead of we cant hit our peers you might say-We need to show kindness to our friends, how can we do that right now? Again this prompts around the behavior and avoids highlighting the behavior of concern which can promote a defensive response from the student. Prompting around the behavior gives the student an idea of the behavior you would like to see instead and helps us avoid that defensive response. If you notice you are getting a lot of those defensive responses this might be a strategy you try with your class our a couple of students. As always, it is best practice to provide more positive acknowledgements related to behavior over redirections/corrections. Keep that in mind while you are using this strategy as well. To make this more effective, if you are having to give a lot of prompts to a student, you might want to have a conversation with them about the behavior you are concerned about. This can happen in private and not immediately after an incident. Even the slightest prompt can be perceived as a criticism and result in that defensive response. When talking with the student we want to make sure they are calm and ready to have a productive conversation. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the teaching behavior together podcast. Wow, it has If you have been around for a while you know how much I talk about reinforcement. We often think of reinforcement as a tangible object we give someone for appropriate behavior. However, reinforcement is anything that occurs after a behavior that increases the behavior in the future. We know we have reinforced a behavior if it occurs again. Reinforcement happens all day everyday around us. One form of reinforcement can be praise. Often we hear things like, nice work, great job, awesome! However, praise is most effective if it is personal and specific. Here are three strategies to up your praise game. The first strategy is called post it praise. Before your class, jot down a couple of praise statements you might give to your students. These might be general praise statements, like great work staying on task, or more specific praise statements related to the activity you are working on, such as nice job completing that puzzle. I would say, write down maybe 10 and pass them out as you are completing the activity. This is an easy, unobtrusive way to guarantee to you provide praise during your lesson or activity. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the lesson and answering questions and helping students we forget to acknowledge all the behaviors we want to see! Another strategy would be to use some compliment cards. These are very similar to post it praise statements, but you might give these out at the end of the day. You might write 5 of them prior to the end of the day and give them to your students. You can compliment progress towards goals they have or if you saw them helping others in the classroom, any behaviors you want to increase you can compliment! Finally, you can use some nonverbal acknowledgements. You can give students a thumbs up, a smile from across the room, a nod in their direction. These might seem like very small moments, however, for some of our students who do not like attention from a public praise statement, nonverbals can be the way to go. You can also create secret signals with some of your students. Believe me, this makes their day. These are all examples of delivering praise in your classroom that does not involve you repeating yourself over with the same old same old, great work, nice job. They are all personal forms of praise that have the potential to mean a lot to your students. Try one to two out and let me know over on Instagram how they work for you! One thing to note, praise is not a form of reinforcement for everyone, if you do not see and increase or maintenance in behavior, praise might be reinforcing for that student, don’t worry though, subscribe to this podcast so you are notified each week when a new episode comes out. There are many more strategies to come! Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Compliment Cards Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

If you are thinking about getting your doctorate degree and wondering what it is really like, this episode is for you. I get to chat with Lauren from @thinkdyslexia about getting our doctorate degrees. She has and doctorate in education (Ed.D.)focused on the practical aspect of serving as a change agent with the field. I have a PhD. in special education and applied behavior analysis and focused on conducting and publishing research related to evidence-based practices within the field. Despite our different degrees, our experiences were pretty parallel. We both decided to pursue a doctorate degree while we were getting our undergraduate degrees. We both went to three year programs. We both agree that the workload is probably not the most challenging aspect of getting your degree. We did have very different “whys” when getting our degrees which highlights the endless possibilities for going back to school and pursuing your doctorate. We delve deep into our whys and discussion how our motivation kept us going during the not so fun parts of the program. In this episode we chat about what we found most challenging and most rewarding about getting our degrees. We also talk about the financial aspect of pursing higher education and the different options that may be available to you as your are navigating the finances. We talk about how life can get in the way, but how we stayed the course and finished our programs on time. And we give you our advice for getting a doctorate degree. If you have ever thought about getting a doctorate degree, we hope you find this episode helpful! Feel free to reach out to either one of us and ask any questions you might have!

On this episode of the podcast I answer some frequently asked questions. I usually will ask over on Instagram if anyone has questions, they would like to be answered on the podcast, so if you have questions, go follow me over on Instagram so you can get your questions answered on the next Q an A episode. In this episode I answer questions such as what my school based FBA/BIP process looks like. This is such a great question, because often this can look different from a home or clinic based FBA/BIP. Because I get this question all the time, I decided to create a school based FBA/BIP training for educators to learn about this process so that they can maximize the success of their students. If you are interested in that training, join my email list so you are the first to know when the training launches! Another question I get all the time is how to find a BCBA supervisor in schools. This can be pretty tricky, and while BCBAs are working more and more in schools, there still are not enough of us in schools. A lot of teachers would like to become BCBAs but have a hard time finding supervisors. In the episode I talk about four different ways you can find a school based BCBA supervisor so you can get going on completing your hours and bring quality behavioral instruction to your school and district. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you feel like you are broken record in your classroom and giving the same prompts over and over again. I’ve got you covered, I answer this question and how I would address this problem in your classroom so you can spend more time teaching and less time reminding. The strategy? Well it involves two parts, using visual or gestural prompts and teaching self-monitoring skills to our students, hear all about this in the episode right now! Lastly, I answer the pressing question of what to do if you work in a school or are on a team where staff do not want to use rewards. This can be pretty tricky. I typically recommend talking with your multidisciplinary team and really determining what is best for the student. I also recommend sharing with the team the big picture related to rewards and reinforcement. Our goal is usually to teach the student skills so they contact naturally occurring reinforcement and the rewards that we are using in the beginning of our programming will be faded out over time so that the behavior is maintained by naturally occurring reinforcers. I love answering all of you questions, so make sure you are following me over on Instagram so you see the next time I am doing a Q and A episode! Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram Join my email list

Strategies for disruptive classroom behaviors can be challenging to implement. In this episode I talk about my go to strategies for disruptive classroom behaviors that will help increase behaviors you want to see in your classroom. First I want to start off by just defining what I mean by disruptive behavior. In most instances a disruptive behavior will be defined as anything that interrupts or takes away from the learning of others. The first strategy I typically recommend would be having a conversation with the student about the behavior. During this conversation I would ask the student about the behavior they are engaging in and let them know how the behavior affects others in the classroom. Now I do not in any way mean you should talk with the student and “blame” them for their behavior or for how it affects others, but having a conversation with the student helps you build rapport and can help the student build perspective taking skills. Believe it or not, some students might not realize that their behavior affects others or that it is disruptive in the first place. A conversation and a collaborative plan could go a long way in the classroom. Another strategy would be giving the student a piece of paper, dry erase board, post it, anything they can write on during class. Whenever they have a thought have them write it on the document and make time for them to share those thoughts with you or a peer later. This strategy works best in situations where the disruptive behavior takes the form of shouting out during the class or discussions with peers during the class. Our students want to be heard, but we also need to deliver a lesson to our class. This can be a great way to teach students some self-regulation skills and also can help them determine which information is really important and something they want to share with you or some peers. Proximity is another great strategy for disruptive behavior. When using proximity you are placing yourself close to the student or students. This does a couple of things, first anytime someone comes closer to someone the behaviors usually stop. This is how proximity works. Additionally, when you are close to students you have an easier time prompting them. I typically recommend discrete or quite prompts as no student likes to be called out in class and doing this can lead to a power struggle, and being close by allows for this to happen. Any time you can use a visual or gestural prompt over a verbal prompt, I would do that. At times when we use verbal prompts it invites a verbal response back. Say for instance you redirect a student using a verbal prompt, which then get’s a reply-“I'm not doing that” first, this student is probably embarrassed for being called out. Second this could start a power struggle. Third, your verbal prompt could be further disrupting the environment. So in these situations, a gestural or visual prompt can be very helpful. I know what you might be thinking at this point, what about situations where it seems like the student is engaging in the behavior to cause a disruption or on purpose. In these situations, I would first say that coming at it from the mindset that the student is engaging in the behavior on purpose might cloud our ability to provide strategies and supports to the student. In these situations, I would assess lagging skills and determine where we can provide explicit instruction on replacement behaviors. You can also explore conducting a functional behavior assessment to determine the function of the behavior and teach a functionally alternative replacement behavior. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram

On this episode of the podcast we discuss how to become an adjunct professor. I get to chat with Caitlin from @beltransbehaviorbasics all about how we became adjunct professors and what is like teaching at the college level. In this episode we discuss how we both became adjunct professors and ways you can explore this option as well. Caitlin is teaching at the University she attended and knew someone else teaching there which is how she started teaching her college classes. I emailed several program directors and heard back from two of them and started teaching at those two Universities. If you are trying to become an adjunct professor, we recommend looking at local universities as they often post lecturer or adjunct positions. Another great strategy is to submit an application and email the director of that program to make sure the application is getting to the right place. You can also attend local conferences where Universities have booths and get your face in front of directors or professors in that program. I recommend bringing your resume and cover letter with you so they have it on file. If you are curious as to what being an adjunct professor entails, we chat about that too. One of the most frequent questions I get is how much time does it take week to week to be an adjunct professor? Here is the thing, this will vary depending on a couple of different factors such as how many times you have taught that class, if you prep your content before the course starts, and if you prep activities before the course starts. Caitlin and I are both huge proponents of prepping the content before you course even starts. This way your week to week time commitment surrounds that actual class, answering questions, and grading assignments. This is much easier when you start teaching and have taught the same course a couple of times. In this situation you are often just making adjustments to the content you already have created. Over time you will get better and better at this and the course set up will take less time overall. Another question people often ask is about imposter syndrome. In the episode Caitlin and I chat about how everyone experiences imposter syndrome and if you have a passion for a specific topic and have been practicing for a while, you probably have the ability to teach that topic. We also highly recommend looking at your reviews and taking into account what students say and using that to improve your class. One thing we both recognized this past semester is that our students do not like using zoom break out rooms, they would much rather do activities as a whole class. This is great information to have and can help you adjust your teaching plan. Overall, we both love being adjunct professors and talk about what joys it brings us as educators and why we have been both doing this for over four years at this point. If you have ever been curious as to how to become an adjunct professor or what it looks like this episode is for you! Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram

Prioritizing behavioral interventions can be the key to behavioral success in your classroom. I am going to give you key strategies you can use to assess and prioritize interventions in you classroom. The main goal of our intervention implementation plans should be that we are implementing plans that are feasible for us so that we are carrying out the intervention with fidelity. Assess your classroom support. The very first thing I want you to do is assess you classroom support. To do this, outline your schedule for the day and identify when additional support like paraprofessionals and teaching assistants are in your classroom. If you have students who move in and out of your classroom throughout the day, also note that in your outline. Then you are going to identify what activities occur at the different times of the day. Based on this schedule, you are going to map out some different whole group or small group interventions you can carry out based on the times you have the support necessary to do so. Prioritizing Behavioral Interventions. In order to prioritize behavioral interventions, go through your day and identify all of the supports, strategies, and interventions you provide. Once you have those identified, assess them in terms of skills they teach or how they support the independence of your students. I always prioritize behavioral interventions that focus on these goals. If you cannot identify how the support, strategy, or intervention meets these goals, I would put it on the back burner and bring other interventions into the forefront. Batching your Supports. Another great way to increase feasibility in your classroom is to batch supports. What I mean by this is create a bank of supports you provide that are ready to go at any time. For this, I am talking about any antecedent supports like visual schedules or choice boards and consequence supports like reinforcers. Batching Choices. Provide choice is a very powerful intervention, however, a lot of times I think we think tend to think of choices on the fly which can be difficult to do. Go through your day and identify the different activities you engage in. Then for each type or category of activity identify 2-3 choices you can offer. Use this as a launching place for when you provide individual choices. This reduces the amount of decisions you need to make and gives you a place to start so when a student is not completing a task you know what types of choices you can give and how you can support that students without starting from scratch. Systematizing Your Classroom. As much as you can identify systems and procedures around the tasks and activities you do in your classroom. Then build strong feasible methods for engaging in then. The important thing is you are developing these systems and procedures to increase feasibility within your classroom. If you see another teacher doing something really well, ask them what they procedure is for doing that, this can give you a place to start and then make it your own. If you are just starting out with this, identify two are three activities or tasks related to your job and create a system or procedure around them. That wraps up the strategies I have for you around prioritizing behavioral interventions in your classroom. Again, a lot of this has to do with creating feasibility within your classroom to carry out these interventions and supports. Resources Discussed in the Episode Free Intervention Implementation Checklist Follow me on Instagram

If you are a new teacher, this episode is a must listen. We hear all the time about how important social emotional learning skills are for our students, but I would be willing to bet that you did not have a course in school that taught you how to focus on these skills…In this episode I chat with Rebecca from @missreadysetteach about her tips for new teachers as it relates to building social emotional learning skills. She focuses on her top 3 tips which will be hugely beneficial to you as a new teacher. We talk about emotional intelligence, teaching collaboration, and working check ins into your routine. The best part….she is a high school teacher! That is right! Middle and high school teachers often feel left out of the social emotional learning conversation under the incorrect assumption that our students already have these skills. Well in this episode we chat all about these skills across different grade levels! In terms of emotional intelligence, we chat about how when students are elevated in anyway they probably will not be able to process your lesson. Makes sense right, when we are upset it is really hard for us to process information, problem solve, make decision etc. It is the same thing for our students. It can be really challenging for them to process information or engage in tasks when they are upset or feeling various emotions. But, often times we feel like we have to hit all our teaching targets and we have to have all our students on task and engaged. However, we give you strategies for handling these situations in your classroom that allow the student to build strong skills around emotional intelligence. The life skills the students will learn from being able to tell you that they are upset of having a bad day and processing that emotion will serve them well into adult life. In terms of teaching collaboration amongst our students Rebecca gives great guidance on directly teaching this skill. Kids love working in groups and collaborating usually, but at times they might be lagging some skills that makes this an effective process. You will take away some great strategies like teaching students what it means to contribute to the group and providing roles within a group to encourage collaboration. Lastly, we talk about check ins. This can be such a great way to build relationships with your students. In elementary classrooms we can do check ins during morning meeting and make sure we follow up with students throughout the day. Rebecca talks about how she works check ins into her assessments so she can follow up with students when they are feeling great and when the need extra support. Believe me when I say this, this will be a game changer when it comes to relationships. Relationships with our students are built over time, check ins are a great way to build these relationships. When it comes to being a new teacher, teaching social emotional learning skills can be daunting. If you take these strategies, you will have a great starting point to focus on in your classroom. Gone are the days of feeling so overwhelmed with behaviors and social emotional learning skill as a new teacher. If you are looking for more strategies to put in place as a new teacher, definitely subscribe to Rebecca’s podcast Ready Set Teach for tips one all things related to being a new teacher! Also, make sure you check out the free guide I have for teacher related to behavioral interventions. I give you 20 pages worth of behavioral interventions with descriptions and examples across the grade levels. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram

Work refusal behaviors can be challenging to intervene upon. There can be several different reasons why students might be refusing to complete work or avoiding work in general. With all behavioral interventions we want to focus on addressing the behavior across the antecedent, behavior teaching, and consequence domains. Antecedent Strategies. First, we can modify the assignment or task based on the skill area. If this is an area of weakness we can modify the task so the student can be successful with the assignment. If this is an area of strength we can also modify it so the student can be engaged and successful with the assignment. Modes of Completion. We can provide alternative assignments or alternative modes of completion. I often provide choices to students about how they want to complete the task. Can they record a response instead of writing out their answers? Can they answer all the questions on a white board and someone else transfer them to a hard copy? Can they work with a peer? Breaking Down Tasks. Breaking down the task into micro steps or into a to do list format can be very helpful. This can give students clear steps for each aspect of the task. I try and make these steps as small as possible. Behavioral Momentum. With this strategy, we start with tasks we know the student can complete and then move onto more challenging tasks. This builds momentum towards the behavior we want to see by building on success. For example, say you are doing a math activity, I might start with problems the student has already completed successfully before moving onto more challenging or new problems. Choices. I challenge us to go beyond the do you want to write with a pencil or pen choice and move into meaningful choices. For example, do you want to complete the task alone or with a partner? Would you like to complete 5 or 10 problems? Would you like me to write the sentence or would you like to write the sentence? These choices are more meaningful and can build stamina towards work completion. Behavior Teaching Strategies. I would focus on skill building in areas of weakness if there are any. Small group tier 2 or intensive tier 3 interventions should be provided for students struggling with a content area. Executive functioning plays a large part in work completion, therefore building all skills related to executive functioning is also a great idea. Consequence Strategies. If students are completing work and task that they previously refused I usually would default to providing students with some sort of break. Therefore, they were engaging in other behaviors before that allowed them to escape a task, now they are engaging in work and we are reinforcing that with a break. We are now building the contingency of I complete work I get a break instead of I engage in behaviors and escape the task. The student can engage in preferred activities during their break. We have to recognize that we cannot force a student to engage with a task, in fact we cannot force them to do anything. Therefore, the most important thing to focus on are the antecedent and behavior teaching strategies. These may take some time to work well, and we need to be patient. What I always hesitate to do is take something away. Often if a student is not engaging in a task they need support with skills as opposed to take something like recess or choice time away. Again, strategies for work refusal behaviors can be complex, and often times we need to attempt several of these strategies in combination to maximize student success. Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram

We know that burnout in the field of education is real. We know that there are systemic structures that lead to burnout amongst teachers, specifically special education teachers. However, there are educators that truly enjoy their job and enjoy their life as an educator. In this episode I chat with Braelan from @thatspecialeducator about how we enjoy our life as educators. This is part one two a two part series, part two is over on Braelan’s podcast That Special Educator so make sure you listen to both parts. This is not your typical make sure you mediate and journal as a form of self-care (not that those are bad, love some good reflecting time) podcast episode. In this episode we ditch the script and just chat about our lives and what we do as educators to make sure we continue to love the job we go to each morning. One of the points we focus on throughout part one is that we are more than just educators. Yes, being and educator is part of our identity but we do not let that be the ONLY part of our identity. We talk about how we have passions outside of school that bring us enjoyment and help us keep our work life at work and our personal life at home. For example, at work I have a group of friends that I enjoy chatting with, but we do not chat about work. We chat about our lives and hobbies and what is going on in the world. It can turn into a negativity game or a “who has it the worst” contest sometimes when the focus is just on work. If I have one recommendation it would be to find your friends in your building that you can eat lunch with a couple of times per week and just chat about life. Also, if you create strong systems and procedures in your classroom-you will be able to manage your time so you do not have to stay late every day. I have never stayed late because of the work I have to do and I never work on the weekend. When I was in grad school and getting my PhD I had 3-4 jobs at a time while taking a full class load. This forced me to develop strong systems and procedures for getting everything in my life done and still having time to enjoy the things I wanted to enjoy. I knew when I started my job this was something I needed to focus on or I would become overwhelmed. This truly helps me enjoy my life as an educator. Look to other people in your building for their systems and procedures if you see that they are doing things really well in an area. It probably took them a while to develop that system and I am sure they would be happy to share it with you. I am talking about systems around collecting data, parent communication, and scheduling all the meetings. If you feel like you are in a constant state of just treading water, this is probably something that will be hugely beneficial and can really help you enjoy your life as an educator. Lastly, stop playing the comparison game. People are looking to you for how you do things in your classroom just like you are looking to them. Instead of comparing yourself to the teacher next door, collaborate! This will help you increase your self-confidence as an educator and really enjoy the work you do. Enjoying your life as an educator does not have to be this far off goal that only a small percentage of teacher achieve. We all can truly enjoy our jobs. You just listened (or read) our strategies, use these as a launching point and build some of your own. We need as many amazing teachers as we can get and that includes you! So start enjoying education and stick around for a long time! Make sure you go listen to part to about we enjoy being an educator outside of school! Resources Discussed in this Episode Free Behavior Intervention Guide Follow me on Instagram

If you are in pursuit of your BCBA, you probably are very familiar with the hour requirement. If you are thinking about getting your BCBA getting BCBA practicum hours is part of the requirement towards your BCBA that you are going to want to plan for. This process can be a little confusing (and by a little, I mean I got 1,500 hours and supervised 20+ teachers as they got their hours and I still reference the handbook for a guidance!). In this episode I chat with Nicole from @adaptationstation. She is a former special education teacher turned BCBA in training. She is currently in the thick of it getting her BCBA hours and has some strategies for you in terms of what you can do to get your hours. If you are a teacher who is interested in getting your BCBA this episode is definitely for you. Not only do we talk about hours we talk about Nicole’s decision to become a full time BCBA in training and her advice for getting your hours in the classroom setting. If you are a current teacher, it is possible to get your hours in the classroom you teach in. I highly recommend finding a BCBA that can come in your classroom and help you identify how you could get your hours. This can be very helpful in terms of determining which aspects of your job count towards hours (it is more than you might think) and how you can feasibly track the tasks that you are engaging in to get your hours. One aspect of getting your hours is finding a supervisor. I will not sugar coat it, this can be harder to do in the school setting. Yes, there are more BCBAs in the schools, however, they are not everywhere and they may not be in a school you work in. I typically recommend contacting a local education agency to see if they employ a BCBA in the county that could possibly supervise you. Since BCBAs often have multiple buildings that they work in they may say that they could supervise you for a portion of your hours. Initially, this might sound like a not so great situation, however, this is immensely helpful believe me. You can get guidance from a BCBA on school based ABA which can look very different than clinic based ABA and you can have an additional opportunity to gain hours through another supervisor adding an additional perspective about behavior change. Having more than one supervisor can be highly beneficial to you and your experience during your hours. If you do need an additional supervisor, a lot of times agencies will provide supervision if you pick up some clients with them. If you can swing 5-10 hours a week outside of your teaching job, this can be huge. You will get to learn principles of ABA that you might not be applying each and every day in your teaching job. One big barrier to getting your BCBA can be the cost of supervision, with these two strategies you may be able to get your supervision for free or at a reduced cost. I highly recommend assessing your options for getting your BCBA supervision hours so you can make an informed and financially sound decision. In this episode Nicole talks about how she gets her hours at a clinic and some opportunities for hours in the classroom as well. These strategies for getting your BCBA hours can really help you plan out your path to getting that credential. I know this can be a very daunting process, as someone who got their BCaBA and BCBA and assisted 20+ teachers in getting their certification…I know how confusing and overwhelming it can be. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast so you are notified whenever I release an episode about getting your BCBA so we can go through the process together! Resources Discussed in the Episode Free Intervention Implementation Checklist Follow me on Instagram