This past week the sports world was in full tilt.
We had Super Bowl Sunday plus a full slate of college and professional
basketball games followed immediately by college football’s National
Signing Day. For a sports fan, it is a great time of the year. But let me tell you about the best game I saw all weekend.
My
youngest daughter, 9 year old Abbie, plays Upwards basketball. Upwards
is a terrific place to learn the skills of basketball. All of the kids
wear wristbands signifying their level of skill and they have to guard
or be guarded by a player of a similar skill set. The kids are taught to
love the game and try to win but it isn’t all about 8 and 9 year olds
winning the game. It is about fair play and being a good teammate and learning to love the competition of athletics.
As I begin this story let me preface it with this:
I don’t believe that every kid should get every trophy. When we water down competition we water down incentives.
One of the great lessons that sports teaches our kids is that there
will be times in life when we lose. Bouncing back from a loss is a much
more important lesson than actually winning. There should be an MVP and
there should be an All Star and there should be a winning and losing
team.
Losing is real and our kids need to learn how to deal with a loss and try to get better.
OK. I will climb off my soap box now and back to the story…
I am the coach of my daughter’s Upwards
team – the Upwards Bears. We have a cool little yell where we slap hands
and count to 3 and then everyone yells “Go Bears†and growls. It is actually quite fun to watch little angel faced boys and girls growling before the game.
My Abbie is a natural athlete and the
leader of our team. She is tall and athletic and skills come very easy
to her. She was the leading scorer on her soccer team and is the leading
scorer and rebounder on her basketball team. She also one of the
leaders in blocked shots, rebounds, and steals. It just comes pretty
easy to her and when you couple that with the fact that she loves to
practice and she tries to emulate her older sister who is a varsity
player, she is just a good player.
This past Saturday we were playing a team that was clearly outmatched.
Even though you try to match skill sets,
the kids on the Bears were just more comfortable playing together and
were much more confident. We jumped out to a pretty big lead early in
the game and it was obvious that the other kids were getting frustrated.
Our kids just weren’t missing and the other team couldn’t hit a shot.
At halftime I told our kids that they
needed to pass the ball 3 times before they took a shot. I reminded them
that we had practiced passing because a good pass is worth a lot more
than a bad shot. This was a way to let them keep playing without just running up and down the floor and running the score up too high.
The Bears took to the court and their passes were crisp and they made
sure there were at least 3 passes before the shot. But the shots kept
going in.
Now as a coach I am in a quandary.
I only had 6 players that day because some were out sick so I couldn’t sub in the “B†team. I also couldn’t tell our kids to not try because that flies in the face of what they are supposed to be out there doing.
Instead I called them over and told them I wanted them to pass the ball
at least 5 times before shooting, to take good shots and make them, to
play aggressive but clean defense, and to try. But I also wanted them to cheer on the other team and encourage them. Make them work for the ball but if they stole it tell them good job. If they made a shot give them a high five.
I told them it was time to practice being a great sport and to encourage these kids…
and to recognize and appreciate that the other team had not quit.
We went out for the last quarter with a big lead.
What I watched over the next 6 minutes was the best sporting event of the weekend.
I watched 8 and 9 year old kids playing and trying hard but they were
also working their best at being great sports. I watched a little girl
from the other team who had been frustrated beam with pride when she
finally made a shot and my kids ran over to her and high fived her. I
watched my kids yelling “You can do it†to the other team when their
players were not wanting to take a chance at missing another shot.
I even watched my little girl, my ultra-competitive little girl, clap
for the boy who was guarding her when he stole the ball from her and
called timeout. It was a good play and she told him so. Then I watched
the best play. Right after the timeout my daughter stole the ball back
from the little boy and scored and he immediately told her good job. That’s sportsmanship. They both hustled they both tried and they both did their best. And they did it with grace.
Don’t get me wrong. Neither team gave the other any free passes. There was no let down or feeling sorry for anyone. Instead,
we reminded each other that this was a competitive game and we were
there to compete but we were also there to be good sports.
I love college football. I am not a huge
fan of professional football because it is a little to mercenary for
me. I love the pageantry and the pride that goes with playing for your
school. As I watched these little kids play a game that no one
outside of the First Baptist Church gymnasium would ever know about high
five each other and encourage each other and still play with heart and
pride I thought, this is how it is supposed to be.
Yes we won. I couldn’t even tell you the final score but it wasn’t close. But
the biggest winners in that game were the kids who made a new friend
and saw the value in lifting each other up while still giving each other
their greatest compliment which was trying their best. Trash-talking and being brash and arrogant has taken a center stage in a lot of sporting venues.
I
wonder how many more people would watch the game and take pride in their
teams if it were played at a very high level by people who let their
effort and their skills talk instead of their mouth. I know for the Upwards Bears they left the court proud and even in defeat, so did the other team.
We have spent a good deal of our Thursday conversations talking about where behaviors come from, the purpose they serve, how our experiences play a role in our choices, and last week we talked about the relevancy of antecedent events. This week we need to spend a little bit of time talking about the difference between organic and acquired behavioral problems.Â
I am guessing that there are some folks who are scratching their head right now wondering what in the world an organic behavior is and how and why it matters whether it is different than an acquired behavior. The most straight-forward way of looking at it is that:
A behavior that is caused or exacerbated by a medical, physical, or physiological condition is an organic behavior.
A behavior that is the result of circumstance and experiences is an acquired behavior.
It is important to understand the difference but it is just as important to know that behaviors still need to be addressed.
Let’s start with organic behaviors.
There are a lot of diagnosis that a lot of folks are both familiar with and understand. ADHD is a common diagnosis with a treatment that seems counter-intuitive. To medically treat a hyperactive child with true ADHD you give the child a stimulant. Doesn’t seem to make sense does it? But this is why it is important to know and understand the difference between a behavior that is either caused or made worse by physical issues and those that are the result of experience alone.
If a child truly has ADHD then they have pathways in their brains called dendrites that have signal transfer points called synapses and some of these synapses are not mature. These synapses do not send and receive signals as efficiently and effectively as they should. The treatment is to give a stimulant so that the synapses have a better capability of firing with greater strength and rapidity. The end result is that the stimulant creates greater connectivity in the brain which in turn makes thinking and rationalizing and discerning easier which in turn slows down the hyper child. If you gave a stimulant to a child that did not have ADHD it would have the opposite effect and would cause greater hyperactivity because of overstimulation.
Acquired behaviors are those that do not have an underlying physical cause but instead are acquired through experience and circumstance. For example, a child’s hyperactivity can be caused by being overstimulated with caffeine or because he is really excited about something. You can also have kids whose parents simply don’t tell them “no†and therefore acting hyper and goofy is just part of what they do.
So the bottom line is…
There are behavioral issues that have a physical underlying cause/exacerbation point and there are other behaviors that are the byproduct of life. Does this mean that the kids who have a physical reason for behavioral issues should get a free pass or that their behaviors shouldn’t be scrutinized as closely? Absolutely not. It simply means we need to make sure we are getting kids the help and the evaluation’s they need and once we know the platform we are working from we need to start changing behaviors.
It is important to know and understand everything we can know and understand but at the end of the day if a student is disruptive or hyper or surly or non-communicative then you have a problem. The real issue comes when a physical underlying cause is either treated or ruled out and the behavior persists. This means that the behavior is part of the kid’s knowledge base and that it has to be replaced with a better, more appropriate behavior. Kids who have a diagnosed condition should be treated and should be given every opportunity to overcome their diagnosis but their diagnosis cannot be an excuse for inappropriate or aberrant behavior.
So, now that we agree that diagnoses don’t equal a free pass…
let’s start talking about how to change behaviors.
Over the past week every time I turned on the radio or television I heard about Valentine’s Day. I kept hearing that if you really loved your wife then she needed flowers and chocolates and maybe even diamonds. Then I heard that if you really loved your kids they needed new toys and clothes and maybe even a new phone. If an alien landed on this planet last week and all he knew of our civilization was what he heard in advertisements he would think that this is a very expensive and shallow place to live. He would think that relationships are built on stuff – really expensive stuff.
Friday was Valentine’s Day and like a good husband I bought my wife chocolate covered strawberries – her favorite. But unlike any other Valentine’s Day, my wife and I weren’t going to go to dinner or to a movie or out for a romantic evening. Instead, my wife was taking my daughter to basketball practice and then to dinner with my daughter’s friends while I took my son and 7 of his buddies along with my youngest daughter to the go-cart track for the beginning of my son’s birthday slumber party. I know at some point late in the evening my wife and I were in the same room for an hour or two but there were at least 10 kids at all times in the room with us – most often between us.
Now you might hear all of this and think that we are being neglectful of each other or you might think that we needed to make time to get away. Maybe you are right. But here is another way of thinking about it:
My oldest daughter is in her junior year of high school and in the back of our minds is this huge ticking clock counting down the minutes until she moves away to go to college. This isn’t a countdown to a glorious event for us. My heart already aches when I think about not sitting with Meg at dinner or following her around the state to basketball games or taking her and her friends to church devos or the movies.
My son just turned 14 and he wanted to race go-carts with his buddies. Daddy was the chauffer this year, not one of the buddies. He is about to enter high school and has started spiking his hair with mousse and working out and wearing enough cologne to gag a musk ox. I am worried that if I turn around he will be old enough to drive and will be on his own.
My little one is 9. She isn’t that little any more. Now I will admit that I took great joy in having a conversation about the Minions from “Despicable Me’ with her this morning. We had a thorough and earnest debate over which Minion we would welcome into our home to live with us if they knocked on our door. I love those conversations and those moments of innocence. I love the connection with the thoughts of a child and the innocence of pure unfiltered love.
My wife and I finally laid down about 2:30 in the morning of Valentines. Needless to say there was not hint of a romantic thought coming from either of us. Instead Sylvia sleepily told me about Meg’s practice and how she took a group of girls to dinner and they laughed and she listened to them talk about boys and their dreams of the future. She told me about how they laughed and giggled and she said she even joined in and felt like a kid again.
I told Sylvia about playing “Guitar Hero†at the go-cart track with my little Abbie and how I couldn’t keep the beat to “Rock and Roll All Night†despite the fact I grew up listening to it. I told her about Hunter racing the go-carts and Abbie climbing the rock wall and how happy they were. We then talked about the fact that 7, 14 year old boys were asleep in our front room and how the day would begin very early the next morning.
I kissed her goodnight and thought about the day.I realized how precious few Valentine’s Day moments there are left with My Meg and Hunter and Abbie. I looked at my sleeping wife. Then I realized – this is what a day of love is supposed to be about. This is a good day.
Over the past several weeks we have been discussing what a behavior is and where behaviors come from. We have even talked a little about the difficulties of recording and measuring and reporting behavioral incidents. Now let’s start talking about the elements that will help us change behaviors. To begin this discussion we have to start with the focal point of behavior change – the function the behavior serves.
Cause and function of behaviors are two different aspects of behavior.
They are not interchangeable. The cause represents the issues we have been discussing previously – experiences, medical conditions, familial background etc. The function is the purpose of the behavior. Is it attention seeking, is it anger coping, is it deflection etc. Cause is where the behavior comes from and function is the purpose the behavior serves.
The function a behavior serves is one of the absolute key elements in creating
A CHANGE OPPORTUNITY.
It is also the element that can be the trickiest to understand, determine, measure, and maintain. Let’s think about the function for a minute. It sounds simple enough. Why is this person acting the way they are acting, what is the benefit, and thereforewhat purpose is the behavior serving? It would seem straightforward enough. Then why do we get it wrong so often?
Think about this example:
Mrs. Wright teaches 5th grade.
She has a class of 23 boys & girls from all walks of life.
HER CLASSROOM LOOKS LIKE MOST OTHERS.
She has wealthy kids and poor kids, smart kids and kids who are struggling. She has kids who are quiet and attentive and she has kids who don’t comprehend the meaning of “raise your hand†and “stop talkingâ€. Mrs. Wright has been tasked with providing small groups for kids in her class who are giving her problems behaviorally. She has decided that she is going to use an anger management curriculum and have a small group for kids who have been fighting and not getting along on the playground. Mrs. Wright knows just who she wants in her group. She wants Roderick – he can’t seem to make it through the day without getting into a shouting or shoving match with someone. She wants Felipe because he is constantly getting upset and offended by the other kids in class and he has even gotten physical a couple of times. She wants Brooke because she is always angry. She comes to class mad and just gets angrier as the day goes on. She is a short fuse just waiting to blow. Finally, she wants Paul. Paul isn’t an aggressive kid but he has been put into detention or ISS at least 4 times for fighting. These are the kids Mrs. Wright has chosen for her anger management small group. They have all been in fights, they have all had behavioral referrals for fighting or taking ugly to each other, and they all have problems getting along with other kids. It makes perfect sense that this is the anger management group, right?
Let’s look a little closer at Mrs. Wright’s decisions on the kids she has chosen.
Anger is a pretty easy emotion to identify and define and the kids she has chosen have all been subject to discipline because of anger related issues – fighting and talking ugly and being mean etc. But there is a problem with this approach. You see, when you use the end result, in this case anger and aggression, as the target for the behavior change then you are treating the symptom but you are not addressing the cause.
Let’s not take it for granted that the kids we know possess common sense. Let’s not assume they have put two and two together. Using the same logic, wouldn’t it make sense that if a student gets detention for fighting then he wouldn’t fight again? But they do. This is because we continue to treat the symptom, not the cause.
Let’s take a closer look at Mrs. Wright’s group:
Roderick is a bully. He is constantly pushing other kids and calling them names and trying to assert himself as the one in charge. He has been in trouble many times. He definitely needs anger control training. However, Roderick is also really hurting right now because his father left home a couple of months ago. Roderick is angry at the world and he is lashing out at everyone but it is because he is hurting and missing his father. Even though he acts tough his self-esteem is shattered and he uses the tough façade to hide the fact that he feels absolutely rejected. He is trying his best to be cold and non-caring but when he gets home and looks back on his day he feels even worse about himself.
Felipe is a first generation citizen. Felipe’s parents immigrated here right before he was born and they still struggle with language barriers. Felipe’s folks speak Spanish at home and even though he has been in school since kindergarten, English is not Felipe’s first language. He gets frustrated in class and even more frustrated on the playground because he cannot communicate effectively and he doesn’t always understand what other people are saying to him. Some days he gets so frustrated that he can’t help himself and he ends up pushing someone.
Brooke is a spoiled brat. She is never told no by her parents and she gets anything and everything she wants. She has no comprehension that other people might not want exactly what she wants because her parents foster a world that focuses exclusively on her. She can’t get along with the other kids and ends up fighting with them because if they don’t do exactly what she wants then she is sure they are trying to be mean to her.
Paul has been in a lot of fights but he has never started any of them. Roderick is the class bully but Paul is the class target. He is unsure of himself and the only thing he is sure of is that no one likes him. He doesn’t have nice clothes and sometimes he comes to school without breakfast. Paul doesn’t want to fight. In fact, Paul wishes that he could somehow be invisible and people wouldn’t even know he was there. He fights because it is hard to always feel bad about yourself.
Here are four kids that get into fights and therefore 4 kids who need an anger management small group. Yes, they will learn some good coping skills in a small group and it will help. But it won’t address the cause of the behaviors and therefore the functions the behaviors serve.
Roderick is angry because his father left and his self-esteem is shattered.Teaching him to calm down will help but it won’t help him adjust to his new life circumstances and it won’t teach him self-worth.
Felipe gets into scrapes with other kids out of frustration. Teaching him to control those frustrations will help but true behavior change will only come when he begins to understand how to better communicate with other people.
Brooke stays in trouble because she is self absorbed.Teaching her coping techniques for calming down will help but she isn’t going to change until she learns the reality of social structure.
Paul doesn’t get along because he doesn’t feel he belongs. Teaching him to recognize anger is great but it won’t change the function his fighting serves. He fights out of frustration and out of lack of self concept. That won’t change until Paul learns how to value himself and how to belong to a group.
You see, it is easy to look at behaviors and think about treating the behavior…
But what is the cause of the behavior and just as importantly, what function does that behavior serve? Roderick, Felipe, Brooke, and Paul will all benefit from an anger management small group but it isn’t going to change the reason they are having anger problems. This is why it is so critical to understand the functions of behaviors and the only way to do that is to understand the personal, social, emotional, and behavioral strengths and deficits for your students and the way those deficits come together to create behaviors. How do you do that? We will get to that soon.
Just remember that applying the skin cream to a sunburn is important but until you teach them to apply sunscreen the burns will continue.
I just closed my eyes and now it is time to start all over again. The morning shower is about the only time I am going to have today with a little silence. I have found myself standing under the water a little longer each day as the school year is passing. That moment of peace is my chance to brace for the day. The problem is that in my moment of peace I can’t take my mind off of my kids who are struggling. I can’t stop thinking about the things I should have done to make learning a little easier. Wait, I have to clear my mind. I just need 5 minutes for me. The rest of the day can be for the kids.
I get to my classroom early in hopes that being extra organized may make the day a little easier and make my teaching time more effective. Wouldn’t you know it, there is a Mom waiting by my door wanting me to explain why her little angel was in trouble yesterday when all he was doing was “trying to express himselfâ€. I spend 5 minutes acknowledging that self expression is important and I tried my best to get her to understand that there is a time for self-expression and there is a time to sit and listen. I’m not sure if I got through to her or not. I did let her know that the rules are the rules and learning to keep the rules is part of learning. It never ceases to amaze me that parents somehow see the rules as oppressive rather than educational. Oh well I…..oh no, the bell just rang. So much for being extra organized today.
There was a movie in the 70’s called “The Swarm”. That is what the hallway and my room turns into. There are bodies everywhere and they are all talking and buzzing around at a speed I can’t quite keep up with. The day has begun. “Everyone sit down and get your books out”, the tug of war between my will and 20 kids’ desire to talk and have fun and seemingly do anything but learn has begun.
As the morning progresses, I work my way through a group reading, taking special care to listen closely to little Mykele because he has really struggled with reading chapter books. He makes it most of the way through his paragraph but tears start to form as he struggles with the last sentence. I find myself in full protective mode and jumping to his aid and nursing him through the last sentence. I am not sure whose relief was greater when his turn was over, his or mine.
From there we were onto math and my stomach was tied in knots as I called on little Karen to go to the board and complete the problem. I wanted to cheer for her and I so wanted to give her hints to complete it. Come on Karen, you can do it! Please let her do it!! She did it! I want to high five her so bad but class control dictates a smile and a pat on the head instead. I feel like I just conquered Mt. Kilimanjaro.
This is the moment I live for – the moment when the light comes on for a child and suddenly they understand and suddenly they have learned.
I just changed this child’s life and if I were any more proud of her I would break down in tears. What a moment. Now it is back to the board and Billy is struggling.
It is so hard getting the kids to calm down after lunch.
It takes me a solid 10 minutes getting them to sit down and get back into the class mindset. Charlie and Zach just won’t hush. They couldn’t keep their hands to themselves at lunch and I ended up eating half my lunch and throwing the rest in the trash thanks to the boys deciding that French-fries can double as missiles in their game of table commando. Why am I not skinnier??
Afternoons are so much harder than mornings.
I am tired. I feel like I have been wrestling a 34 armed wriggling, giggling, smelly animal. The kids are getting tired and they are ready to run. Sitting down at a desk and reading goes against every instinct and urge they have. The afternoons are just harder. It feels like I am pushing a wet noodle up a hill trying to get the kids to focus. I love science but this afternoon even I can’t find my enthusiasm for rock formations. I am trying because I know if I show the kids that I am not enthused about learning this then there is no way they will be. It is so hard maintain abject enthusiasm all day. The afternoons are so much harder.
I give up. They won’t sit down and they won’t be quiet. There are going to be some unhappy moms and kids tonight because behavior slips are going out. Charlie and Zach and Lakarsha are shoe-ins for getting a slip. The whole class is watching them instead of me and I feel like standing on the desk and screaming “Just pay attention and we can be done and go home!!†But I don’t. Nobody wants to pay attention and I am tired. I can’t find my enthusiasm for rocks either. The afternoons are just harder.
One and a half hours to go.
My lesson planner shows that I am behind schedule. I am behind because I keep getting interrupted by kids not listening and not paying attention and wanting to go to the bathroom. It feels like I am investing my time in quick sand.
I take a rare break and sit at my desk and try to collect my thoughts. I have now been on my feet for nearly 6 hours. I have answered questions and reminded kids to keep their hands to themselves and told kids to be quiet so often that I feel I need a flashing “Be Quiet†neon sign in the back of the room.
I then remember something I heard in staff development session. A speaker once charged us with thinking about the amount of time we spend telling kids to sit down and be quiet and pay attention. His question was:“What if we reinvested that redirection time and turned it into proactive lessons on how to sit down and be quiet and paying attention?” When I first heard him say this my only thought was “Yeah, good luck with that when you have 20 kids constantly needing something and wanting to be doing anything but the lesson you are teachingâ€. But maybe that was the point.
School is about academics but the payoff for academics is down the road. There really isn’t an immediate gratification for learning about math and science and reading and writing. Sure you get those moments of pure gold when little ones like Karen suddenly get it. But those are the moments of the day. The hours of the day are spent redirecting the kids’ thoughts back to learning.
OK… I’m going to spend 15 minutes working with my kids on calming down and being quiet.
I’m not going to wait until I hit my boiling point, I am just going to take the time and work on it. I have a friend that teaches in a school that is working on social and emotional development and she shared a lesson with me one time that focused on getting kids to calm down after transitions by using signals. I soon find myself teaching the kids our own special class signals for quieting down and sitting down.
The kids really get into it because I tell them that these are going to be our special and secret signals. We have a song for clean up time. We have a bell on my desk that is rung when it is time to sit down. We have double clap when it is time to be quiet. The kids voted on these signals and we practiced them several times. We even practiced being out of our seats and getting back into our seats when they heard the bell. They really got into it because it was like having their own secret handshake. And when one of the kids didn’t snap into place the other kids reminded them to do so before I could. They had taken ownership in these ideas and they wanted to see them work.
Little Karen had her “ah-ha†moment this morning. I had mine this afternoon.
The 15 minutes I invested felt like I had just hit the jackpot on the slot machine. The kids learned a lesson but the pay-off was as good for me as it was for them. I even appointed room captains to be in charge of the bell and the clap and the song. They each appointed a co-captain for each table. They thought it was so cool. Now sitting down and being quiet and paying attention are not on any of our tests but I can’t get them ready for the test if they aren’t sitting down and being quiet and paying attention.
The final bell rings and the swarms descends back into the hallway.
I take a deep breath and look at the mountain of papers on my desk. I only have 20 kid’s papers in math and science to grade, get 20 packets ready for tomorrow, write my Friday letter for the parents, make sure everyone’s permission slip for next week’s field trip is in place, attend my afternoon staff meeting, and then go home and be a parent and a spouse.
The whirlwind begins to slow down when my head hits the pillow.
I can’t hardly keep my eyes open and I think that there must surely be an easier way to make a living. Then my thoughts drift back to little Karen and I remember the exact moment when the light went on for her and she figured out how to do the problem. I remember the joy that came across her face and the pride that swelled in me.
That is my moment. That is the reason I will do it all over again tomorrow.
 My eyes are heavy but I know why I am a teacher.
The social and emotional development program referenced above is Leaps. Leaps has over 240 social, emotional and behavioral lesson plans along with classroom, small group, and individual assessments. It’s not reading writing and arithmetic but it is amazing how much easier those are to teach when the class is learning to behave! You can get some free Leaps lesson plans on our website – click here to view. There are also all kinds of videos and papers about how to make your class more manageable.
