Kaylie: What To Do When Things Go Wrong

It was before 8 a.m. on Tuesday. My students were signing the daily sign-in sheet, completing the morning work assignment on the board, eating breakfast, looking at library books, and, of course, some were just milling around the room visiting. One of the last buses arrived, and three of my students entered the room. I was at my desk glancing at an IEP needing revision soon when I hear words that sound worse than nails on a chalkboard to me: “I haven’t had my medicine today! I’ll probably be a little rowdy!”

Let me start by saying that I am in no way against behavioral medication and truly believe that it helps a number of kids be successful. I don’t think it should be the first behavioral intervention, however, and find it very upsetting when some of my students believe they are not responsible for their own behavior after missing medication. Needless to say, this is not the first time I’ve had a student give me the old “I can’t help it; I haven’t had my medicine!” spiel. It is true that not taking medications can affect behavior, but I am a firm believer that students must still learn to make good choices.   

So, attempting to start the day off on the right foot, I called my student up to count his earned money from the previous day in our token economy behavior system, which we do every morning. While he had my one-on-one, undivided attention, I talked to him about the positive and appropriate behaviors I was confident he would exhibit that day. He immediately replied with his “no medication” story and even elaborated on all the disabilities he has that prevent him from following the class expectations and being successful at school that day. I responded with my standard and predictable response: “I understand that, but you are in control of your own behavior.” 

Unfortunately, my student’s behavior throughout the day was just as he predicted it would be. There was yelling out in class without a raised hand and acknowledgement from the teacher. There were inappropriate conversation topics, including firearms, violence, and how cool it would be to join a gang. There was verbal and physical aggression. There was cursing. There was continued and repeated non-compliance.

After lunch, my student’s behavior had reached a point of instability that caused me to be concerned for my other students’ safety. Therefore, I enacted the behavior plan developed by the assistant principal and behavior specialist that I am to follow in such situations. This plan was developed after several of my previous students had been suspended for weapon offenses last year and other students began to misbehave in attempts to get sent home. This plan was meant to prevent these escape-motivated behaviors from occurring.

 According to the plan, I am to remove my students from the classroom to a small conference room adjacent to the library for an in-school suspension (ISS) period. I take an amount of work that must be completed and a visual timer to designate how long the ISS period will last. Per the plan, I instructed my student to have a seat and complete the assigned work by the time the timer went off, and we would return to class after the ISS period was over. I also planned to have a debriefing time with the student to discuss his choices and the consequences of those choices afterward.

This particular ISS period went anything but according to plan. My student appeared to be detached and unconcerned with the consequences of any of his actions. Tables and chairs were shoved and tumbled. Tables and walls were scribbled with pencil. Curse words were said. Threats were made. Windows were pounded. Walls were literally climbed. I was overwhelmed and in need of wisdom to do the best thing in this very unstable situation. I tried ignoring all inappropriate behavior. I attempted to divert my student’s attention to helping me do tasks, which he enjoys, or starting conversations of interest to him. We talked about rules he would have in his classroom if he was a teacher and how he would handle misbehavior. There would be moments of calm, and then I would lose him again. We were in ISS for two hours. 

It was mentally and emotionally draining. I tried everything I knew to keep my student calm and safe. Toward the end, my student was finally sitting down and having a mature conversation with me about completing the work he was assigned during ISS at home that night. He was just gathering it up when his mother arrived to take him home. She immediately informed me about his missed medication. I simply gave her a brief explanation about what had happened, fetched my student’s binder and coat from the classroom, and said goodbye to them both.

Experiences like this one leave me so full of questions. I wonder what I could and should have done to prevent this. I wonder what strategies would have made my student successful that day. I wonder if the ISS behavior plan is appropriate. I wonder if I helped or hurt my student emotionally. 

Have you had a similar experience? One of your students makes repeated poor choices and you’re left to decide and manage how it’s handled. How did you deal with the situation? What was and wasn’t successful? What do I need to do differently?

Comments

[Heather]

Kaylie,
I first want to say that I think you handled the situation very well. Two hours is a long time and I'm very impressed with how strong and patient you were. I have somewhat of a similar situation like yours during my student teaching. The student I work with in 5th grade continues to use his SPED classification as an excuse. And more then the student, his parent always believes his inappropriate behaviors has to do with his disability. Now, I'm not saying this isn't the case but after excuses and excuses I find it a little hard to believe that everything he refuses to do has to do because of his classification. Even after many and many behavioral interventions have been put into place. Just last week he filled up his reward card which means he got to play for 15 minutes on the iPad. He had a really good week and was doing well because he knew he was so close to getting the reward he was working for. But the next day he found out his reward card empty and he had to start all over. He had one of the biggest melt downs. He was in his mainstreamed classroom and was enabling other students to learn. So we pulled him and had him stay in the SPED room for the rest of the day. He continued to act up all day and like you, we just tried to ignore him and not give him the attention he wanted. A number of times we calmly tried to talk to him and explain but whenever we tried this he would get louder and louder. The tough part about this whole thing was when we contacted his mother. She simply denied everything we said and made up excuse after excuse. I'm still stumped on what I should do next but I continue to work with him and try new things.
Thank you for sharing your story and giving me some more ideas on how I might handle situations like that. Thank you!

[Andrew]

Hi Kaylie,
It sounds like you did a great job managing the situation. I have heard that ISS is the best way to deal with behaviors like that. The only thing I would be concerned with is your other students. If you are stuck spending the day with this student, it seems like your other students who are acting appropriately are missing out on your teaching. It seems like your assistant principal should be in charge of the ISS. This would possibly help manage the students behavior a little more too, seeing as it would be someone he wasn't as familiar with. Thank you for the post.

[Liz]

Kaylie,
It sounds to me that you did an excellent job handling the situation. This student needs a good lesson on how their behavior is theirs and theirs alone and that they need to learn that if they don't take their meds they are still expected to behave respectively. I understand that medication is a big help in behavior management but I also don't think lack of medication is an excuse for misbehavior.

[Nick]

Kaylie- I feel you did a great job witht he situation you were dealt with your student. I will be starting my student teaching next semester and hope that I can develop some strategies that can assist me in situations like this, if they may arrise. In the end, the child was safe, which is a positive. Thanks for sharing.

[Emma]

Kaylie,
I think that the way you handled the situation was excellent. You were very lucky that there was a plan in place for when things like this happen. My only suggestion is to give him a physical sensory break. Whether that's jumping on a trampoline or talking with a PE teacher about borrowing the gym to let him run laps. It seems that since by the end of the day he seemed to have calmed down, maybe just giving him a couple minutes to run around, safely, to release his built up energy would have helped him calm down faster. I would have then tried to either let him continue on as normal or gone into ISS if it was still needed.

[Kelsey]

Kaylie,
I think you handled this situation in the best way you could have at the time. It is very difficult to come up with a solution that will consistently work for students with behavior problems. I am currently student teaching in a high school and have a student who has a history of "refusals" almost every day. I have tried dealing with this in a variety of ways and what I found to work best is to give an option and let the student decide. He can either accept the help I'm offering or he can take his work to another room and complete it on his own. He usually ends up taking the help and I've found the really emphasizing the positive things that he does makes the days go much smoother than always punishing him for his negative behavior. It's important for us to always look for positives, no matter how small, and remember that each day we should start fresh with our students and not carry their previous days negativity into a new day.

[Brooke]

Kaylie, I think you did the best you could with your student. You laid out your expectations and had a calm discussion with him and then you followed the procedures that were in place for students having behavioral issues. Removing him from the room sounds like the best way to keep him safe and the other students safe as well. My only suggestion would be to possibly call the parent and see if she could drop off the medicine that was missed. Otherwise, doing what you did was the only other course of action. I just try to remind myself that the behaviors and outcomes from that one day do not reflect on me as a teacher and you should too. You did your job and that was to keep everyone safe and follow the plan that was in place. I work with children who have disabilities and there was one day that was so awful, I started to question my career choice. I thought maybe I wasn't cut out to work with students who had disabilities. Then I took that step back and realized it was just one day. One day didn't even compare to all the good days I'd had with the children, and you should remember that too.

[Hailey K]

Hi Kylie,
I am glad that the student was kept safe. We had a blow up similar to this yesterday. I have a student who has ASD and comes down to our room for scheduled breaks. Recently he has been allowed to take longer amounts of time for these breaks by a certain professional staff member and is not required to clean up after himself. When the other 3 staff members are with him though we make that a requirement. The student became very upset and stormed out of our room, since he is only a first grader we had to body block him and shut the doors leading to the other areas of the school when this outburst began. He began hitting and screaming, then preceded to take off his shoes and chuck them yelling, "I hate this old smelly shoes and this old brick school." We had to call administration in to help get the student back into our room, but the student just spit in administrations face. This led to his case manager setting up a meeting so that we were all on the same page for consistency, otherwise he thinks he can get away with everything for anyone. One thing though I realized through all this is that when he would leave mad, the one staff that let that happen led to the student possibly taking his anger out on another student (which has happened before). We as special education teachers have to be aware of the actions that our students have may negatively affect others. Today we stuck with the same idea, the student cannot leave the room angry he has to continue to take a break, clean up, and keep his shoes on. By doing this he got mad again and threw a fit, but nothing compared to the day before. Although the students may be enraged the first few times of a behavioral plan, we put them in rule for a reason. The safety of our students, the safety of others, and the overall successful day for the student that we all want to see!

I think you handled this well, sometimes you have to be tough for the student to realize that those behaviors are truly not expected in our classrooms.

[Kaylie]

I so appreciate all of your feedback and encouragement! thanks for being great readers!

[Kaylie]

@Stephanie and Kristin-I did call my student's mother after the situation had gotten out of hand. Looking back, this was definitely a mistake. I should have contacted her immediately after hearing that my student had not taken his medication. Also, I was wondering if you could give me some examples of sensory breaks that you use in these situations? I would appreciate it! Thanks so much for commenting!

[Kaylie]

@Brandi-I was concerned that my student was acting out to escape class. So, I wasn't a big fan of the behavior plan at first. However, when we get there and I give the assignment, he requests to come back to the room. I definitely think the attention from other students and my assistants feeds his behaviors and being removed from the room helps alleviate some of this. Thanks for your comments, and I wish you the best with your student, as well!

[Kayla]

Kaylie –
I believe that you did what you could for your student. Like you explained to your student, he is in control of his own behavior. Unfortunately, all of the strategies and behavior management you had up your sleeve didn’t help the student with his behavior because of the choices he made. However, following your school’s behavior plan allowed the rest of your students to learn without his distraction and stay safe, as well as keep the student safe. I think the best thing you did in this situation was talk to him at the beginning of class. This allowed both of you to discuss the situation and you were able to do your best to prevent the negative behaviors. You made a good choice by following your school’s behavior plan, keep up the good work with your students!

[Alison]

Kaylie, I think you did the right thing by following the behavior plan. It was a great thing you had one in place. Even though it didn't stop the behavior it helped keep the other students safe. When I was doing some work in a school we had a student who acted just like this. We found that if we left him go to the gym with the para he really gets along with he was able to burn off some energy and would be able to focus for awhile when he got back to the classroom. Every student is different and you just have to find things that will work for your student. Keep up the amazing work you are doing!

[Kaylie]

@Laura: Sounds like you are doing well handling your student. It is definitely difficult to not engage in arguments when students become defiant. A behavior contract sounds like a great idea. I think this might also be effective with my student. Keep up the great work!

[Stephanie C]

Kaylie,

You did the best that you could in this situation. You were given a behavior plan and you followed it. I really liked how you discussed the situation with him as soon as he brought up the situation. You told him that he is responsible for his actions and what behaviors you expect for the day. When the behaviors occurred and you felt your students' safety was threatened you removed him from the situation. It is unfortunate that you had to be away from your other students for two hours.

Were this student's guardians called to see if the medication could be brought in? If not, that would be a step to be implemented to prevent behaviors from happening again. I have been in this situation before with a Kindergarten student. He walked into the classroom and apologized in advance for his behavior since he didn't have his meds. With this situation I gave him a little more attention than usual and made sure I acknowledged the positive things he was doing. By complimenting this student's appropriate behavior I feel it made him want to keep it up. In my experiences, I have also seen a school nurse give a student a smartie (the candy). This seemed to help this particular student, but of course it may not with others!!

In another experience I had when a student was acting out and threatening the safety of others, my cooperating teacher and I gave him a sensory break. The sensory break helped this student calm down and realize his actions. After his break was over, he filled out a questionnaire on his behavior. The questionnaire asked him the who, what, where, and why of negative situation. Since he had the sensory break he was able to fill it out and concentrate. He then stayed in the room until the questionnaire was finished and he discussed it with the people it impacted.

[Kristin]

Kaylie,
I think you fallowed your schools plan well. My one question is could you have called mom as soon as you heard he didn’t take his meds to see if she could have brought the meds to school? I know when I was a para at a school we called and requested meds be brought to school. Two hours in the same room with this student climbing the walls is a long time for the both of you. Could you have given him a few sensory breaks like in the gym just to let him burn off some of that energy?
Once again I think you fallowed your schools plan well- you did your best! Keep up the great work!

[Brandi]

Kaylie, the situation that you had with this student sounds strangely familiar. I am currently student teaching at an elementary school and we had a student go through a similar behavior the other day. He is a first grade student with ASD and he is characteristically rule-bound. Another student sat in his seat, and this then led to a meltdown. This particular meltdown lasted 3 hours. There were points, just like with your student, where he was calmer and more reasonable, but he escalated a couple more times. The teacher I work with was also exhausted, physically and emotionally. Its so difficult to see our students exhibit these behaviors, especially when we know that they have some sort of control over how they act. For our students to act this way in school only gives other students and teachers inaccurate feelings of our "problem" students. I agree with you about the whole medicine controlling behavior argument. I think that students shouldn't solely rely on their medication to control their behavior.

I have discussed with my teacher some possible reasons for our student to act this way. Whenever this student starts to escalate, he removes himself from the class and comes down to the special education classroom. We talked about this, and we thought that it was reinforcing for him. He receives the attention of the teacher I work with (and me as well). He has a chance to play on the iPad, which he loves. After the 3 hour crisis this past week, we decided that he shouldn't be allowed to come to the room for small escalations. Also, during a crisis that becomes physical, he will be taken to the behavior interventionists room, without the attention of the special education teacher. So, with your student I know that he was using the excuse of not having his medication, but do you think that he wants your attention during ISS? Is he trying to get out of class? I think it would be best for you to try to discover what he is trying to communicate with his behavior, so that you can find a way to prevent or discuss this with him. Good luck! You're doing a great job with these kids!

[Nicole]

Kaylie,
I think you did the best you could have to prevented that. You talked to him a little before the day started and tried then. You are right though, it was your student's choice to act that way knowing that he did not have his meds. Different strategies work for different students, now you know that this one you tried did not work as well as you wanted it too. Next time maybe try another strategy. I am currently in my student teaching and we have a student who chooses to act up. Her parents have not had her diagnosed with anything so we are at a lose to what different things to try with her. We think that a lot of the behavior is her choice so we are working on helping her make better choices. Do not give up even if one thing does not work! Keep your head up!

[Chandra]

Kaylie: I think that the way handled the situation was great. As long as you followed your behavior plan this time and did what you could, then it's ok. I really like that you gave your student time to reflect on his behavior and process. This is a very vital step in behavior de-escalation. It is experiences like this that let you reflect on your behavior plan and figure out what you may need to change to make it better for the student next time. In my student teaching experience right now, I am dealing with some heavy, aggressive behavior as well. We are needing to remove our students for their safety almost everyday. We are at a loss for how we should complete the BIP for this student because while one thing may break his aggressive cycle one day, it will not work again the next day.

[Brenna]

Kaylie, I think you did the right thing in this situation. It sounds like there was no way that this particular student could have been a part of the classroom without distracting or endangering the rest of the students. I know it's hard to send students to ISS or remove them from the classroom... but what else could a teacher do in situations where a student is acting completely inappropriately? I am student teaching right now and am learning how to handle behavioral situations like this. I don't know everything about handling behavior, but I do know that there is more than one right way to approach situations and it could be different for each student. Probably the most important thing that I have learned is that it is much easier to prevent problem behaviors than to react to them. If only I could figure out how to prevent all of my students' negative behaviors!

[Laura]

Kaylie, I feel like I have one of these days everyday but on a lot smaller scale. I am currently student teaching and working with a student who is not on medication, but we believe he may benefit from it. The student is very against taking medication and says that he is able to work without it, which is true at times. Other times, he does not do his work and interrupts the work of other students. I have a really hard time working with this student when he becomes ‘defiant’. I try to be proactive in my attempts to keep his attention focused to prevent negative behaviors. I do this by making lessons exciting! This usually helps the situation but never really prevents the negative behaviors from occurring. I am still learning, and I am aware that I have a difficult time with negative, inappropriate behaviors of students. My co-operating teacher has helped me with this and I have progressed, but I still have a lot of work to do in this area! I tend to ignore the negative behaviors up to a certain point. When the behaviors start to impact other students’ instruction time, then I respond to the behavior. I first had a hard time in saying too much to the student. I would not intentionally start an argument with the student, but sometimes it turned into an argument. I have learned to be more direct and straightforward with the student by using a stern voice and giving him an option. He can either complete his work with assistance with the class, or he can complete his work for homework without assistance. He typically responds well to this. My co-operating teacher and I are also working on a behavior contract for this student, but it is not complete. We are working on a contract that rewards the student’s positive behaviors and not punishing him for his negative behaviors. I think it is very important to always focus on the positive, because sometimes students and parents only hear the negatives. It sounds like you are handling the situation well!

[Diane]

Hi Kaylie,

The behavior plan worked because it kept the student safe, but it didn't get rid of his frustration/energy and it is not so good for the teacher. I wonder about the other students in your class. How are you able to be out of the room for hours attending to this one student? What does that do to the schedule?

I wonder if a better behavior plan would include assigning short timed physical or sensory outlets first (with assistant or aide) and then alternate those with academics in ISS. I would try re-entering the regular classroom routine every hour or so.