Reaching Our Most Vulnerable Students
Students with social, emotional and behavioural challenges are those most frequently on the receiving end of punitive, exclusionary disciplinary practices, such as detention, suspension, expulsion, paddling, restraint, seclusion or arrests at school. Without question, these
students can be scary, cause classmates to feel unsafe, disrupt the classroom process and be quite difficult to help. But the punitive, exclusionary disciplinary practices certainly aren’t getting the job done.
In part, that’s because those practices are primarily focused on students’ behaviour and modifying it. But, as set forth in a model called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), and as described in the books, Lost at School and Lost & Found, there’s an alternative: focusing instead on the problems that are causing those behaviours and solving them. Problems like, “Difficulty coming back into the classroom after recess, difficulty completing the double- digit division problems in math, difficulty keeping hands to self in the hallway between classes and difficulty staying awake during science lab.” Once the problems are solved, they don’t cause concerning behaviour anymore.
Solving problems shouldn’t be a huge transition for educators, who have always been engaged in the work of solving the academic problems that are interfering with students’ progress. Unfortunately, educators (like just about everyone else) put behaviour and academics in completely different categories. Yet, anecdotally, approximately 80% of concerning behaviours that occur at school can be traced back to academic difficulties (the remaining 20% is social). When we apply the same mentality to behavioural challenges as we would to academic difficulties, the approach to helping students with concerning behaviour becomes a lot more compassionate and effective.
To make this shift, educators need a methodology for identifying those unsolved problems and a methodology for solving problems with students. As regards the former, schools that implement the CPS model rely heavily on an instrument called the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP). Once a student’s lagging skills and unsolved problems have been identified—usually accomplished in a 45-50 minute meeting—the student’s difficulties become highly predictable and intervention can become almost totally proactive. As an added benefit, the information provided by the ALSUP can serve as the foundation for an IEP, 504 Plan, Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA), or Behaviour Plan.
As regards to the latter, in the CPS model, the problem-solving is of the collaborative and proactive variety. When problems are being solved collaboratively, caregivers and students are teammates, or partners, in solving problems. That tends to be more productive than solving problems unilaterally. The proactive part is important, too, since solving problems in the heat of the moment is bad timing and unnecessary.
Solving a problem collaboratively involves a three-step process. The first step is called the Empathy Step. Caregivers gather information from the student about concerns or perspectives on a specific, unsolved problem. We encounter many jaw-dropping moments during the Empathy Step, as caregivers discover that they had the wrong idea about what was making it hard for the student to meet a given expectation.
In the second step, called the Define Adult Concerns step, caregivers enter their concerns into consideration. Those concerns usually center around how a given problem is affecting the child and/or others.
During the third step, called the Invitation, students and caregivers collaborate on mutually satisfactory solutions. In other words, finding solutions that address the concerns of both parties. Through this process, children and caregivers feel heard, come to recognise that their concerns will be addressed and anticipate that problems will get solved.
Research has shown that the evidence-based CPS model improves children’s behaviour on a par with behaviour modification procedures (a meaningful finding, given that the CPS doesn’t primarily focus on behaviour) and is more effective at solving the problems that are causing
those behaviours (not surprising, given that behaviour modification procedures aren’t focused on solving problems). In schools, the CPS model has been associated with dramatic reductions in discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, restraints and seclusions.
In almost every school, it’s the same 10-15 students who are on the receiving end of those punitive practices, proof that those practices aren’t working for those students and aren’t needed for the well-behaved students. It’s time to change course. The goals of greater compassion and effective intervention aren’t mutually exclusive.