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Janet Fausti Marion School District As a Special Education Teacher, I have spent a large amount of time with colleagues discussing behavioral issues of students on my caseload. The teachers appear to be unaware of why the behaviors are occurring and what to do with the students with behavioral issues. The concerns range in scope from:1) what to do when a student won’t attend to the lesson to 2) why isn’t a student doing their school work? Through RECESS (Rural Educators Collaborating for the Success of Students) I focused the past year on behavioral issues that students exhibit in the classroom as well as furthering my understanding of the social and emotional issues that contribute to behavioral issues. I focused on analyzing the reasons behind behavioral issues and the relationship between behavior and academic performance. Much of this year has been spent on reading various books on unmotivated students. Some of these books have been Motivating Students Who Don’t Care by Allen Mender, Motivating Students Left Behind, by Dr Richard Curwin, and Powerful Classroom Management Strategies Motivating Students to Learn by Paul Burden. I also attended the workshop Motivating Your Underachieving Learners presented by Mr. Ernie Chapman. Previously I had also attended workshops by Corwin Kronenberg on Classroom Management Strategies that Teach Responsibility as well as a workshop with Sally Northway Ogden titled Bag O’Tricks for Stress Free Discipline which was based on using strategies from Jim Fay and Foster Cline’s Love and Logic. Through all of these resources, it has become clear that inappropriate behavior and motivation are intrinsically bound. They go hand in hand. Many students who have behavioral issues in the classroom are covering their concerns about being perceived as stupid. They are protecting themselves from the embarrassment of looking dumb in the eyes of their classmates, parents, and peers. Some students find power and control in their refusal to work. They are often competent and capable, but their need to be in control is so strong they employ a self-defeating strategy to exert their independence. No one wants to try and fail – it is simply easier to not try at all. Lack of motivation is a protective mechanism that must be respectfully challenged. If students are motivated they are more likely to participate in activities and less likely to get off task and contribute to disorder. An effective classroom manager deliberately plans for ways to motivate students. Motivation is threatened when ineffective discipline interventions are used. For example, a power struggle. Interventions need to focus less on behavior and more on student’s willingness to learn. Motivation is getting them to WANT to do their work. There are two broad categories of motivation – intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is a response to needs that exist within the student, such as curiosity, the need to know, and feelings of competence or growth. Intrinsic motivation is an internal satisfaction a student feels. Extrinsic motivation is from outside the learner and has to do with external rewards for completion of a task, for example, words of praise from the teacher, a privilege, and a higher grade on a paper or the report card are examples. The reinforcement of practices of extrinsic motivation can be effective, but the excessive use of rewards may be decreasingly successful in new situations and may foster a dependency and undermine intrinsic motivation. Ernie Chapman made a bold statement at his workshop that extrinsic motivation is simply manipulation. I found that to be a real eye opener. Techniques that involve rewarding or punishing are simply manipulation measures. Rewards encourage students to work for extrinsic gain rather than wanting to learn. Punishment or the threat of punishment also discourages learning. Others feel a teacher should make everything taught as intrinsically interesting as possible and avoid handing out material rewards when they are unnecessary. At the same time, others feel giving extrinsic rewards when they are needed is acceptable and by weaning these away the student begins to feel that intrinsic motivation kick in. Extrinsic rewards may be needed after an activity that students find less intrinsically interesting and satisfying. It should also be noted that a successful student will work hard to earn incentives because they believe it is well within their grasp to get them – difficult students have learned through experience that it is better for them not to try than to try and fail. If the difficult student is working toward a reward they will often respond negatively because it is less hurtful to lose it right away than to work hard and then lose it anyway – the student would rather be in control of losing it than to turn that control over to the teacher. Dr. Curwin feels there are four theoretical views of motivation. Behavioral view – a person’s internal cognitive needs are not as important as the reinforcers that are provided to control the behavior. Individuals are motivated when their behavior is reinforced. Cognitive view – people are motivate to understand the world, to have control over their lives, and to be self-directed Humanistic view – people are motivated by a need for growth and the development of self. This view highlights intrinsic motivation Achievement view – people are motivated to achieve something, such as the need to achieve success and to avoid failure. Although the categorical views of motivation are interesting, the question still lingered in my mind. What do I as an educator do? Allen Mendler states that being successful at motivating students who are difficult requires teachers to believe: All students are capable of learning when they have the academic and personal tools to be successful. Students are inherently motivated to learn but learn to be unmotivated when they repeatedly fail. Learning requires risk taking, so classrooms need to be safe places physically and psychologically. All students have basic needs to belong, to be competent, and to influence what happens to them. High self-esteem is result that comes with mastery of challenging tasks. High motivation occurs when adults treat students with respect and dignity. Through all these workshops and books there were a variety of strategies to use to motivate students. However, the most important strategy I found in every article, book, or workshop I have attended is to treat these most challenging students with respect and dignity. Forming a relationship and bonding with these students is essential! Simply put, these students must believe whole heartedly that I care about them. I must continue to build that trust with them and show them repeatedly that I care. Once the trust level is built then I can begin to implement a variety of strategies to help with motivating these students. I have many students who participate in negative self talk. They are “special ed” students so they must be stupid (my student’s words). After attending the workshop on Motivating Your Underachieving Learner, I decided to teach a complete unit on character traits to one of my reading groups. Many of the students in this group have a lower self esteem because they realize they are not at the level of their peers in reading. Being in the resource room is often viewed as a negative. These students often participate in “I can’t” conversations. The hope is that they will begin to think differently about themselves. Students who believe in themselves will be stronger individuals. I provided each student with the personal creed from the workshop to be used as a fluency passage. Students built a positive vocabulary to continually reinforce an affirmative self concept that they will work to fulfill. Throughout this lesson students continuously asked for clarification on vocabulary. This resulted in many conversations between peers and story telling. They began to see themselves in an optimistic way. They began to realize that with hard work they could do anything they believed in. They soon were helping each other see that they needed to take ownership of their own feelings and beliefs. One student in particular stated in a discussion with me “I guess if I don’t think I can do it then how can you think I can do it?” My response was “I always knew you could do it – I believe in you – but the question is do you believe in yourself?” The next day this student shared with me that she had gone home and thought about the conversation and she realized that all the excuses she made were just that – excuses. I have also spent time talking with each student on how they view school, what were positive school character traits they showed?, and what were areas they needed to work on. I interviewed the students and asked each student to complete a simple rubric entitled How to Get Good Grades. This format opened up discussion with each student. One student concern was simply that she didn’t know how to study. This lead me to question if regular education staff were teaching study skills. After asking the staff most relayed they do teach study skills within context. I am not sure students understand specifically how to study for a test. Yes, the teachers make flashcards or outlines but how do students use these to study is what I feel the students were asking. I will continue to work on how to help staff teach study skills in the classroom so students understand how to study for a test. I have begun using more study skills and pointing out how taking notes is essential for homework completion and studying. For example, in math class (pull-out) I now have students take notes. Theses notes consist of the definition of a process along with a working example. The last session for example was on finding area and perimeter. The students each needed to write down “Perimeter = finding the total of the outside of a polygon. The “t” in perimeter reminds us to add.” The students then needed to draw an example of a polygon and how to solve for perimeter. We then moved onto area. The students were prompted to write in their notebooks “Area = the amount of space inside a polygon. Length X Width” The students again drew an example in their notebook. When we solved for area or perimeter they were asked what operation was needed. They referred to their notebooks to figure it out. I pointed out that they were taking notes in class – this is a study skill – to help them when they are working independently. They also have the steps to adding fractions, subtracting fractions, multiplying fractions, and dividing fractions. They continue to add on to their “notes” and refer to them often in class discussions. They have begun to realize that if they take good notes they will be able to work independently when staff is not present. Today we started a new unit on mean, median, mode, and range. One of the students quickly reminded the others something new was going to be taught and they should all get their notebooks out to take notes. It is refreshing when students realize there is a purpose to taking notes. Another area I have worked on that each of the books and workshops I attended touched upon was goal setting. Motivation is facilitated when students create attainable goals that are specific. One of the follow up projects I did after returning from the workshop Motivating Your Underachieving Learner was to have 6th grade students write a letter to the high school principal. In our district K-6 is in one building and 7-12 in another building. This exercise was tri-fold. One goal of the project was to facilitate the initial relationship building that is necessary between staff and students. Another goal of the project was to have students do some self reflection on their positive character traits. The last goal was to have students do some goal setting in an area they felt they needed to improve on. The letter was to have three paragraphs. The first paragraph addressed their positive character traits. It was wonderful to see all of the students (even those staff would consider unmotivated) write and acknowledge their positive character traits. The second paragraph was to acknowledge an area that students needed to work on to improve themselves. It was very difficult for one of my students who has chronic late assignments to set a goal for herself. She clearly realized this was an area she needed help with but had no idea on the steps needed to take to reach that goal. The breakdown for her was in how to go about achieving this goal. It should also be noted the mother of this student responded to staff at parent teacher conferences “I figured that” when told her daughter had many late assignments therefore the report card showed incompletes. It was astonishing that in essence the mother gave her daughter permission for late assignments because little else was expected. The student at this time was completing 45% of assignments on time and she is now at 82% of assignments completed on time. The student and I sat together and worked through what was working and what wasn’t and how to change what wasn’t working. I ended up writing an IEP goal for this student on working through the problem solving steps. This is an area she needs work on in both academic and social situations. We meet once a week to go over a goal and what worked and didn’t work with the goal setting. This particular student’s mother felt that an extrinsic motivator would work for her daughter. The mother wanted to set up a goal for her for every 5 days of homework completion the student would earn a “reward”. The student and I sat down and discussed possible rewards. Some of them came from home (mom would buy her a book, mom would spend time with her ice skating, she could have a friend over) and some from school (the student wanted to invite a friend to the resource room to play a game). The student has since earned 3 of these rewards. First chose to have a friend come the resource room, then a book from mom, and the 3rd reward was to have a friend over. Mom has yet to follow through on this reward. This particular incident was interesting because many experts say that extrinsic rewards are manipulation. However, I have seen the intrinsic satisfaction on this young girl’s face when she talks about getting her homework done – she feels good about herself. She also needs social skills work, so bringing a friend to hang out in the resource room is helpful to her on a different level. In this case, as with many cases I feel the extrinsic rewards are needed to build a positive feeling in the student. Extrinsic rewards work if they are faded away slowly and the intrinsic motivation is allowed to build. One area I still want to work on is teamong with regular education staff on modeling how to match learning styles with teaching styles. Many staff want help and appear to not understand how to change what they do in the classroom to reach all students. I had two particular incidents arise this year with this issue. Both of these involve students with autism. The first was a first grade student who exhibited a lot of screaming in the classroom. The teacher and I talk weekly and many suggestions were given to her. However, after much frustration for both the student and the teacher I decided it may be best to remove the student for a good portion of his day so I could work with him to see what the issues may actually be. The ideal situation would be for me to go into the regular education classroom to observe, model, and teach both the student and staff but with the number of students I currently have I was unable to do that. I spent a month with this student and I heard many comments over this month from him that “I don’t take test, I don’t do all that work, etc”. However, I broke down each task for the student, explained calmly that all students were required to work and when he was done he could have a break. I used work strips with this student for everything he had to do. Each work strip ended with a break card. At first the student would fight everything I wanted him to do but by remaining calm and teaching him that the work strip had ___ number of items on it before he got a break (extrinsic reward). The student quickly caught on to this idea. He began to do everything asked of him and if I would not have a work strip ready he asked for it. Clearly this student needed to know his expectations. After working with this student it became clear he is above his peers in mathematics. He was exhibiting behavior issues in the classroom due to boredom. It wasn’t that he wasn’t able – he was simply bored – a statement he made often but staff ignored. He is also on a higher end in reading. However, in the classroom he wouldn’t do reading and he exhibited many ticks when reading with his teacher. This student exhibits many sensory issues as well so part of the problem is his environment and part is the curriculum being too easy. The student stayed with me for several weeks and then was introduced back into the classroom full time. When I brought my findings or thoughts to the regular education teacher – that the student was indeed bored in math and my recommendation was to give him more challenging work she was concerned that it would be so difficult to differentiate the lessons. This is clearly an example of a student learning style conflicting with a teaching style. Teachers must adapt to a changing classroom environment with the increase in students with autism. Currently this student is working with a different regular education teacher for math at a second grade level. Another example of this is a 5th grade student with autism. This student was having issues in math. The regular education teacher stated the student has a lot of behavior issues particularly in math because the student wasn’t paying attention. I have been in the classroom on numerous occasions to observe math time. The student fidgets appropriately when I am in the classroom. When the student’s IEP came due I spoke with the teacher and of course the math issue came up. I tried speaking with the teacher that his teaching style (lecture for most of the 75 minute time period) and the student’s learning style (kinesthetic) just were not matching up. The teacher sees no other way to do math. I have given the teacher suggestions only to be told he can’t see how doing small group work in math would work. He also doesn’t see how he has time to work one on one with this particular student. I ended up writing an IEP goal that stated the student would actively participate in math class in 3 out of 4 attempts per class period. I have given the teacher suggestions on prompting the student. For example, in one minute I will be back to ask you to answer question number 7. The teacher goes on with his lesson and when he gets to number 7 he calls on the student. At first the teacher responded if he asked the student to do number 7 he wouldn’t be listening to numbers 4, 5, or 6. However, I simply responded number 7 was the same as the other problems and if the student can do number 7 he should be able to do the others. It was also a way for the teacher to see what the student did in number 7 to decide if the student needed further help and what the help would be. If teachers never work one on one with the student they won’t know where the breakdown occurs. The student is beginning to volunteer in class – he feels he must know the answers and maybe math isn’t so hard. Sometimes teachers need to prompt the student to initially participate in class – once the student feels like he is understanding and an active member he will increase his participation on his own! Both of the above examples are areas I need to continually focus on. Inappropriate behavior is often seen as lack of motivation. People are of the notion that the students “won’t” but with autism it is more often the students “can’t”. With the increase in the number of students in our district with autism it is essential that I continue to educate myself in order to reach staff to change their belief that it isn’t “won’t” but “can’t”. I have been attending many in-services on autism this year and I am in the process of putting together in-services for staff training as well as working on bringing in training opportunities for staff. I will collaborate with administration on how to get myself in the classroom to model how to appropriately set up a child for success. Staff are not necessarily unwilling to work with difficult students – they need modeling on how to do so. My goal for next year is to work directly with students and staff in the classroom more often to prevent many of the breakdowns in communication and therefore have less behavior referrals to me. I would also like to work on a prompting guide on what staff can do for behavioral issues. Behavior is simply a reaction for the student – what is the issue and how we react to it is the key. Overall, I feel our building is on the right track with teaching responsibility in students. As a district we use Corwin Kronenberg’s model of building relationships with children. We have school wide behavior expectations with the Above the Line Behavior Program. We teach children to be respectful, responsible, and safe within our buildings. We model what appropriate behavior looks like. However, one of the areas our building needs to work on is finding appropriate consequences or fix-its for behavior. We struggle with finding consequences or fix-it plans that are related, respectful and relevant. I feel I am strong on my motivational techniques – now the question for me is how do I help other staff? I also want to work on connecting with parents of students who are unmotivated. How can I help them help their child? My focus will also be on behavioral interventions for students with autism as that will be the majority of my caseload in the upcoming year.