Inviting schools are positive schools
The adage “spare the rod; spoil the child,” the teacher’s “hickory stick” in the song “School Days,” and the teacher’s “meanful look” in Chuck Berry’s famous song are a sample of our once pervasive attitude of schooling based on punishment. TIEE’s schools have been in the forefront to change this attitude and make school a positive experience for all students.
We teach our students how to do school
Some students also need to be specifically taught how to interact with others, including both teachers and their peers. That’s called social skills instruction, and it is best done throughout the day, taking each naturally occurring opportunity to teach. Finally, a very few students will display behaviors so troubling that they will require special programs, called Behavior Intervention Plans (or Behavior Support Plans) that are based on careful analysis of the factors that are responsible for their problem behavior, which are called Functional Analyses (or Functional Assessments). These students typically require intensive instruction in socially desirable ways to respond and the instruction is best when based on setting the student up to do the “right thing” and then “catching ‘em being good.” This combination of methods is used in all TIEE schools. We have come to call it Positive Programming.
University of Oregon behavior analysts Rob Horner and George Sugai (who is now at the University of Connecticut) saw the virtue of these practices in making for positive schools some years ago, and they started Positive Behavior Intervention in Schools. Their PBIS concept has become nearly a national movement with literally thousands of schools and school districts participating.Functional analysis discovers why problem behavior occurs
Functional Analysis is a set of technical methods used to determine the conditions under which the student displays problem behavior, including what typically happens as a result of the problem behavior. The notion is that the consequences of problem behavior are what maintain or strengthen it, so, if we have a clear understanding of these, we can help the student to display more appropriate ways to obtain the same ends. The plan to teach the student better ways to achieve goals is called the Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) or a Behavior Support Plan (BSP), which is to become part of the student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) through the IEP process. Click for a somewhat technical and very thorough discussion of functional analysis.