Monday Musings - Week of October 22

Last week when I attended the AWSA Convention (Association of Wisconsin School Administrators) I had the great opportunity to discuss current issues in the elementary buildings at our networking session.  One common issue is "what to do with challenging students."  Whether it's a kindergartner with aggressive behaviors or a 5th grader that just doesn't care about school, we've all encountered a student like this at some point in our career.  If there was one strategy that would work, then we would have all used it by now (and someone would have gotten rich off of "selling" it).  Unfortunately, there isn't one strategy or trick that will work with every student, so it is up to us to look at what patterns we see in the behaviors, hypothesize what might be the cause for their behavior and try to be proactive and address the cause with an appropriate intervention.

More often than not, students exhibiting challenging behaviors lack relationships with others in their life.  One very simple strategy to try and build that rapport with this student is just spending 2 minutes a day with them. Not 2 minutes talking about what they should be doing (they get enough of that already), but 2 minutes to give them a chance to talk about anything-what happened over the weekend, what's their favorite tv show, favorite game, etc. 2 minutes to get to know them and build that connection.

I keep a list of "frequent flyer" students that I try to check in with each day on a positive note (before they make it to my office for a negative reason).  When I'm having busy days and don't get to one of them, it seems like that child ends up having a bad day and ends up having to spend time in the office with me. (Disclaimer - I don't have data to back this up and I'm not claiming that it's me that makes the difference in their day.)

Do you have a student with challenging behaviors?  Give this simple 2 minute strategy a shot. Focus on spending 2 minutes with him/her for the next 10 days and see if it makes a difference.  I'd love to hear your "results."

By the way...if you're looking for a list of interventions for challenging behaviors, Intervention Central is full of research based strategies.