“Teachers
are being judged by how strict they are. Meanwhile, thousands of children are
not going to school, teachers are under increasing pressure to command their
students to behave, and parents are blamed for not being good role models.”
(Taylor, 2012 pg. 1) Tim Taylor, a primary school teacher working in east of
England (Taylor, 2012 pg. 3) speaks on his experience working in a school with
a particular child whom he referred to as Kyle, a child with extreme behaviors
that became at times too difficult to manage and would need to be removed from the
classroom. Taylor refused to give up on
Kyle and with the help of Dr. Geoff James, a specialist support teacher working
for a local authority school support service (Taylor, 2012, pg. 3); James came
to Taylor’s school to offer support and guidance to Kyle and him. Helping and
showing Taylor how to use an inquiry based approach, Taylor and Kyle were able
to transform their relationship and change Kyle’s once extreme behavior into
nonexistence.
In your teaching career, you are going to
be challenged in dealing with behavior management in the classroom. Whether it
is a few particular students or one student specifically as discussed in this
article, teachers need to be able to find different approaches to reach those
“difficult” students on another level.
Though it won’t be easy at times, it is important to not give up on
those challenging children. Taylor discusses that “after four or five years he
learned a wide range of behavior management strategies based on rewarding good
and punishing bad behavior. The strategies he used were stickers, golden time,
time out, three strikes and red and yellow cards.” (Taylor, 2012, pg.1). With this information provided, it
illustrates the importance that all instructors should have some form of a
behavior system whether the behavior is positive or negative. However as educators, it is important to ask
ourselves what happens when you’re faced with a student, as Taylor was with
Kyle, where with the behavior system in place, what happens when it doesn’t
respond to the child in the way that it should?
From personal teaching experience using similar behavior management
strategies, as Taylor did, I found them ineffective in dealing with especially challenging
children. This included time out, stickers and green, yellow and red behavior
circles that were affective with most students but not with a child like Kyle. Dealing
with a student like “Kyle” in an actual classroom experience requires
flexibility from the standard behavior strategies and requires patients and
creativity.
As Taylor did, it is important to draw
from outside resources when you are struggling as an instructor with behavioral
children. Whether it be books or
specialists, being open to different methods to help manage those children who
are behavioral can benefit not only in the structure of your classroom but it
will benefit the child who is having the behavioral issues and make them
successful. For Taylor, he reached out
to Geoff James, a local authority specialist support teacher who was looking
into behavior support for his PhD. (Taylor, 2012, pg. 3) Taylor writes that he
had met James years before and invited him to the school to work with Kyle and
him. (Taylor, 2012, pg. 2) James advised Taylor to start talking to Kyle about
something he was already doing successfully (Taylor, 2012, pg. 2) which was
football. It was a starting platform for
Taylor and Kyle but as educators we must keep in mind that finding the starting
platform is one step but to be able to make a trusting relationship with your
student or students in order to create an open communication wave can be a
challenge but extremely rewarding when successful. For Taylor beginning with a starting platform
with Kyle, it appeared that their conversations about Kyle’s success in
football were going positively and Taylor felt widening their platform to include
school would be the necessary next step.
Taylor refers to one of his conversations with Kyle: “What’s your best
hope for school Kyle?” “To be friends with the others in class so I can play
football with them.” (Taylor, 2012, pg. 2)
As Taylor and Kyle’s conversations continued, Taylor discussed with Kyle
about Kyle’s anger. In the article, Taylor and Kyle talk about what Kyle would
do if he felt himself getting angry and if there is some place he could go to
calm down. After further discussion,
Kyle expressed that he would leave the classroom and go under a table when he
became angry and when he was calm he would return the classroom and be ready to
continue working. (Taylor, 2012, pg. 3)
In the article, Taylor writes what
happened after Kyle and he decided on where he would go if he became angry:
“Kyle was as good as his word. Over the next
few weeks whenever he started to get angry he would leave the classroom and sit
under the table. I let everyone know
this was agreed and they left him alone.
In often less than five minutes, he would come back into class to
work. We continued to meet fairly
regularly and when things went wrong which they did occasionally-I’d ask him
what he might do to make them better. Working in this way with Kyle transformed
our relationship. We learned to work together and to trust each other. Kyle
began to relax in class and became more focused on his learning. The other children relaxed too and Kyle’s
violent outbursts disappeared.” (Taylor, 2012 pg 3)
As educators, it is crucial that we not
give up on those children who are challenging. We must do everything in our
power to meet those students at an even platform and begin a trusting
relationship. We must find different
approaches whether it be an inquiry based approach as Taylor used or using
other outside references and resources (i.e. time out, stickers, colored
circles, etc.) to meet these children’s needs.
It is up to us as educators to do everything in our power to help these
children and let them know they are not alone and that helping them become successful
is the ultimate goal to be achieved.
Taylor, T. (2012). A Fresh Look
at Behavior Management in Schools.
www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network,
Pgs. 1-3.
