Sunday, August 12, 2012

Day 5 and Final Day of Re-ED training


We ended the final day of Re-ED training exploring the world of Meaningful Collaboration. One of the 12 Re-ED principles states, "Communities are important for children and youth, but the uses and benefits of community must be experienced to be learned." So, not only is the group essential to learning, but the larger community itself plays a role.

We looked at bringing parents, caregivers, community organizations, primary service providers, state and local agencies, and other professionals in our buildings to the table to provide support for our students beyond school walls and to help students and families interact with and become familiar with community opportunities for engagement and support. Here we spent some time discussing the communication pitfalls these types of teams might encounter. General guidelines for forming and maintaining these types of teams include a strength based focus (building on student strengths), proactive and comprehensive interventions, use of “natural supports” (the community supports that already are in place), partnerships between families and direct service providers, and goals that aim to create meaningful life-long outcomes. For our students who might struggle to see a place for themselves in a supportive community environment, it is our job to help them create that vision, while we support their development.

At the beginning of the training when we looked at the statistics describing students classified with emotional and behavioral disorders, I think it was difficult for participants and trainers to avoid seeing a mythical culture of poverty that produces our students with their various complicated lives. Many are marginalized by social and institutional structures that have been historically oppressive. That said, when we build stories for ourselves about our students and their difficult experiences, we risk blinding ourselves to those “natural supports” that students and families already rely on. We also begin to blame parents and particular communities for our student’s challenges, while averting our eyes from the social, structural, and institutional inequities that fall disproportionally on the shoulders some students.

The principles of Re-ED include; all kids need joy in their lives, being part of a group is important, self-control can be learned, trust between children an adults is essential to learning, relationships play a key role in education and in life, life is to be lived now, competence (being able to do something well) makes a difference, time is an ally, feelings should be nurtured, cognitive competence can be taught, the body is the armature of the self, ceremony and ritual give order, stability, and confidence, and the community is important.

It all seems overwhelming, yet doable! It’s going to be quite a year.

Day 4 Re-ED Training


Day 4 began with Behavior Management and ended with Groups and Group Process. I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by day four, thinking about all the things I wanted to do in my class and not knowing what my day will look like and with no information about my students. Only three weeks until the first kid day of school!

The Behavior Management training looked closely at stage two, limit testing, and stage three, active resistance. We brainstormed antecedent, behavior (in the moment), and consequence interventions. I thought about applying the ABC interventions to my formal lesson plans and classroom norms so that I am thinking and planning for the behaviors that complicate learning. Antecedent interventions are things like cues, prompts, and self-management strategies (including data collection that the student collects themselves). Behavior, or during the behavior interventions include things like teaching replacement behaviors and self-monitoring. The application of positive reinforcement through praise, group contingencies, and differential reinforcements (token economies, contracts, etc.) are examples of consequence interventions.

One of the principles of Re-Ed is that the group is important. Students classified with emotional and behavioral disabilities have often experienced life on the outside of groups because they have been removed or kicked out. Re-ED philosophy looks at problematic behavior like we would look at an academic or learning roadblock. The assumption is that the student is not successful because they haven’t learned the skill (the social skill or school skill) and they can be taught self-control. The group and learning how to be part of a group is essential to this instruction.

During the training we discussed group development; the forming, storming, norming, and performing process. We looked at full value participation contracts, and various types of meetings and their structures (goal-setting, check-in, goal review, planning, problem solving, and “positives” meetings). The experiential activities that teachers provide, as part of the Re-ED approach, help develop group cohesion, collaboration, and provide students with protected environments where they can practice how to negotiate conflict. The Groups and Group Process section of the training helped me to contextualize the experimental education aspect of Re-ED. Before I was looking experimental education in terms of hands-on learning, however, its really about building groups and providing opportunities for students to practice social skills, problem-solving strategies, and cooperative learning.   

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Day 3 Re-ED debrief


The focuses of today’s training included experiential education and social skills instruction.

Often when I think about experiential education, I think Outward Bound and “hands on” learning and it’s true that these things can be experiential opportunities. However, what defines experiential education, especially in a setting led by the principals of Re-ED, are the briefing, planned sequencing, experiencing, reflection, and debriefing components brought together in a complete activity. In my secondary setting, I would sequence activity, with my specific students in mind, over a period of time to allow students the opportunity to interact as a group, build trust, practice and grow communication skills, and solve problems. Small classroom experiences/activities can help students grow their social competence by giving them frequent opportunity to practice. Certainly, there are a lot of examples of experiential education that go beyond the walls of a classroom, but I think there are plenty of inquiry lessons that could have an experiential component within the walls of the school.

Instructional Resources for Experiential Education:





Our discussion around social skills instruction highlighted the Re-ED principal that self-control can be learned. Additionally, when educators see a student struggle with an academic problem, the assumption is made that the student needs to be re-taught the skill. If the student still doesn’t master the skill other interventions are often explored until the student finds success. When educators see a student struggle with a social skill, an assumption is made that the student is purposefully acting that way or that they could do something different if they chose to, educators fail to see that the social skill has yet to be mastered and therefore do not teach and re-teach the skill.

In effective social skill instruction, educators identify or name the skill they are attempting to teach, teach when and when not to use the skill, operationalize (task analysis or break into steps) the skill, model the skill, practice the skill, review, test, collect data on the effectiveness of the instruction and implementation, and then try to generalize the newly learned skill into other areas.    
We teach social skills everyday, whether we are deliberately planning for it or not, therefore if we integrate social skills teaching into our lesson planning and instruction deliberately we will positively impact future behaviors in our classrooms.

Social Skills Instruction Resources:


Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Beginning a New Year and a Different Focus


I am beginning a new school year working with students classified with emotional and behavioral disorders in a high school setting. Right now I don’t know what my day will look like. It could be a self-contained setting where I co-teach with another EBD teacher or it could look like a mixture of co-teaching with general education teachers, co-teaching with another EBD teacher, and a self-contained period where I am the only “teacher” in the room with support staff. I am waiting to hear from my new principal and/or assistant principal what my schedule might entail.

This week I am attending a weeklong training given by WAREA, Washington Re-Education Association, entitled “Effectively Serving Children with Emotional/Behavioral Disabilities. Yesterday we focused on what is Re-ED, the nine stages of Re-EDucation, and structure and predictability. Today we focused on effective instruction and conflict to coping skills.

My take-aways from day one include the importance of having a philosophy (district, building, and/or classroom) that guide an EBD program. A lot of the presenters working for WAREA also work at Renton Academy, which is a therapeutic public EBD school in Renton, WA. I have visited this self-contained school and their district and school have adopted the Re-ED principles as the districts philosophy and approach to dealing with students classified with EBD.

The twelve principles of Re-EDucation include; trust between child and adult is essential and foundational, life is to be lived now, competence makes a difference (children and adolescents should be helped to be good at something), time is an ally (work on the side of growth), self-control can be taught and students can learn to manage behaviors, cognitive competence of children and adolescents can be enhanced through skill development, feelings should be nurtured, the group is very important and should be a part of instruction, ceremony and ritual give order, stability and confidence, the body is the armature of the self, communities are important and benefits of community must be learned and experienced, and children should know some joy in each day.

The nine stages of Re-EDucation refer to the stages that a child goes through as they learn to manage their own behavior and make connection with adults, other students, and their school community. Here change looks likes child development stages, where students progress and regress as they move through stages like limit testing, active resistance, and beginning stages of trust. We spent the afternoon talking about preparing for our students, creating structure and predictability from the start, boarders or boundaries, that will help students move through the nine stages feeling more safe and secure.

Today, we spent the morning practicing and reviewing research based literacy and math interventions, emphasizing that our EBD kids have years of experience dealing with behavioral interventions, but less experience with teachers addressing academic deficiencies. Not a lot of surprises here, behavior is linked to past academic and/or school failure. Finally, we closed the day looking at the conflict cycle. Are we reinforcing the “irrational thinking” that leads kids to feelings and problematic behavior? Or are we interrupting the cycle and helping kids to interrupt their own thinking, maybe even help them change their thinking.

I felt like talking about the conflict cycle was a perfect opening for discussing cognitive behavioral interventions and cognitive academic interventions. If our kids’ deficits center on metacognitive deficiencies then work around thinking and evaluating information is a great next step.