Sunday, August 12, 2012

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.   

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