A behaviour plan in a school tells a teacher what to do in the event of a particular behaviour… but what if those plans are based on totally useless, out of date and possibly harmful practices?
Then what you get is more behaviour problems, because reactions matter. Behaviours have natural consequences – each action has an equal reaction. If you are using tools that are in and of themselves ‘bad behaviour’; the ‘bad behaviour’ will be the returned reaction to the teacher’s ‘bad’ tool. Again – this is not the teachers fault – this is the university’s and the systems fault for not teaching tools that are good and do work (for all people).
How do you (or have you ever?) checked to see if those behaviour tools and plans are harmful? Have you checked with the communities that you use them on? Have you checked to see if they are culturally appropriate? Have you done a gender impact assessment?
NOTE: In Australia, a ‘gender impact assessment’ is something that is very poorly named. It’s actually nothing to do with gender… it’s an assessment that investigates whether a policy or procedure might be (or would) have an impact on ANY minority group or community of people. That means it’s supposed to assess for discrimination or detriment to all peoples: to females, to males, to the LGBTQ+ community, to disabled, religious groups, to aged or youth, to BIPOC or BAME, or any other group. In schools – their behaviour plans are not put through this process… but they desperately need to be. As I can pull out just a couple and immediately see how they discriminate against, harm/ or humiliate, or detriment any one/ or multiples of those groups.
In the following I will explain both things – why the behaviour tool doesn’t work – and which group of people it likely affects the most.
1. Yelling: this is escalating a problem, and cultural one.
If you’re a parent, have you ever been in public and yelled at your child and felt tremendous guilt or shame (or even horror), or annoyed with yourself afterwards? I know I have. If you’ve ever been in another persons house where yelling is the norm – that’s a cultural thing. But many cultures also find yelling super offensive and wrong.
Generational trauma is also involved in this. Younger generations do not respond well to yelling due to generational trauma and due to corporal punishment being abandoned. These generations are moving away from verbal abuse as an appropriate tool to help people.
When kids are yelling – they are in fight/flight response of trauma… if you yell back – you escalate that fight/flight response to more yelling, or force it into running or hitting or whatever else.
2. Trying to control the situation: this also escalates the problem
When a child is seeking control (or autonomy) and you also try to take control – you enter a power struggle. Noone ever wins this. You may think you win – but the result is a dissolution of the relationship – the child will never respect you and will possibly hate you and actively try to piss you off more and more from that day forth. You have just caused an infinite power loop that you can never untangle.
This child is not seeking control – they are seeking understanding, and equity. They are seeking balance to their own nervous system. When a person tries to gain control, it’s because they perceive a threat from the other person. That’s why the adult reacts with trying to control more – because they also perceive a threat from the child.
By entering the power struggle, you are actually showing your complete ineptitude but also showing the child your weakness – that if you aren’t in control, you feel threatened and go on the attack. This teaches the child that you are unsafe. And don’t tell me that this teaches you the same thing about the child – because it doesn’t! A child doesn’t have the cognitive skills or the maturity or the self-regulation skills to realise that they are going into the fight response of trauma (unless they have been explicitly taught this -most will not have the slightest clue). The child is the child – you are the adult. You should be the one sharing your regulation with the child to calm the situation – being the bigger person with more understanding life experience and maturity.
If you are in a job in any other field, and you yelled at your boss, and they yelled back – HR would possibly be firing both. If you are the employee and yelled at your boss and your boss took the time to calm, find out why you yelled at them and tried to deal with the situation – likely the only one fired would be the employee (if it was found to be unwarranted yelling or harassment/bullying etc HR always investigate circumstances/ reasons – unlike schools). If it was warranted that the employee yelled at the boss for being unsafe or causing harm etc: the boss would be fired or slapped on the wrist or demoted etc. The employee would get a stern talking to about the proper way to handle the situation going forward. Schools do not handle behaviour like the real world – and if the real world handled it the school way – more bosses would be fired and taken to court for bullying.
Because this power dynamic is called bullying and workplace harassment in the real world. Teachers do not live in the real world… but think they do, and often use their behaviour as an excuse, eg: they’ll tell the parent or student “I’m preparing them/you for the real world”. But they aren’t, all they are teaching them is that adults get to treat anyone they want like shit.
Power control is also a cultural thing. In the autistic community we see power control and authoritarianism as abusive. We see equity and collaboration as part of our culture. We don’t respect authority because we respect everyone as being equal. When you try to control or rule – the autistic community sees this as discrimination and abusive – it’s actually part of our culture.
3. Ignoring: This causes hatred and escalated behaviour
This is another behaviourism technique (like the top two are). This one is called “planned ignoring” in ABA ‘therapy’ (it’s not therapy, it’s abuse).
Planned ignoring is another word for neglect – and don’t misunderstand – you can be sued or jailed over it… so I’d suggest you don’t do it. It’s been proven to raise cortisol levels and cause the child to go into meltdowns more often – this is good old 50’s parenting and has no place in education. Ignored children don’t learn
A child has a right to an education – ignoring them is planned removal of instruction and care. You have a duty of care to both look after the child and to teach them. If you are ignoring them – you are violating both duties.
When you ignore you force the child to either give up, or to escalate. So which is you want? Do you want them to give up on you, on their education and learning, or do you want them to hit you so you’ll stop ignoring them…. Do you really think this is a good plan? This is an ignorance plan – not a helpful one.
This affects children of all minority and disadvantaged groups… they may be used to being ignored, but it doesn’t make it right. In fact, we have special days or weeks dedicated to not ignoring people like NADOC week, Are you OK Day? Black history month (in USA), international Women’s day, and any other “DAY” of importance or recognition – every one of those days is about awareness – not ignoring, and there’s a damn good reason for that.
4. Reward good behaviour
This is the dumbest one. Giving a reward to a child for good behaviour does nothing. It removes intrinsic motivation and the want to learn – because the kids who can’t behave aren’t doing it through choice (unless you’ve escalated them to choose to behave that way – because you’ve not listened to them in the first place). They are stuck in ‘can’t’ – so giving a reward to people who can, only punishing those who can’t – you force them into being stuck in can’t.
Without figuring out why they can’t – you have disabled them – you’re the bad guy – and literally the bad teacher. Bad – because you are no longer teaching at all – you are only trying to control and abuse a child stuck in can’t. No amount of rewards will make a child to be able. No amount of rewards will enable the child to understand you or your lesson.
This is direct discrimination against minority groups who are ‘Unable” or disabled by the task and by the reward for being able.
5. Punishments – let’s look at punishments separately
· Stay in at recess and do the work: aside from this being illegal – as it takes away the child’s human right to rest – it won’t make them able. If they can’t now – they won’t be able later – you are just delaying the issue and throwing fuel on the fire – while leaving yourself open to litigation.
This may actually be preferred to children who are being bullied in the school yard or hate recess because they have no friends or hate it because they don’t know what to do with themselves during that time (eg; no structure so they feel displaced)
· Stay after school: this is also illegal in many places – due to having to catch a bus to get home – and it being the only option to be able to get home.
You are still delaying the inevitable “Can’t” – because you still haven’t addressed why they aren’t doing the work – or why they are behaving a certain way.
This may be seen by some children as a good thing – if they have bad home lives, staying at school may be their only option or only tool to keep themselves safe. If you find out the why of the behaviour – you’d know this and may be able to help them by calling the police or CPS or social services etc. Or perhaps their peers beat them up after school – and to avoid it – they are getting in trouble so they can avoid it… do better – find out why.
This disadvantages lower income people who rely on public transport – but also remember it’s illegal in most places.
· Tell them to sit in the corner of the classroom next door for a while:
This is not helpful at all. This is bullying. You shame them in front of two classes instead of one. This will escalate the behaviour not fix it. It will cause them to hate you and timeouts have been proven to not work – please read my books or google it to find out why. The research says this doesn’t work – so stop doing it.
If the room is too loud, busy etc, this will also escalate the child – if noise and business is what triggered them into the behaviour in the first place.
Did you know that ADHD kids are told off and segregated more than any other child (around 80 % more)…. Next in line is the BIPOC / BAME communities – so you are literally doing what they did during the segregation of people of colour.
· Tell them to sit in the hall or outside the room for a while:
This is the same as above – it’s a timeout that will never work – even if they oblige you and go, it doesn’t change anything. Also, when I was in primary school – I would leave the classroom – go get my bag and go home. It did nothing. I’d return the next day and do the same behaviour because nothing had changed for me… so this was repeated until I moved into the next year level and didn’t have that repetitive useless moronic tool used on me anymore.
Again – same as the one above you are segregating one type of student (often the ADHD or BIPOC/ BAME communities)
· Sent to the Principals office, or the principal called to collect the child:
For starters- if you are sent to the office, the principal doesn’t know what you did and can’t help – because of that – what exactly do you as the teacher expect them to do – they can’t punish based on no information and shouldn’t even if they did – because punitive measures never work, because they don’t solve the issue
Secondly – if the principal collects the child, the teacher still doesn’t have time to explain the situation – and the principal still can’t punish the child because it solves nothing. This is what is called “a journey in fruitlessness” – google it if you haven’t heard of it.
Same again – segregation of minorities as most ‘white’ teachers see minority peoples behaviour as not fitting in or problematic… they are disproportionately affected. Why you ask? Because the curriculum, bias of education and rules are set up for white middle class students without disabilities or differences to succeed, and anyone else to fail.
· Call the parent:
I laugh at this one every time. When I was a child, the school called my parents all the time for my ‘bad behaviour’. My father worked for a business that was a long drive away, and was often out on-site visits – so they couldn’t reach him. My mother worked in town, nearby, but was not allowed to leave work. The only option was to talk to her (not my father) over the phone or after work (which for my parents was after 6pm)… which was well after the time that teachers had left the school. So, they’d talk to them over the phone, my mother was a people pleaser and would just say “yes yes”, then do nothing and ignore them, because she knew they weren’t listening to me or solving the issue. My father would state very sternly indeed: “why did she do that?” to which the teachers had no answer because they didn’t bother finding out… to which he’d say “then go find out and stop bothering me”.
The school obviously stopped calling my dad…. He’s autistic too, and in his engineer logic brain – he always asked why and never accepted things like “because that’s the way we do it” or “because I said so” or “because she’s naughty”… because he was smart and wanted to know why and wanted to find a solution. After all – that was his job – to find solutions…. Not to repeat stupidity.
Once a teacher told me to write a letter to my parents to explain my behaviour instead of calling them. So, I did. In great detail I explained what the teacher was doing wrong, how they were harming not only me but other students in the class, and how they could fix it, but that they wouldn’t listen to me and instead wanted me to write it down to tell my parents – which wouldn’t help at all – because the teacher was the problem.
When the teacher read the note, they screwed it up and threw it in the bin. When my mother finally saw the teacher – he handed her the letter (which he’d retrieved from the bin for her). She read it and said “I think this is for you, what do you want me to do exactly” – to which he had no idea and couldn’t answer…. Because I’d already solved the issue for him, but he was the one refusing to do it.
This detriments parents who do not have a parent who doesn’t work (two income families who have to work to survive).
· Boys being told off for ‘bad behaviour’ (especially violence) more than girls. Did you know that some psychs have researched that girls are more likely to put up with bad behaviour from teachers and bullies because they know they won’t be taken seriously – or they’ll be ignored, or not treated equally anyway – so they simply shut up and take it.
Did you also know that there’s a theory about boys being more aggressive because they are actually more sensitive to getting things wrong. Boys are meant to be ‘the backbone’ and ‘leaders’ of society, and when they fail – they feel it more strongly, and can’t control their RSD or nervous system responses as well as girls.
· Expulsion or suspension
Neither of these two things work – because if you remove the child and send them back to the same thing – nothing has changed. Their nervous system has also now stored the trauma and event that caused the expulsion – so every time they are triggered by that same/ similar thing – the behaviour repeats.
This disadvantages pretty much everyone of every minority group. It harms parents who can’t take time off work to be home with them, it disadvantages BIPOC /BAME and autistics…if you involve police (because they are now a target for the police in some countries and are sometimes shot for a nervous system response). Some of these expulsions/ suspensions are due to unfollowed or ignored IEP’s or 504’s or EHCP’s etc.
Remember that your culture is not every ones culture. The things that harm you aren’t the same things that harm others. Acknowledge your extreme privilege.
Start looking at your policies and procedures and try to see the discrimination and harm that they cause. There is always another way…. Try Ross Greene’s CPS method – it’s inclusive of all – doesn’t disadvantage people, and tries to create equity, safety for all and accountability at the same time… it is not ‘without’ consequences – which is the biggest problem with convincing teachers to try other methods – they just assume that if the child isn’t caused pain or hurt by the consequence – then it isn’t a consequence. I assure you – CPS involves consequences.