Behavior & Classroom Equity

Educators know that some students are equipped to come to class and some are not. The reasons for this vary and there is varying agreement on who is responsible for equipping students for school. Some students arrive knowing how communicate effectively, knowing about writing, music, science, math, knowing how to make and keep friends, knowing how to concentrate, organise, dress, speak and behave to get the best from their education, and some are not.

Ollie Lovell (His Website Here), who I think is just aces- (Love his Deep-Dive Monthly Podcast), and who’s Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory in Action Book is on it’s way to my hands, interviewed Tom Bennet (His Company Website Here), Bennet is the lead behavior advisor to the UK Department for Education (DfE) and in February 2020 was appointed the chair of a new task force created by the DfE to tackle unruly behaviour in schools. He is the founder of researchED, a grass-roots organisation that raises research literacy in education. 

Before becoming a teacher, as a nanny for a special needs child (I can thank my dear friend Chloe for getting me involved in that), and a personal assistant to the preeminent social psychologist focused on Work Place Bulling -for some really extensive research on that, find Dr. Gary Namie here.

As a undergraduate teacher in training, working in 5th grade in a neighborhood school in the states, I remember marvelling at how easily my mentor teacher kept control of the students. I had minimal training or education in behavior management or support, like most university students when I began my practicum.

During my MS in Special Ed, I worked at special schools for students with extreme behavioral disorders- Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Emotional/Behavioral Disorder and a number of related disorders. The methods employed to teach appropriate behaviors were a significant amount of therapy, creating connection with students, clearly identifying rules and success criteria, teaching self-reflection and analysis, and extreme consistency in enforcement and application of rewards and sanctions by the staff. Teachers were trained in Applied Behavioral Analysis (now controversial), Positive Behavioral Intervention & Support (PBIS), as well as BF Skinner.

I went on to work in specialized programs within neighborhood schools in special needs & behavioral support, serving on the school’s behavioral intervention team, training teachers and teaching assistants in behavioral analysis and behavioral support.

In my move abroad, I began to understand how inconsistently teachers are trained in behavior, many expecting not to even have to teach these skills to students- but teachers are expected to cover all the material, meet with students, use their planning time productively, and get good results, “Pupils are missing out on 38 days of teaching each year due to low-level disruptive behaviour in the classroom, according to a new Ofsted report”.  The impacts of behavior are pretty well measured, the rates of application of sanctions on one group over another are also quite well measured- I’m still digesting some research from The Center for Civil Rights Remedies, “Lost Instruction: The Disparate Impact of the school discipline gap in California”, which finds that black and brown students vastly out number white students in missing school due to behavior. In the states, students cannot be suspended for their behavior if their behavior is a function of their disability, which is such a complicated situation, it’ll need it’s own blog post.

In understanding what teaching behaviors can do- it is not only ‘didruptive’ behavior, but productive, learning beahviors that can be learned how to work with partners, how to quickly transition, how to be ready for class, how to structure your work, how to organize, how to stay on topic… these are the kinds of behaviors that can help someone be successful for the rest of their lives.

I propose that teaching success behaviors may be the way forward to reducing over identification and overly strict application of sanctions on marginalized groups.

More on this as it comes.