Transcription Provided By: Caption First, Inc

Speaker: Jed Baker

Transcription provided by: Caption First, Inc.

Part 2

One of the most important triggers we can talk about is demands for work or difficult work. This is what we do in school settings. We give kids work to do.

So before I talk to you about how we might modify the work, change the trigger, or teach a replacement skill, I want to give you an example, setup the situation here.

So we have a situation where we have a teacher who is giving a young girl a math problem to do. It is place value. So place value is where you have a decimal point and he says to her, here is what is in the tenths column. Here is what’s in the hundredths column. What is in the thousandths column? So what is the first question he asks? What is in the thousandths column?

And she begins to screech and bang her head and yell but she is sitting with him but she is frustrated clearly, banging on her head and making a lot of noise.

He continues to say here is what is in the tenths. Here’s what’s in the hundredths. What’s in the thousandths place? Again, she is getting frustrated and yelling so he says well look. I’ve written it so just say the answer. So now he gives her the answer but she won’t say it out loud. She continues to express her frustration, to squeal, and to bang her head.

So let’s talk about what we could do here. For one thing, did this teacher use the 80/20 rule? We talked about that before. That is, did he give her 80% of what is easy before the 20% that is difficult?

No he did not because the first question he asked the student is what is in the thousandths column. Well that is the most difficult one. It is three spaces away from the decimal point and she couldn’t do it.

So even though he gave her the answer at some point, here I’ve written it, just say it, she won’t. Once she is upset, that’s it and that’s the issue for many of our really sensitive learners. Once they can’t do something, once they experience failure, it alters their mood. They’re upset and even if you try to help them, it may be too late.

So the 80/20 rule means set them up for success, almost what we would call errorless learning. Make sure she gets everything right the first eight or nine times before we give her something that is challenging. So we’re not going to test to see what she knows. We’re going to model it first.

Here’s what’s in the tenths column, here’s what’s in the hundredths column, here’s what’s in the thousandths column, okay? Now which one do you want to do so we can let her pick and make sure she picks the one that she can do so she experiences success, okay?

We can use visual supports to make it more concrete, right? So here is what is in the tenths. Here is what is in the hundredths. Here is what is in the thousandths again to set her up for success.

We can give her some choice of what work to do as well, you know or use her special interest. So we can say which one do you want to do, tenths, hundredths, or thousandths? Or we can talk about maybe she is a Pokémon fan or YuGiOh! Card fan and we can talk about these numbers as, you know, defense points in one of these Japanese anime card games.

So many of our students have attentional issues that we need to consider reducing the length or using timers for work because if we give her nine place value problems on a page, a student with attention issues will never get to the work. They’ll say I broke my pencil. I broke it again. Can I call my mom? You know, I think my knee hurts. Can I go to the nurse? They’ll never get to it.

But if we put one place value problem on a page, let’s say let’s just do one problem and then we’ll take a quick break. So we do the problem and then we do some jumping jacks. Now let’s do another problem. Great. Let’s do some push-ups. Now let’s do another problem. Let’s take a quick walk. Let’s do another problem. It’s going to take you a lot longer to get things done but you will get things done. Some folks need more of those sensory breaks.

Now if you have a verbal student – oh. Let’s talk about breaks for a second. Hold on. He or she is upset, screaming, banging her head. Should we give her a break?

Well one of the concerns is we don’t want to reward negative behavior but on the other hand, she doesn’t look like she’s trying to avoid the task. She is sitting there. She’s just frustrated. So it would be okay to give her a break from my point of view but we’d rather her, you know, ask for it than bang her head. Say I need a break and then we can give her a break.

So we give her a break. We get her calm by what? Our modes of distraction.Maybe different sensory input, a novel item, a special interest. Maybe we read a Disney magazine. She gets calm and now what should we do? Should we bring her back and start the work again? No.

Go back and do the 80/20 rule. Don’t bring her right back to the work that frustrated her. Go back and maybe play a couple games of tic-tac-toe and let her win so now she is in a good mood or then start some addition. Two plus two is four. Three plus three is six. Wow. You’re on fire today.

We’re going to create confidence. The issue here is we have to manipulate peoples’ moods, get them in a positive mood to be ready for work, okay?

Now if you have a verbal student, another thing you can do is explain the learning curve. This is really crucial and this is very much related to Carol Dweck’s “Growth Mindset”.

Twenty-five years of research is summarized in Carol Dweck’s book “Growth Mindset” and what she is saying is you get students to understand that intelligence is something that changes over time. It’s not something that you’re just born with. A certain amount of that doesn’t change, right? You get better outcomes.

If students believe that intelligence is fixed, it doesn’t change, students like that don’t want to take on a difficult task that might expose that they’re not smart. They don’t want to make a mistake and they don’t want your help, particularly your special ed help because all of that might indicate to them is that they’re not smart, they don’t have a high IQ.

On the other hand, if you get kids to believe that intelligence changes over time, what we call a growth mindset, then it’s okay to do things you don’t know how to do because that’s the only way you’re going to learn new things and it’s okay to make mistakes because that’s how you learn and okay to get help because that’s how you learn more.

This is what we call a growth mindset. We need to convince our students that they’re not supposed to know how to do these things. Place value; when I was a kid, that took me three months. Honey, you’re not supposed to know how to do place value yet, right? That may take a while, so what – we’ll do it together. I’ll show you how to do it. We need to have that growth mindset.

That leads right into the replacement skill, what I call trying when it’s hard. We want to teach kids that I don’t care if you get the work done right or wrong. I want you to try to see if you know how to do it. Now, if you don’t know how to do it, that’s fine. You can ask to watch first or ask for help.

I would say half of the kids who come in with diagnoses of oppositional defiance disorder who refuse to do work, the main emotion behind that is fear of failure, fear of being humiliated. What is the treatment of choice for fear? Gradual exposure, gradually facing your fear.

Rather than forcing them to do the work, gradually face that. Say oh, if they are saying I’m not doing this work; this is stupid, say you’re right. Don’t do it. Don’t do it but just watch but don’t do it. Then they watch. Okay but don’t do all of it but do you want to do this first part, just the first part? But don’t do the rest. Gradually they begin to do it.

If we give them that time, let them watch first or ask for help, then we’re not putting them in the position where they will fail because they’re going to see how to do it and get the help so that once they do it, they’ll do it right.

We can teach them it’s okay to ask for a break. We have to time our breaks, maybe two minutes because otherwise breaks can go on all day. And for verbal students, we can teach them to negotiate, that it’s not all or nothing. Instead of refusing to do it, you can say well can I do this part if, teacher, you’ll help me with that part?

And then what I like to do with the trying when it’s hard skills is put it on a reward program where we give points for trying when it’s hard. If you get enough points, we have a party. So if I have a classroom where I have lots of kids who are having difficulty dealing with difficult work, we say anybody who tries or asks to watch or takes a break and comes back again or negotiates, we put a point on the trying when it’s hard poster.

When we have enough points, we have a party or we go to the school store. In this way, we’re rewarding effort that is the process of learning, the growth mindset, not outcome.

What Carol Dweck showed us is that’s what’s important. The people who succeed more are those who have lots of failures, who make mistakes, but perseverate and keep going rather than those who just want to confirm that they’re smart or not, right? So being in a process of learning is what we need to reward.

When we use a reward system for trying when it’s hard, I like to do this as a group reward at least for highly verbal students because otherwise sometimes people can compete on their behavior chart and they’re trying to see who has more points.

So if one person in the class asks for help, that person gets a point for the whole class. So it highlights for the whole class that growth mindset, that oh I’m so happy you asked for help. You’re really learning. Or oh I’m so happy you took a break and then came right back and tried it again. Or I’m so happy you negotiated rather than refusing. So that’s the idea of using the reward system.

I try to avoid a loss system when students are frustrated with work because then we’re just adding fire to fire, that escalating power struggle. So for students who are refusing to do their work, I want to hold them to some task, right. You can try. You can ask for help. You’ll get points for doing that but if they refuse or they begin to knock over chairs, I don’t want to add more punishments at that point because that often adds fire to fire.

Now I want to talk to you about dealing with fear related to our last trigger, similar in certain ways. People are afraid to do work but I want to talk about fears in a more general way.

Maybe you have students who are selectively mute, who have an anxiety disorder about talking in front of other people despite the fact that they are able to talk. So that’s an example of an anxiety disorder.

When I have – for all students verbal or non-verbal, the treatment of choice for fear and anxiety is gradual exposure. So for example, if I have a non-verbal student who is afraid to go to the cafeteria despite the fact that we have made it less loud for them, then we could create a graduated hierarchy for them of exposing themselves to that cafeteria where maybe they just walk by the cafeteria. They get, you know, a point towards a reward. They go in the cafeteria for five seconds, they get two points. They stay there for ten seconds, they get more points and we reward successive approximations sustained in that cafeteria.

But if I have a verbal student, I can do more than just reward them for facing their fears. I can try to sell them on the idea by explaining the way anxiety works. So when I’ve had kids say with selective mute-ism as young as four or older, I have sat down and I have spoken to them about the way anxiety works.

I say to them all of us have an alarm system in our bodies and that alarm system tells us when there is a danger. Sometimes we have true alarms and sometimes we have false alarms. For example, if we were walking in the middle of the street with cars, we might have an alarm and that is a true alarm because it really is dangerous. We could get hurt by a car and so if our mind says danger, danger, you better run, get away from there, that’s a good thing. That’s a true alarm.

But sometimes we have false alarms like when our – our brain tells us danger, danger, don’t talk in front of the teacher or in front of these students and if they are students who like us and the teacher likes us, that is a false alarm because that is really not dangerous and our brain is sort of lying to us.

Sometimes we can inherit that sensitive alarm system that gives false alarms. There might be another person in our family, an aunt or an uncle or whoever who also had that very sensitive alarm system. It’s good for kids to learn about that so they don’t just think that that part of their brain is telling them the truth but they can begin to see that there might be this anxiety part of their brain that gives off false alarms that other family members had and overcame as well.

So once we’ve sold them on the is idea of the alarm system, we can explain that the only way to learn that these are really false alarms is to face some of those fears but we know that’s hard so we’re not going to make you face the scariest thing. Let’s create a list from least scary to more scary of these false alarms and we’ll give you a reward for facing each fear.

So for the selectively mute child, what we might do is say if you’re willing to nod yes or no in front of your teacher, that is worth a point. If you can talk through your friends or you whisper to your friend who then talks to the teacher for you, that’s worth two points. If you whisper to the teacher, that’s worth three points. If you can talk to the teacher in a regular inside voice, that’s worth four points.

So we can begin to create this hierarchy with a different amount of points for being able to face that fear. And just to give you an idea of this, when we use an encouraging system like this, it can take kids sometimes six months to a year before we see really major changes in facing some of those fears.

Other things we should think about when we talk about fears as well is how do we reduce anxiety in general. Well, there are certainly medications that can reduce anxiety. Some of the SSRI medications that are antidepressants are also anti-anxiety medications but there is a lot of good research as well on vigorous aerobic exercise, thirty minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise for maybe four to five hours can have an anxiety reducing effect similar to those medications and clearly with a better side effect profile.

So if we can get kids who have severe anxiety to develop an aerobic exercise program, we might see some reductions in their general anxiety that will allow us to do some of this exposure therapy which is what we call cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety.

In addition to the reward system I just spoke about where you reward a youngster for facing each step of a fear, we need to avoid loss systems for people who are fearful and anxious.

For example, we don’t want to get into a power struggle where we say to a little student, you know, well unless you can say it with words and ask me to go to the bathroom, then you can’t go. So we wouldn’t want to do that to someone say who is selectively mute because that is just going to create more anxiety for someone who is already anxious.

So we just stick with a reward system and we avoid loss systems when dealing with fear and phobia and anxiety.

No, you can’t have a piece of cake now but if you’re calm, I may have some beautiful consolation prizes behind curtain number two. So this is about helping kids learn to wait or know that if they don’t get what they want, there is always something else to live for.

So let’s talk about teaching students to wait, or accept no, or stop something fun. I want to describe a situation I had with a young kindergartener and my job was to teach him to play with other kids in the kindergarten class. He was a youngster with very limited language, just beginning to develop some expressive language.

So we walk into the classroom to help him play with other kids and I didn’t realize it was Valentine’s Day and as a result on the windowsill there were cookies and a cup of juice for each kid in that class for a Valentine’s Day party. Now what limited language he had, with proper motivation like cookies, the language begins to emerge. So he starts shouting cookie, cookie, cookie. So I say to the teacher, could he have a cookie and the teacher says oh no, no, that cookie is for our Valentine’s Day party, which isn’t for 40 minutes from now and if I give it to him I’d have to give it to everybody. And I’m thinking, uh no you don’t.