Objectivity

Step Back to get some Objectivity


Last week I took a few days to travel with my sister to the wonderful state of North Carolina. As a native Floridian, life long resident and dedicated teacher, I have had few chances to view the wonderful spectacle known as Fall. So as I was traveling last week and enjoying all the beautiful fall colors, I was communicating with my classroom on a few behavior problems that came up, mostly because of the routine changes.
As I was traveling up and down mountains and going in and out of good cell reception, I realized that I was able to come up with solutions and ideas to try, much quicker than when I was in the classroom. I was shocked and surprised at how quickly I could come up with some viable solutions for them to try in the classroom. I got a social story written, visuals made and sent back to the class for them to use. It made me aware that objectivity is so important! Perhaps even when I am at school and dealing with the behaviors, I need to find a way to step back from the situation and determine the best course of action sometimes. I might want to find a way to obtain more objectivity.
Do you have students that run away from class? I have two right now that like to do it and of course, they try it when I am not at school. So when I received the information that they were attempting to run, I first determined, from information my paraprofessional gave me, what the cause was. What are they getting out of the behavior. Once I had the reason behind it, I was able to tell her what needed to be done to help stop the problem. One child was running to get attention and one was running to escape the disruption of the classroom schedule caused by my absence and just different people doing things differently. I adjusted the frequency of the the reinforcers to an reinforcement everytime he did something correct instead of every other time. This helped and things got back to normal...well close to it.
Through this experience, I came to realize that sometimes stepping back from situations such as behavior problems in the classroom can actually give you more  perspective you need to see what really needs to be done and see the behavior for what it really is.
Take a look at these visuals for a variety of behaviors. As I was traveling, I realized there were many behaviors that I needed visuals for...poking, hitting, too close, and pinching, just to name a few.




One of the things I did was put together a social story for running away from class. Check it out.

Here is your Monday Freebie for today Enjoy.


Classroom Freebies Manic Monday
Have GREAT week!

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