Unexpected Behavior

4/14/16

         This morning was going like any other morning, the kids were mostly on task and focused but some were distracted. We finished morning meeting and the CT was giving out class points for those who practiced "self control" by listening and paying attention with disturbing. The CT gives out the points on the Smart board on this neat little website that the kids really enjoy. So the students can see how many points they are at, how much more they needed for a prize, and if they gained a point. Well I have mixed feelings about showing the class their points because the students who didn't receive a point start to act out. Well one of the students with EBD (Emotional and Behavioral Disorder) noticed that he didn't get a point (as he really shouldn't have anyways) so he started acting out. He would write on the Smart board while the CT was teaching, then he grabbed all of Smart board tools and threw them across the room. His behavior escalated even more and the CT eventually just evacuated the entire class into another class while the behavior intervention specialist tried to help the situation.

         What I took from this experience is that it's really important to be mindful of the cause of the students' behaviors. I wasn't sure if the CT had realized that the point system was just increasing behavior problems for some of the students, and this, in my opinion, could have been easily avoided if the points were just kept more covert. However, on the other hand, it did work as a reinforcement for most of the students. One of my teachers once told me that one classroom management might work for most of the class but there's always some that it won't work for. So do you adapt or change your strategy to try and accommodate for those few students or try to make it work?