TIM KNOSTER: Thank you. And well, you've already been welcomed multiple times today, right? So welcome again though. It is my pleasure to be here. It's nice to be talking about these issues and
actually be talking about it in my home state of Pennsylvania rather than running all over the place. So that's really encouraging. I know this event here, the first Implementer's Forum, is a major
accomplishment for a number of people within the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And in particular, it's really come to fruition, obviously, with so many strong school-based applications of these
things. So you folks are to be commended for all the heavy lifting and hard work you've been doing, understanding that there's always more to do when you go back. What I'm going to focus on here this
afternoon, which you're aware of to some extent but I want to kind of frame out how I'm going to approach it, is looking at the application of positive behavior, intervention, and support. But we're
going to focus exclusively on the classroom. Now 99% of you, if not 100% of you, are already involved in some capacity with school-wide positive behavior intervention and support, correct? Is there
anybody's that this is totally new to them, school-wide PBS? Okay, that's what I anticipated if there was one or two hands tops. For those of you obviously that are in different phases or stages of
implantation with school-wide PBS, one of the things that we find sometimes there is, if not a disconnect, a bit of a challenge that occurs with schools that are implementing and striving for fidelity
with school-wide implementation is the translation of practice from non-classroom to classroom-based settings. In some instances sometimes schools just kind of leave that to the teachers to figure out
on their own or kind of just presume it's going to naturally happen. And sometimes it does. But then on other occasions, that translation, for whatever reason, becomes challenging or problematic. So
what we'll be talking about here today are essentially the basic application of the principles of PBS that are school-wide. The only difference is our unit of analysis, or frame of reference or point
of focus, is a classroom. We're going to be distilling this down into at the classroom level in terms of what it looks like and sounds like at classroom practice level on an ongoing basis. All the
things, of course, we'll be talking about are going to be not just compatible, but consistent with school-wide application in a broader fashion or to a broader extent. Now as we do this, first and
foremost, my background is that of a teacher. I'm a special educator by trade. I've been a teacher my entire career and still consider myself a teacher. My primary responsibilities have been teaching
and pre-service at this point in time at Bloomsburg University as well as graduate level programming, but also working with schools and teachers and classrooms. If, for nothing else, I'm married to a
teacher. She's a kindergarten teacher, so she tends to ground me in reality rather quickly when I get a little bit too lofty or ivory tower saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that all sounds good, but.
You know, what about this situation? What about this situation? What about this situation?" Most of my teaching background, unlike most of you, was secondary and middle school even though I've worked
with lots and lots of people in elementary as well as pre-school environments and pre-school settings. We have a long block of time this afternoon together. I'm not going to talk at you per se for
three and a half -- for three hours or whatever the magic number is. What we will do is build in some breaks strategically along the way. There are some natural points where logically taking breaks
would make sense, but ballpark just for your planning purposes, in terms of your comfort, we're looking at probably about an hour and ten, an hour and 15 minutes first kind of block, then we'll take a
15-minute break. Then we'll come back, do about another hour, hour and 15. Then we'll take another 15- minute break and then we'll come back for, depending on when those breaks occur, anywhere from
about 35 minutes maybe up to 45 minutes for a third segment that we'll be looking at. Everything we will be looking at this afternoon would be considered tier one strategies, okay. We won't be looking
at or talking about tier two or tier three strategies per se. I mean, not that we can't talk about them if questions come up, but the focal point of all of the practices we'll be looking at will be
focused on good, universal, preventive tier one types of approaches distilled or translated down into the classroom level. So that'll be the way we go about focusing no these things. In addition,
along those same lines, what I'm going to try to do as much as I can is encourage you to try to think about a number of the concepts or principles that we're going to focus on here to try to think
about them in the first person, in your own personal lives as opposed to in just the third person in your professional life. What I found in my own life experiences, but also in working with lots of
people doing staff development, is the more people can connect concepts, themes, or practices to things in their own personal life, you can spend less time trying to remember things because they make
sense almost intuitively because you were able to connect it in some way. So we're going to do that and throughout the course of today or this afternoon, I'm going to ask you to engage in some
individual reflective exercises, some pair-share small group work as well. We'll look at a variety of different types of practices, most of them preventative practices. But we will also then look
towards the end of the afternoon session at some simple intervention approaches, because the reality is no matter how much you do a really good job at preventing and preparing to prevent and doing all
those proactive preventative strategies, still kids are going to engage in, at a minimum, what we call developmentally appropriate inappropriate behavior. So it's going to happen. We know
inappropriate behavior is going to happen. So we have to kind of be organized and prepared in advance as to how do we respond to those things, but we're going to look at how we respond to those things
in a way compatible and consistent with how we go about preventing those same very things so that all this together kind of creates and overall kind of gestalt, or an approach or a framework, to how
you would approach practice at a classroom level. Now my hunch is a number of you are going to be carrying back information, obviously, to the schools whom you're representing here. A number of you
are probably on leadership teams from your school-wide PBS teams back home. I believe everybody received on a thumb drive PowerPoint materials and hand-out materials like that. And I encourage you,
feel free to utilize this material, share those materials with people. If as you go back for the, both translation, maintenance, and generalization of the things that we'll cover here, if you have
questions or whatever, feel free to kick me an email. I'm pretty responsive to emails so feel free to do that. If can I can be of support to you outside of just out timeframe here that we have. So
with that and without much further ado, let me kind of frame a little bit how we're going to be organizing our thought here looking at classroom management in the form of behavior management. And in
particular, these things are going to be very consistent not just with school-wide PBS at a broader sense, but in particular should echo or sound very familiar to some of the comments that George
Segai mentioned this morning when he was talking about RTI and the connection of these things and how having academic RTI over here and behavior RTI over here called school-wide PBIS, it makes sense
to look at a blending or an integration. It's not just from a pragmatic standpoint that that makes sense, but at a conceptual standpoint it makes sense. I think when you really start to think about
what we're challenged with in schools, we have two primary types of outcomes that we're looking to try and obtain or facilitate with the kids that we work with, whether they're kindergarteners,
whether they're fifth graders, we're going to deal with the high school folks tomorrow. So we'll stop at the fifth or sixth grade level in here today. The obvious one is the academic learning, right?
I mean, that's what, quote unquote, "schools are for," everybody will tell us. We want them to be able to read, write, do math, all those types of things. So academic learning, academic outcomes,
absolutely essential. Those are the things that you all know for those of you that are practicing teachers of administrators in buildings, you know these are the things that you're scaled and measured
against particularly in the form of high stakes testing and all those types of things. Whether it's in Pennsylvania with PSSAs or New Jersey with their form or other states, everybody's kind of under
the same microscope, under the same type of pressures in terms of high-stakes testing. Academic outcomes are absolutely essential. They were, for what it's worth and no news to you, they were
important before we had high-stakes testing, right? We knew that all along, but the reality is we know that they are still obviously a centerpiece of what we're about in schools. However, I would also
argue, and increasingly more and more people are looking at this this way, is that the issue of social and emotional learning outcomes, or behavioral types of outcomes, are equally important. In fact,
real quick show of hands of here, how many people are actually practicing teachers other than today, day in and day out, with kids? A number of you probably are, right? My hunch is if not this year,
probably this year, but if not this year and past years, how many of you know of a kid that if you don't address the social- emotional learning issues, you can pretty much write off the academic side
of the street, right? I mean, there are kids that fit that profile, we know that. And to pretend it doesn't exist makes no sense whatsoever. It's counter-intuitive, totally illogical, and very na‹ve
at best, right? So we know that we have to look at social and emotional learning types of things. I would suggest that both are equally important to us as schools, not just in a pragmatic sense, but
in terms of what we're charged with as educators. Developing future citizens for Pennsylvania or wherever their kids are going to happen to reside. Now when we think about the infamous triangle
visuals that everybody has emblazoned in their memory banks at this point in time, you go to sleep at night and you close your eyes and you see triangles. You know, you probably want to seek some
extra help somewhere. But the reality is if we think about academics and behavior, there is a direct relationship between these things. So let me talk very briefly about the academic side of this
street, this particular visual with the lighting isn't showing up particularly well. So on this side we're talking about academic systems. On this side we're talking about behavioral systems. So you
have the triangle with an academic and a behavioral side. Want to call it RTI, makes sense to me. So you can call it that as well. On the academic side, when kids struggle academically in schools, in
classrooms, while there's lots of factors that go into the struggling, you could probably describe most kids' circumstances when they struggle on academic issues as struggling for one of two primary
reasons. Either the kid has what we call an actually skill deficit. He doesn't know how to phonetically decode a sentence. He does not know how to read for comprehension. He does not how to do
two-digit by two-digit multiplication. He does not know how to do whatever the academic task that he or she, I'm always saying, could be she, that the student is being asked to do. They just have a
skill deficit. They just do not have the skill set. Now if a kid is not struggling academically for that reason, what you tend to have is a kid who's struggling for what we may call a skill fluency
problem, or mastery problem. In other words, this is a kid who kind of fits the following profile. Gets a problem right, gets a problem wrong. Has a good day, has a bad day. Kind of does okay
sometimes, but not okay the other times. In other words, inconsistency in academic performance. In other words, if he didn't have, or she didn't have, some degree or elements of the skill set already,
you wouldn't at least see a little bit of the positive inconsistency that's going on. So it's not an absolute skill deficit, but it's a skill fluency issue. Now the reality is whether a kid has an
academic skill deficit or the kid has an academic skill fluency issue, we know that the primary mode of intervention that's going to be required to help that kid either acquire the skill he doesn't
have, or she doesn't have, or to help them become fluent and master the skill that they have the kind of rudimentary components of. We know that that thing is called direct instruction. We know that
requires teaching. We know that requires teachers. In other words, if the primary mode of intervention was to simply continue to give the kid negative feedback in the form of, yes, she got another
failing grade. I'm going to call your parents again because you failed again on this. I'm going to keep you in from recess because you didn't complete your math assignments correctly. I'm going to
suspend you out of school for a couple of days because you're doing well on your academics, which makes no sense, right? But if that was the primary mode of intervention to help that kid learn how to
either read, write, do math, or whatever it is, not only would the likelihood of that kid all of a sudden magically finding religion and being able to read, write, and do math very, very low, but what
might we start to see with that kid that we might not have seen before? Behaviors, right? In other words, we can develop problem behaviors, right? We can absolutely do that. In other words, we know
that in general, that approach to trying to remediate an academic skill deficit or remediate an academic fluency issue would not work particularly well and it would be totally illogical and crazy for
us to use it as an approach. It would violate everything we know from an educational standpoint as teachers. It doesn't mean that negative feedback might not be a part of the process, but that's not
going to be the predominant or primary mode of intervention. We're going to provide direct instruction and we're going to provide encouragement and reinforcement system along the way. Now let's talk
about that related to the behavioral side of the street. When kids struggle with behavioral issues, from my perspective, they struggle for one of two reasons. And they're the same ones as in the
academic side. Either one, they have what we call a skill deficit. They just do not know how to use words to remediate a problem with another peer. They do not know how to share. They do not know how
to do to whatever it is they're being put in a situation to do in terms of acting a certain way, they just don't have the skill set whatsoever. If kids don't struggle from a behavioral standpoint with
a skill deficit issue, they struggle with a skill fluency, or mastery, issue. This kid fits the following profile, very similar to the academic side except the only difference is it's not academic
difficulty, it's behavioral difficulty. He has a good class period and a bad class period. Or maybe in a class period, a good ten minutes and a bad ten minutes. Or he has a good week and then a bad
week. We have inconsistency, fluctuation, in his ability to socially navigate, or her, to socially navigate the hallways, the classroom, the playgrounds, the cafeteria, the bus ride, all of these
types of environment situations in context. But we get that inconsistency. Now the big question then becomes, and it's rhetorical, you can answer it if you want, but it is rhetorical: why would we
expect kids to all of a sudden learn how to behave appropriately if our primary mode of intervention was to simply keeping telling them, yes, you screwed up again. Yes, you're going to stay in for
another recess, so I'm going to send another note home. How about an afterschool detention? How about four or five of them? And oh, maybe when we get to older kids, maybe with some younger too, maybe
some other type of alternative settings that we're going to put you in. If that's the primary mode of how we respond to kids that are struggling behaviorally, we know that that's not going to
particularly well And in fact, you're already probably going to have a kid that's very vulnerable and at risk already to develop chronic problem behavior, think top of the triangle, that we're going
to kind of nudge and bump and push our way up there as soon as we can get him or her there because of our intervention approaches that we've historically used in schools. So the key to understand
first and foremost from my standpoint about classroom management and management in general is to understand that we need to view academic and behavioral issues hooked at the hip. They are one in the
same in terms of our approach, thus a response to intervention approach. And we ramp up, gear up, ratchet up, or use whatever kind of up statement you want to use. But we increase our intensity in the
intervention design that we put in place based on how kids respond to what we do. But it requires us to proactively kind of design these systems or structures that we can move from tier one to tier
two to tier three respectively as needed. And hopefully not needed, but we know the reality is we will have situations where it will be needed. Now let's think a little bit about behavior specifically
because that's what we're going to be focusing on most of the time here this afternoon. But don't lose sight of the fact there's a direct relationship with the academics. On the behavioral side of the
street, this age-old kind of question is, what causes problem behavior? Is it nature? Is it nurture? We could have very healthy philosophical debates over that. Those philosophical discussions go much
better over a couple of beers late in the evening. They become maybe a very, very just interesting discussions. But it's really a false dichotomy. Kids don't come with the nature/nurture separation on
them like a jigsaw puzzle: here's my nature side, here's my nurture side. It doesn't work that way. I mean, kids come as a total package, right? And the bottom line is as teachers, those of you that
are classroom teachers, you inherit the kids that come to you, you don't get to pick and go, I'll take that one and that one and that one to teach this year. Doesn't work that way. Oh, and I'll trade
this one for two players to be named later. You don't get those options too often. I know people sometimes try to kind of dovetail and manipulate class lists a little to try to accommodate diversity
balance supports and all those things. I'm not saying it's totally random in nature, but the reality is we inherit who we get. We don't get to pick and choose along the way. So let's think about this
nature/nurture issue just to kind of both dispel it but also put it into context to understand how it directly relates to what we look at with classroom management. I want you to think about in your
own personal lives, I want you to think of how many people know someone that fits this following kind of scenario I'm going to give you. You know of someone that you can't remember the last time that
this person was so physically sick, right? Cold, flu, that kind of stuff. That they ended up needing to miss work. In other words, I'm not saying they never feel -- they never not feel a 100%, but
generally speaking, this person does not get sick a lot. Now that doesn't mean they didn't miss work maybe, that's a different discussion. But that they just don't get sick a whole lot, that they're
pretty healthy and they just rarely ever really get sick. How many people know somebody that fits that profile? Most of us do, right. Most people know somebody that fits that profile. Now let's take
the same kind of question though and kind of flip it around a little. How many of you know someone that fits the following scenario? As soon as somebody's sniffing or coughing in the faculty room or
you've read an article in the local paper about flu season coming or, in other words, as soon as something starts to spread around, you can pretty much anticipate that they're almost, not by choice
maybe, but you know they're going to be first in line to get it. They're going to start coughing, sneeze -- somebody's coughing right now. So how many people know somebody that fits that profile? They
get sick a lot, right. So in other words, what we have is diversity, if you will, relevant to the issue of resiliency, and that's an important concept to understand. We have diversity in resiliency
relative to physical illness, or physical health issues. Some people get more sick or are more likely to get more sick. Some people are less likely to get sick as often as other people, right? Kind of
the same way kids in classrooms kind of fit: they come in a diverse package of more resilient and less resilient kids as well. Now let's take that biological/physical health piece and let's kind of
stretch that a little bit over to kind of dealing with stress and/or emotional health. How many people know somebody that fits the following profile? This person is somebody who is meticulous at
planning. They are a phenomenal organizer. And if you were going to organize some major event, this is the person that you want on your team. They are really good at it, but once something doesn't go
quite according to plan, they're like a deer in the headlights on Route 80 and they just frozen for -- and they just -- it's not that they can't -- but they really have to work at extemporaneously
problem-solving. They can plan. They are phenomenal planners, but they have difficulty with like, wait, that wasn't the way it was supposed to go. How many people know somebody that fits that profile,
right? Some of us? All of us probably mostly. Now I'll take the same scenario, turn it around again on its head. How many people know somebody that fits this following profile? That you can't remember
the last time you ever saw this person really sweat. In other words, they just seem to go with the flow no matter what kids do, no matter what a parent does, no matter what occurs, they kind of just
problem solve it. And even though to them on the inside they're sweating and working, they look like they're so calm, cool, and collected. In fact, if this person I'm describing isn't you but it's
somebody you know, you probably have said, "Could you fail once in a while just for the rest of us to let us know it's okay?" Right? How many people know somebody that just really -- they're a
proverbial cat. Like you hold them upside-down, land paws and purring, right? How many people know somebody like that, right? Again, diversity and resiliency and dealing with extemporaneous types of
things. Now as a teacher, I will be the first one to admit, and for what it's worth, I still consider myself a teacher. I just have 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th graders. And make no mistake about it,
that's not a punch line. I believe that wholeheartedly with probably about at least a third of the students that I interact with at the undergraduate level. Some of them are phenomenal,
pre-professional, going to be excellent teachers. And some I'm really scratching my head saying, somebody's really either wasting a lot of tuition or we need some more frontal lobe development before
this is really going to happen anymore. So fundamentally, in some ways, some freshmen, sophomores, and juniors or seniors are no different than freshmen, sophomores, and juniors and seniors that I've
worked with in high schools. So the issue though relevant to this has to do with thinking about kids in those types of situations in terms of resiliency, those kids are coming to school, you're
elementary of course, not secondary, they're coming into your elementary school settings and on a bad day with a given kid, my hunch is you've had a similar thought and I, again, I freely admit it.
I've had this thought. I sit there and I think about a kid or I look at a kid and I'm like, what makes this kid tick? I mean, I'm trying to get inside of his head, or her head, and figure out and
sometimes I would say, I wish I could get in there and do a little bit of engineering, neurological changing myself, right? I mean, we've all had those moments with given kids. Kids that really kind
of confuse us and probably in some cases frustrate us. And depending on what they're doing, might even scare us somewhat in terms of the things they engage in. The reality is though we don't have the
technology to do that. And I would say arguably good thing, because I might have tried it. We don't have the technology. And even if we did, it wouldn't be the right thing to do, right? So when you
think about this nature and nurture thing, out of the two of these, they both exist. They're both real. They tend to ebb and flow based on circumstances. But out of the two, what is the thing that we
have the most direct influence over? And please notice I did not use the word control. Most direct influence over, nature of nurture? The nurture, clearly. It's the environmental side of the street.
In other words, that's the stuff that we have the greatest degree of influence on. And I deliberately don't use the word control. But we have the most direct influence on. So let's kind of think about
this notion of classroom management relevant to understanding how we nurture the environment, how we engineer the environment, how we influence those things that we have the greatest degree of
influence over in a way that is mostly proactive rather than reactive, constructive rather than destructive in the process. Now the first thing I'd suggest in terms of understanding classroom
management is I think -- as a field, as a profession, I think one of the big reasons why we struggle with really understanding classroom management and in particular translating it into, how does this
fit into school-wide PBIS or PBs depending on how you're approaching things, comes from the term itself, the word management. When you hear the word manage, what does that suggest you're going to do?
Control, absolutely. We manage things all the time. We manage our budgets. We manage our grocery lists. We manage all sorts of things. But I don't know about you, but I have enough trouble controlling
my own behavior on a daily basis. I mean, that's a full-time job for me. It really is. And to think, to have the audacity, or the naivety, to think that I'm going to control right now in this large
classroom what every single one of you are thinking and doing at every moment in time is setting myself up for failure. I'm not going to be able to control that. I can't control that. And the problem
when we approach classroom management from an orientation of control, it puts us more so into a policeman mode than it does into an instructional mode. We're no longer in the educational arena, we're
in the crime control arena. So I'm going to use the term classroom management today. But when I say classroom management, what I mean by it is the following. It's teacher self- management of
instructional behavior in group settings, okay. Teacher self- management of instructional behavior in group settings. Justice was alluded to earlier today when John Thomasine talked, Jim Palmary
talked, George Segai talked, and other breakout sessions talked. It's about the adult behavior. And if we can influence and manage our own behaviors and organize systems of supports for us to then in
fact increase the likelihood that we act in certain ways, what we will see are better results with the kids that, in some ways not only the ones we've been struggling, but in general all of the kids
in general. It helps us to operationally get at this thing or this notion, notice classroom climate. Now take a minute or two here I want you to start with this as an individual task. If you're a
classroom teacher, this will be an easy one for you because you don't have to go too far down memory lane to do this one. For those of you that are administrators, think about the teachers that you
work with and support. For those of you that are PBS coaches, think of the staff at the schools that you're facilitating and supporting along the way. Or anybody else that is working to support
teachers, think of the teachers that you've been working with. All of us have what we call, or what I like to call, our little pet peeves. The little things that kids do that, by themselves, are not
that consequential. It's not the big stuff, but it's the little stuff. But the little stuff, when it becomes chronic and it occurs and occurs and occurs and occurs and occurs, it is like the
proverbial fingernails on the chalkboard. It's the stuff that can just drive us nuts. And what it does is, frankly, is it lowers our degree of tolerance and/or resiliency to probably manage our own
behavior because we're getting worn down by this chronic stuff that's occurring. I want you to come up with some examples of what you would call either your pet peeves or the pet peeves of people,
teachers, that you work with. And then once you come up with a couple examples, I want you either in a pair-share or at your tables, however you want to do this is fine. I know some of you are here
intact in teams, some teams have split up to go to sessions. So whatever works for you. But I want you to share this what at least one other person and vice versa. I'm going to give you about two to
three minutes to do this task, okay. So first come up with some examples individually, then pair-share small group scenario, and then we'll come back large group with it, okay? I've got the clock for
you and you're on it. All right, allow me to interrupt you and try to interject here. Now you can tell right away that you're all involved with education because if you try that in a large group
setting with anybody else other than educators, they keep talking. So thank you, I appreciate that. Didn't use visual signals or anything, you actually all just came right back. It's wonderful. Let's
get -- we're just going to get some examples of these little kind of pet- peeves out here. We're not going to exhaust the universe. Now if you have a burning you've got to get out here and it's that
cathartic, please make sure I know that and we'll get it out here so everybody can kind of analyze it and think about it. But my hunch is there's going to be a lot of similarity, but there will be
differences based on your experiences. So what are some examples, just some common examples here? Please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: When kids that know another kid's trigger and they kind of -- TIM KNOSTER: So
the kids that know what sets another kid off and they're constantly picking, picking, picking, picking, picking without being noticed at picking. Yeah, they're very good that aren't they some of them?
Some of them, not all. Some think they're good at it, but you catch them really easily and the other ones are really good at it. Other examples. What are some other examples of those little tiny
things that can wear you down? AUDIENCE MEMBER: That child that thinks they have a degree in Education. TIM KNOSTER: Ah, yes, that child that thinks they have the degree in Education who's clearly
more qualified to run the class from his or her perspective than you are, right? Okay, follow you, yup. They're always going to one-up you. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I hate when the kids say brah. TIM KNOSTER:
Brung? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Brah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: "Brah," like brother. TIM KNOSTER: Oh, brah or bro, depending on -- okay, so yeah, in other words, using some other type of vernacular other than what
would normally be used, okay. Other examples, please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Tattling. TIM KNOSTER: Tattling. You get at older levels too, it just looks different, but tattling, right. Other examples.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Kids talking while I'm trying to teach. TIM KNOSTER: Oh, yeah, that one's tough, right. Kids talking. Or if they're not talking, you give a direction like I'm giving a direction to
Geraldine and as soon as I get done giving the direction -- AUDIENCE MEMBER: They start talking. TIM KNOSTER: Well, you ask me, what are we supposed to do? And I'm like, uh, hello? Right, now you
don't do that, but I know you're thinking it if you're anything like me. You're thinking, you're like, didn't I just go over this? AUDIENCE MEMBER: We've been seeing a lot of arguing back with
teachers. TIM KNOSTER: Arguing back, right. And again, we might define or describe that differently, attitude, disrespect, whatever it might happen to be. But in other words, kids done this, you've
said stop doing this. And then they either want to get into a debate with you, a negotiation with you. And my hunch is, again, those of you that are teachers, aren't some kids really good at
bait-and-switch? I mean, they drag you into discussions and then like two minutes later, you're like catching yourself saying, how did we get here? I came over to simply tell him to knock it off and
get back to work, and now I've lost a minute and a half to two minutes here and, oh, yeah, I've also lost some other kids along the way here. And now I've got to really struggle to kind of get back to
a cadence or a flow of what's going on in the room, right. Other examples. What are some other common examples of pet-peeves, please? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Making noises. TIM KNOSTER: Noise-making, right.
Not any particular noise, probably a variety of them. Noise du jour, right? Whatever's going on. And it's interesting too, sometimes those types of things tend to be contagious. All of a sudden, one
comes in chirping like a frog and all of a sudden, you got a bunch of frogs in your room after a couple hours or whatever it is. I mean, these are all common examples, right, of things that can wear
you down. None of them by themselves, if you took any one of the behaviors you just shared here and took it out, put it under a microscope, and really analyzed it for that one occurrence, it's not the
end of the world, that one little instance. But when it becomes chronic, it becomes a pattern, it becomes consistent, what it does is it essentially raises up what we would call the behavioral noise
level. Sometimes literally, it's nosier, but if it's not literally noisier, it still ramps up though the level of behavioral things that are going on. Not that any one thing itself is so dramatic by
itself, but it makes it harder to manage, operate, keep the flow of instruction going. And it just can eventually wear you down, right. These are all examples of what we would call those pet-peeves,
the little things. Now the reality is that most pet-peeves can be addressed, most, addressed proactively through the application and use of the same things you're looking at with school-wide
application at the classroom level. In other words, what we're going to look at today, and again, to reiterate, to put in language that George talked about this morning, one of the primary basic
themes he talked about was the importance of doing a couple of things really well, right, instead of trying to do everything. Pick some things and do them well. From my perspective, if you do these
couple of things relevant to classroom management well, all the other stuff starts to fold into place not perfectly, but more efficiently over the course of time. In particular, we're going to look at
three preventative approaches, in particular rapport building. My hunch is everybody in the room has heard the word rapport. But I'm going to try to talk about it both conceptually but then
operationally of how do you go about building rapport with a kid that doesn't look like he or she wants to build rapport with you. Because we all have kids that fit that profile, right? Hopefully not
a lot of them, but we all have had kids that fit that profile. So we're going to look at rapport building. We're going to look at the issue of establishing clear expectations, the exact same process
that we look at school-wide distilled into the classroom level to make it contextually fit the classroom. And not all classrooms are the same, right. The operational definitions of an expectation
might look different in the art room versus the science room versus the gym versus, you know, the kindergarten classroom versus the third grade classroom. There's going to be some similarities, but
there's going to be some differences because the context is different as well. And then we're also going to look at this issue of positive reinforcement or acknowledgment systems. The key is with
these three preventative pieces, each one is important in and of itself but by itself is insufficient. In other words, you're going to get the type of kind of preventative or prophylactic effect in
minimizing the likelihood of inappropriate behavior by just doing one of these really, really, really, really well. The key is we have to look at doing all three of these things in harmony or concert
with one another. And what happens is, and this is a good way to kind of think about these preventative approaches, is kind of picture them like a three-legged stool that you sit on. While each leg is
important and bares weight by itself, where the strength of the stool really comes from is the inner connectedness between the three legs. You knock out a leg or make one leg a little shaky or wobbly,
that stool was a whole lot less safe to be sitting on. Doesn't mean you couldn't balance and teeter on it, but it's not real efficient to work with it. So each of these three aspects of prevention:
rapport building, expectations, and reinforcement are equally important and they also interrelate or feed off of one another as well. They tend to work in concert with one another reasonably well. And
hopefully that'll become crystal clear as we kind of move forward. In addition to that though we also have to have intervention techniques. Now to de-jargonize this further, if you want to say
prevention is proactive and intervention is reactive, works fine by me because that's kind of what it is. We have to have planned in advance what are going to be the ways in which we respond when kids
do act inappropriately. Now let me be clear about this and we'll talk about this a little bit later on this afternoon. I'm not saying you have to try to think of all of the things that kids might do,
in particular, behaviors like hitting, screaming, spitting, swearing, stealing, scratching, poking eyes, all that kind of stuff. But rather, when certain types of behaviors occur, how am I going to
respond to it? And when other types of behaviors occur, how do I respond to those? And then to be consistent in how I respond. So you can substitute in any type of inappropriate behavior, one, for
either of those types of responses. The other thing though to emphasize here is that while these are, from my perspective, the most important kind of primary preventative pieces, it doesn't mean that
there aren't other things that are relevant. For example, one you'll see up there isn't physically arranging the room. Of course that's important how you physically arrange the room. It's important
for the ebb and flow of traffic and activities for your kids. It's also equally important for your ebb and flow as you proactively try to guide kids in the learning process. But having said that,
these three things, the rapport, expectations, and reinforcement are the most pivotal pieces. If you can put these three things in place, you can manage and figure out how to physically arrange kids
relatively efficiently once that starts to happen. The other thing to keep in mind with this is that you're going to have pro-action and reaction and both are important, but you want to think about
how you invest your time and energy kind of the same way that we look at making personal investments in either retirement or things like that. In other words, think of a classroom, those of you who
are teachers, you don't have to think long and hard on this, but think of any given classroom. As a teacher, I'm going to invest my time and energy lots and lots and lots of ways through a typical
school day. I'm not just going to be doing behavior management or classroom management, right? I've got paperwork to do. I have the -- oh, this other thing called instruction, right, and curriculum.
So I've got lots of things I have to invest my time and energy in. But there is going to be a portion of my time, every day, that I'm going to invest in classroom management. Sometimes I invest more
time on a given day. Sometimes less time on a given day. But I have to invest some time every single day and with my kids in classroom management. So what I'm talking about here now is that one
portion of your time that you're investing in classroom management. I'm not talking about all of the time in the classroom. It's just that portion. That portion of classroom management time should be
balanced. At a minimum, what you're striving for is 80% preventative. And at a maximum, 20% interventive, or reactive. Those are minimum and maximum goals or targets. Now the nice thing is, the more
competent, confident, and experienced we become as teachers, that 80% starts to bump or morph upward to 85, 88, 90, 95, maybe even 98%, rarely ever 100%. If it does get there, play the lottery because
you're being very lucky. Because it's usually -- I mean, kids are going to have issues that are going to surface, even in the best-run classrooms, right. But we want to have that 80:20 balance
minimum. If we do that, what we're going to find is we're positioning ourselves in a way to be effective at rapport building and reinforcing the expectations once we've established them. And the other
thing that's powerful about this is when you do have to intervene and redirect, it's that much more powerful when you do it. Because it's not occurring at a higher frequency, it's occurring at a
proportional rather than disproportional frequency. So we want to look at a balance here of this 80:20. We're going to look at, in a moment here, rapport building and then that'll get us up to the
first break we're going to take. Then when we come back from break, we're going to look at expectations and reinforcement systems. And then after we take that break, we're going to come back and look
at the reactive types of intervention approaches as well. Now in terms of behavioral issues, one of the things that I've had the luxury of doing over the years is, as George Segai talked about, most
of my initial background in PBS endeavors were tier three and tier two types of situations. Red zone, whatever you want to call it, right. But having said that, one of the benefits of those
experiences for me at least has been that over years I've had the chance or opportunity to talk with lots and lots of individuals who had histories of behavioral challenges. Sometimes in informal kind
of discussions, sometimes in actually formal, what we call, clinical interviews even, right. Those kids or people have ranged from as young as about three years old in some preschools, and it's
amazing sometimes what three-year-olds will do, especially ones with true emotional issues. All the way up through working with some of adults in adults adjudicated situations as well. So it's kind of
a big age range that I've had a chance or a luxury to interview and talk with people over the years. And in particular, I'm always interested or fascinated in getting a sense of how they've kind of
viewed their life experience. In other words, all of us have stories to tell about our lives, right. You know, and the question is always, well, how did you get here? Where did you come from? And how
did you end up where you're at right now? Just to get a sense of that. And what's amazing to me is that consistently from person to person, story to story, interview to interview, people will say
either explicitly verbatim, or if not explicitly, very clearly implicitly when you read between the lines, they will describe their life experiences from their standpoint of any of the following of
these. And I'll read a couple of them because I know the visibility's tough in here. They'll talk about extreme feelings of loneliness, feeling disengaged, feeling devalued, powerless, incompetent,
unloved, all of these types of things, right. Now when you think about any of those feelings, if you want to call them that, not one of them is abnormal. Not one. Every single one of us in this room,
at some point in time probably in our lives, have felt lonely. We've all had that experience. We've felt a little lonely. All of us probably in here have at some point in time felt incompetent. We
were put in a position to do something that other people though we could do or we were quote unquote "ready for." But we didn't feel so ready for it, and as a result, we didn't do particularly well
from our standard. And we kind of stumbled, fumbled, or maybe even downright failed in terms of at least our own criteria, right. We've all had experiences like this along the way. But here's the
difference in terms of when they go from being normal experiences to becoming abnormal experiences and then that can lead to the development of emotional disturbances and disorders. Is that those
experiences probably, without knowing many of you individually, those couple experiences here and there were nested into a larger context of a lot of more positive experiences where if you failed at
something one time, you didn't chronically fail every time you tried to do something. You learned from the experience and you got better at whatever it was in terms of either the skill deficit or the
skill fluency issue you needed to address to perform the task. So over the course of time while we've all had experiences like that, they've been nested into a larger proportion of positives and as a
result, that has made us more resilient to be able to address life stressors in our lives. They become abnormal when they become disproportionately the world view or the life experience or life view
of the person of concern that tends to matriculate from tier one to tier two to tier three. And they become downright societally dangerous when we have someone in that tier two, tier three area and we
mix it together with exposure to drugs and alcohol and weapons. Then we get into real trauma or crises of society, right. So the actual root of an experience of any of these by themselves is not
fundamentally abnormal. But when it becomes the preponderance of the life experience, it tends to kind of taint or distort our world view on what's going on. Think of kids in classrooms that you know
are more at risk and more vulnerable that might fit into that profile down the road if something doesn't happen to try to help nurture and navigate and steer them in a more constructive direction over
the course time. But they key is we have to be able to do that in a way where we bring all of these levels of systems into play. Now let's take this same notion here, and again, I want to kind of
personalize this just a little bit, because good classroom management approaches, PBS application at the classroom level, takes these feelings on as the center of the bull's eye and tries to create
opposites or antitheses to what these types of things are. We want to ensure that our kids don't have a high preponderance of loneliness or feeling disconnected or devalued or powerless or voiceless
or unloved or uncared for. So good classroom management procedures try to insulate just as you and I generally probably have been pretty insulated in our life experiences so that we're resilient. We
want to build resiliency in kids. Resiliency just doesn't happen by itself. Some kids are more resilient based on how they come packaged when they come to school and some kids are less resilient. But
all kids can become more resilient based on what we do. That's the challenge. So let's take this though and kind of think about this personally. When you were coming in here, we only have the one door
to get in here even though some were sitting in here. Let's say as you came in here, as you walked in, you saw someone that you didn't come to the event with here, but you saw somebody, and this
probably happened to some of you anyway because it's kind of a networking event, who's really, really important to you, somebody who you're really comfortable around, somebody who you really enjoy
their company. And maybe it's somebody who you really are very comfortable where you even talk about personal stuff, not just professional stuff, right. In other words, I want you to envision you come
here and you weren't expecting to see them, but you see somebody who's really, really high value to you. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? And how are you acting? Let's kind of dissect that
a little bit. What's your thought process? What are the emotions or feelings running through you? And how are you going to act as a result of those things? What's the first thing someone's going to
do? Smile. So we're going to have body language, right. So we're going to have smiley faces, not sad faces, right. So we're going to have smiles. What else are we going to do? What else is someone
going to do? They're going to stand there and smile at each other from 20 yards away? No, of course not. What else is going to happen? All right, so well -- unless you got really long arms, you're
going have to physically move, right. So we're going to go over to where that person is and then we're either going to shake hands, hug, high-five, whatever our interaction pattern is, right. So we're
going to have touch. We're going to have smile. We're going to have proximity, right. So are you going to just get over there and smile and hug and look at each other? No, you're going to have a
conversation probably of some sort, right, based on your history and your common knowledge of one another. All these things are happening. And there's a lot of things internally that are happening
too. Endorphins are flying all over the place. If we were to have some type of imaging system on your brain at that moment in time, you'd be lighting up like a holiday Christmas tree. You'd be lights
flying all over the place, right. How are respiratory rate? Faster or slower? Faster, right. This is someone you like to be around you. You're getting excited and adrenaline's kicking in, endorphins
are flying, stimulating adrenaline to discharge, right. So you're breathing heavier. How about heart rate? Increasing in heart rate, right. Not decreasing in heart rate. There's a lot of stuff. There
are changes going on in that little instance that I'm asking you to think about physiologically, neurologically, right, emotionally, and then socially in the form of behavior. There are a number of
things that all kind of create a synchronicity together and all this stuff happens and then you start to move. We just don't randomly behave, right. These things are occurring because of all these
influences. Let's take the same scenario now, the exact same one. Sneak you by there, thanks. Except I'm going to change it about 180 degrees, even though it'll seem subtle on the surface. You walk in
here and let's say you're trying to come up to a table up here with the rest of your colleagues, but standing between the door and here, in other words, there ain't nowhere to get here other than
through here, is someone who, I won't say you hate, I won't put that on you. [laughing] But I want you to right in your own personal dictionary get it out, your contact list, page through, and come up
with a picture of, if I never saw this person for the rest of my life, I'd be a happy camper. Does everybody have somebody? I'd be shocked. Okay, seriously, is there anybody that doesn't because I
always want to meet Mother Teresa. We all have somebody, right? I have two, neither are ex-wives. I get asked that every now and then. I've been married once and still am happily. At least I think.
No. But I've got two people that come to mind. Now if you have more than two, we can talk later that's a different issue. But we all have somebody that fits that profile, right. What are you thinking?
What are you feeling? And how are you acting? I'll help you out on the thoughts to make it safe and clean, right. Crap. Right, that's probably gentler. You're like, ugh, ugh, right. So all right, so
you know that and you know you're not feeling real positive about the situation. So let's just deal with the behavior. What are you going to do here? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'd give a big smile. TIM
KNOSTER: Okay. So you put the plastic face on, whatever that looks like, and give a fake smile. And that's really good if you could keep your coping skills together. But if this is someone you really
don't want be around, that might be more of a challenge with someone who is just mildly aggravating versus very aggravating. But that's a coping skill. What else? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Don't make eye
contact. TIM KNOSTER: Don't make -- so you get a sudden interest in the pattern in the carpet. [laughing] Look at that. Or you inadvertently drop something and have to pick it up, right. I saw another
hand. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Get eye contact with the person [inaudible]. Get them to come to you. TIM KNOSTER: Oh, yeah, please, come, come, come. Save me, save me, right. Some of you might all of a sudden
realize your bladder's full. It wasn't before, but all of a sudden you're walking out, you're like, oh, man, do I have to go to the bathroom, right, as soon as you see them. And some people can
problem solve that quickly. Other people are like, oh, oh. You know, I mean, depending on how good you are on your feet and how quick you are at thinking and problem solving. Everybody in here is
packing, right? Cell phone of some sort, right. We're all packing. Be honest. Be honest on this. Who in here has never pretended to need to either send a text or get a text in order to avoid a
situation you didn't want to have an interaction with at that moment in time? Some, couple, couple. Not Mother Teresa, but the pope. Nice to meet you. No, isn't that an appropriate social problem
skill in this day? Wouldn't it be easier for me to get a text and pretend I'm texting rather than to have a negative interaction with somebody, right? I mean, that's appropriate social problem
solving. Now here's the good news with this. See, in your personal lives, in my personal live, I can pick and choose who I like and who I don't. I can hang out with anybody I want to, right. But in
our professional lives, none of us have the choice or the right to say who we will and who we will not establish rapport with, not if we're truly professionals. Some kids are harder, no question about
it. But we also know that if we don't do what we need to do to make the connections occur, we're going to lose that kid more than he's already, or she's already, lost, right. That's the difference
between our personal lives and our professional lives. As a professional, what we have to do, and it's so easy to say and so darn hard to do, is we have to violate what our human nature tells us to do
by avoiding an interaction with somebody who we're not particularly comfortable around and instead go into the light and approach that person and find ways to have interactions. So what I want to be
clear on here is I don't want to confuse rapport with being somebody's best friend, because some of you are probably visualizing like a best friend. Rapport is not being somebody's best buddy. That's
what rapport is. Rapport is nothing more than having a mutually understandable, caring relationship based on trust. Trust is the key to rapport. Trust is absolutely the key to rapport relevant to kids
that are hardest to reach for us as we're working with them. How many of you work with kids in and out of foster care? I would bet a number of you, right? Okay, here is kind of what I would call a
typical profile. Now I want to be really clear about this, please do not over-generalize. I said typical, not every kid in foster care has this experience. But in my experiences, most kids fit this
profile. When you talk with kids that go in and out of foster care, one of the first things they want to know is when am I getting reunified with my family, however the family was defined. Even if
that kid is coming from an abusive environment. And I mean really abusive environment. They want to know about reunification, right. Beyond that though, the other thing that they typically will say,
either explicitly or implicitly, is I want predictability, I was stability, and I want adults in my life that I can depend on. I've heard 16-year-olds, males and females that go in and out of foster
care, say, I want someone to set a curfew and hold me accountable to limits. I'm like talk to my 17-year-old, please. In other words, kids want that, but there's a natural rebellion that comes with
adolescence. So you get this rollercoaster ride. Anybody that's a parent knows that. You've been on it and may still be on the ride, right. Like Space Mountain with no lights. You just go for it. But
the reality is that kids in general want that predictability. Kids in general want that stability not just kids that go in and out of foster care, but kids that go in and out of foster care a lot,
they crave it. Because they've had a paucity of it in terms of experience-base, right. So we know that a lot of kids that go in and out of foster care oftentimes have come from difficult experiences
and we know they really want this predictability and connection with caring adults. And then they come to school and then sometimes, not always, but sometimes, those kids tend to keep us at more than
arm's length. They don't let us in quite as easily or as quickly, right. Why does that happen? It's totally illogical if somebody -- if I'm thirsty and somebody offers me something to drink, I drink
it. And if I'm hungry and somebody offers me something to eat, I'll eat it. If I'm craving this predictability, stability, caring relationship and connecting with adults and I have these teachers kind
of lining up to say, please, come, yes, yes, yes. And they like, ehh almost. You can almost see it with some of them, like a big coat of armor. Why does that happen? It doesn't make any sense, does
it? Why do you think? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Trust. TIM KNOSTER: Exactly, it hurts too much. In other words, if I have been burnt multiple times, I would suggest it would be abnormal for a kid to keep
coming in and letting his guard down all the time. He's actually creating protective layers of insulation by keeping people at arm's length for self-preservation because he's been burnt multiple
times, right. It just hurts too much when all of a sudden I get in there and then all of a sudden, boom, I moved over here now. And then boom, I moved over here now. Now the system is not designed to
do this. Please don't misinterpret what I'm saying. This is not a slam on the foster care system. I appreciate and have worked closely with people who operate foster care systems. They have a daunting
task. But a lot of times, systems, failures, funding, structures, eligibility, criminal justice overlap, whatever, tends to make foster care placements less stable, right. And kids can move in the
night. And families can get separated. And they're here, here, and here and here. So it's natural for someone in that experience to kind of say, "Well, wait a minute, I'm not just going to go in and
kind of bare my soul and just let this start to happen because then I get trampled on again." It's the issue of trust. Now here's the thing though to understand about connecting rapport and trust even
with the hardest to reach kids. Kids will let us in. But they will only let us in when they can trust us. And here's what makes it so darn hard, not allusive, but hard. They will let us in on their
timeframe not our timeframe. Most classroom teachers don't have to think long and hard strategically about building rapport with all of their kids. Ideally if it's a great class -- my wife's a
teacher. Sometimes one year she'll have a class of kids and she just hits it off with all of them and she says, this is a great class. And then the next year there's a couple of kids or a smaller
pocket of kids she's struggling more with and she's like, who in their right mind put these kids together? Right. In other words, I hope that every teacher, including myself as a teacher, has 100% of
their kids that you naturally make the connection with. If you do, again, play the lottery on that one too. That's a great thing. With those kids that you have a natural connection occurring, it kind
of does happen like friendships, but I don't want to misinterpret it as a friendship. It almost just happens on its own. You don't have to think long and hard about rapport building with those kids.
Thank goodness, right. I mean, think about it this way. When was the last time you thought about -- think of somebody as a friend, a good friend of yours. I think I need to build more rapport with
this person. You know, you don't think that way. It just happens naturally. It's with the kids though that it does not happen almost on its own. This is where we need to become strategic about how we
go about building rapport. So let's kind of talk about this operationally. On your thumb drive, which obviously you don't have printout of here, you're going to find on your thumb drive one document
that has four different tools, tools, like hammers and screwdrivers but not those kinds of tools, that are useful in building rapport, reinforcing, and redirecting as we'll look at a little bit later
on. The first tool, tool one in those materials deals with what we call rapport, or staying close, procedures. And these tools were based on a gentleman's work by the name of Glenn Latham who
initially did most of his work in working with training of therapeutic foster parents and in turn biological parents that had a history of abusing their children to developing their parenting skills.
And we've stumbled into these over the years and we've kind of adapted them somewhat in terms of application at a classroom level. But they're the same basic tools. Building rapport, all the tools are
when you look at them is a task analysis, a step by step by step by step by step breakdown of the interpersonal skills that are involved in rapport building. In other words, things like being
physically close, appropriate touch, showing appropriate facial expression, those should sound very familiar to what your experience was with that scenario I said when you come in and you see somebody
you like to be around. You smile. You go towards them. You hug. You high-five. You handshake. All those things. See, that stuff comes natural with somebody you're comfortable being around, right. But
it doesn't come so natural with someone you're not so comfortable being around. And that's the connection here. We're human beings first and teachers second, which means that we will respond first
viscerally at an emotional level as a human being first. And for what it's worth, thank goodness for that. I don't want a bunch of robots and machines teaching kids, not my kids. I want a caring,
warm-blooded human being who uses technology but is not driven by technology. Technology can help us, it cannot replace that caring connection. So these are nothing more than a breakdown of all of the
component parts of an interactive activity. Now the question becomes, so let's say you've got one, two, three, hopefully not more than that, but maybe you do, kids that you're having trouble making a
connection with, right. The key becomes to strategically look for opportunities to use these procedures with these kids strategically, proactively, not reactively. Looking for opportunities, short of
stalking your children, finding out what they're into so that you can have brief little conversations and interactions. You have to, I have to as a teacher, force myself to do that because it won't
come naturally if I'm not feeling connected or comfortable with this kid. Maybe not as extreme as that second scenario I asked you to think about, but kids who develop or more from tier one to tier
two to tier three tend to conjure up more of that in the pit of your stomach feelings and reactions more like the second scenario of somebody you don't like to be around than the first scenario.
Acknowledge that, embrace it, don't pretend it doesn't exist because each of us are human beings first, and that's how we operate, that's how we're wired. We have to fight the tendency to just act at
a visceral level and say, I have to be thoughtful about this professionally and reach out. Now the key with this is that the nice thing about rapport building is it does not have to be an overly labor
intensive activity. In other words, typical application of what I'll refer to as tool one procedures take about as little time as ten to 15 seconds and maybe run up to a maximum amount of time, maybe
two minutes. In other words, I'm not suggesting that you target that one particular kid you're not making the connection with or the staff you're working with isn't connecting with, and you try to sit
down and have half-hour discussions. First of all, you have the luxury of time to do that. And even if you did, if they don't want to open up and there isn't that trusting relationship, that's going
to be a really awkward 30 minutes for him, her, and you, right? So the key becomes, how do you look for little windows of time in which you can have quick little interactions or exchanges? And by that
I mean, let's think of maybe the kid doesn't even almost acknowledge you. You say hi and not only doesn't he or she say hi back, they don't even make eye contact with you, which is almost a
prerequisite to a verbal exchange more likely. So maybe over the course of time, you're going to get that kid to at least make eye contact, then maybe some type of non-profane guttural response when
you say hi, "ergh," you know, or whatever it is. It's a key of chipping away and working away over time so that they gain a trust level. Now the key becomes that well when are those blocks of time?
Let me tell you when they're not. I mean, I'm not -- I don't want to discourage people from doing this, but this -- if this is your primary mode of looking for those blocks of time, it's not going to
work for you. I'm not suggesting teachers need to go to every kid's little league game, AYSO soccer game, Pee-wee football game, and go grocery shopping with the kids and take them to the movies on
the weekends. You -- if you're like me, I need a life, right. I need something outside of school that's me and my family unit. I'm talking about times within the school day and ideally times within
the classroom where you can have these little 15-second windows to two-minute windows. Now the first shot is well, wait, I don't have that kind of downtime in my classroom. We all do. We just need to
know where those are. So here's what I want you to do. We're going to do this activity then we're going to take a break after we do it. I want you to spend a little bit of time either pair or groups
of three, larger group if you want depending on how you're structured here at your tables. I want you to target or come up with examples of little 15-second windows all the way up to maybe two-minute
blocks of time where they -- it is what we'll call non-instructional time. In other words, the kids aren't supposed to be working on an academic task, right. Non-instructional time where you could be
looking for these little place to have these little interactions with kids. The more you can frame them in the classroom, the higher frequency they are accessible to a given teacher. But if you want
to go outside of the classroom to the hallways in the school day in the school building, that's okay too. There are examples of blocks of times both in the class and outside of the class. Take a
couple minutes, two minutes tops here. Come up with some examples of these. Fifteen-second to two- minute windows. All right, let me interrupt you where you're at. Let's get some examples just
illustrations out here. What are examples of non-instructional little windows of opportunity, 15 seconds, maybe all the way up to two minutes, maybe three minutes. I mean, I'm not saying it can't be
longer. But when you go looking for bigger blocks of time, you find them less frequently, right. What are some common examples either in the classroom or at least throughout the school day where kids
would be accessible? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Talk in turns. TIM KNOSTER: Talk -- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Talk in turns. When you have the kids talk and turn to a partner but as the teacher be a partner -- TIM
KNOSTER: Partner with somebody in terms of talk in turns. So you'd actually be the partner with a given student maybe on occasion. AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible] TIM KNOSTER: Okay, all right, sure.
There's one example. So you can actually incorporate that in to an activity or an instructional strategy. Other examples. Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Getting them to say when they're unpacking -- TIM
KNOSTER: Kids are unpacking at their cubbies or whatever it might happen to be or lockers depending on the ages or however you're structured in your school. Yes, please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: When you're
turning in homework. TIM KNOSTER: Turning in homework or collecting lunch money or doing lunch count. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Transitional times. TIM KNOSTER: Transitional times. Now transitions come in many
forms, shapes, and sizes, don't they? I mean, you could have not just when they're unpacking but when they enter the room, when they exit the room, when they transition from an individual task, from a
group task. Because there's always going to be some little window of time that's quote unquote, I won't say off task, but it's not an academic task. You know, they got to close their materials then
they got to move, maybe physically move or put something away and get it out. Little tiny snippets of time, right. Other examples of times throughout the day. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Like lunch buddies, like
you have like some kids -- TIM KNOSTER: Okay, so lunch buddy or during the lunch period there might be opportunities. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Like the time when you're just teaching and if you look at kids
and you smile at them when they're doing something -- TIM KNOSTER: Just incorporating the components. I'm glad you raised that. Just smiling at kids while you're teaching and things. I'm not
suggesting that rapport is built 100% during non-instructional time. You obviously want to use the component parts, the affective parts of smiling, eye contact, body language, tone of voice, all that
kind of -- the happy stuff when you're providing reinforcement. And when we get to tool two procedures reinforcement, you'll see that. But one big difference is if your primary focus of an interaction
with a kid is rapport building, you're trying to get an interaction. So what's your first name since we just made eye contact? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Erin. TIM KNOSTER: Erin. So let's say I'm a teacher and
Erin's supposed to be working on her math problems. I don't want to take her off task to have a quick conversation because then I'm kind of defeating my purpose instructionally at that moment. So most
rapport building goes on during non-instructional blocks, but the component parts of these things with rapport building are built into and you'll see that when we get to reinforcement procedures, the
affect pieces. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I used just go to gym class -- TIM KNOSTER: Just walking down to -- AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, I used to play. TIM KNOSTER: Oh, actually go and play at gym class. Okay, sure.
I mean, when you think about it, the key becomes this. It's really not that hard to find those little windows of time if, one, we know it's important to find them and then, two, I would argue equally
importantly what to do with them, right, what to do with those little windows. It's like, well, what do I do with 15 seconds? It's not that 15 seconds on Wednesday, May the 18th at 2:48, right. All of
a sudden I had that quick interaction with Erin and now all of a sudden, boom, she's opened up and we have a great rapport. It doesn't work -- if it works that way, you really ought to play the
lottery. It doesn't work that way. What happens is though if Erin -- was it Erin? I'm sorry. If Erin's a student I wasn't connecting with, I want to maybe in the morning try and catch her, in the
afternoon try and catch her, in the hallway during transitions try and catch her. And I'm going to gradually over time diplomatically, constructively, proactively, and positively wear her down.
[laughing] I'm going to work it. I'm working it. I'm working us. I'm trying to get a connection. I'm trying to communicate through how I act and what I do. And even if Erin doesn't respond at first in
a way that I would hope she would respond, the fact that I keep coming back and trying only helps building trust. Some kids make you work hard, don't they? We all know those kids. Those are the kids
that we truly are paid as professionals, paid not as much as want I know that, but paid as professionals to be working with. Because if we don't do those things successfully, that kid increasingly
becomes more and more and more at risk. So rapport building is essential to establish. Let's take 15 minutes. So I have just about ten of, so let's come back at five after, okay. I'll start promptly
at that point in time. Take a break and we'll see you then. All right, I'm going to get us started here so we can keep on a reasonable timeframe. A couple of quick comments on the rapport building
piece before we kind of segue over looking at the other two primary preventative practices we're going to look at. And that deals with on this list, which I know for a number of you in the back is
difficult to see. One of the issues here, or one the task analyzed items in terms of looking for those little windows of time to have to have those quick interactions with a particular kid or clients
that you might be working with if you're at more of a therapeutic setting or day setting rather than typical classroom setting, is this issue of using open ended questions. In other words, it's one
thing to go to have an interaction with a kid that you're not feeling particularly comfortable with, but if you don't kind of go in having a sense of what would be something that they might have some
interest in talking about, that can be a really awkward moment. I mean, you know, you kind of all dressed up, all ready to go, and you're like, uh, uh-oh, now what we talk about, right? And those
impressions create a lasting kind of recollection or memory. So and this -- I alluded to this kind of euphemistically quickly, short of stalking a given kid, you really need to sometimes do some
upfront investigative work to try to figure out what a given kid is either good at or interested in. Now I know right away some of you are thinking, well, all the things this kid is interested in are
not things that would be legitimate to be talking about, right. I understand that. But so you might have to obviously, with some kids, dig a little deeper, work a little longer to gain a sense of what
are some things. Is it sports? Is it music? Is it art? You know, does he have an older brother or sister? Find something that would be at least neutral to positive that you think the kid would maybe
be willing to talk about. Now that doesn't mean that he or she is going to open and have the conversation right away, but at least if you're starting to pose some notion of interaction on a topic
that's of interest or something he or she's good at, they're more likely as a fish to bite on the hook if they like the worm that's on the hook rather than just casting a hook out there that does not
look particularly attractive. So with some kids you've got work longer and harder to kind of do that investigative work up front. The other quick thing, or a quick comment on that, is that when you go
to use these procedures in those little windows of time, and I kind of refer to them as almost like dosages of rapport building. When you go to administer a dose of rapport building, if it's very
clear or evident based on body language and affect that that kid just isn't going to have an interaction with you that's going to be constructive at that point in time, then let it go. Just say, hey,
how you doing? And if they clearly don't want to have an interaction, then you just move on. You look for another opportunity at another time and another opportunity at another time. That's the nice
thing about 15-second to two- minute little dosages or in preventative interventions like this. It doesn't have to be, okay, darn it, we're going to have a talk right now for 15 seconds because I had
planned. That's again, counterproductive to what you want to have. But what will likely happen over the course of time is that the kid of concern will start to gradually, probably, I mean, it would be
great if it was all of a sudden magical and they open right up, most kids don't do that. It's gradual. It's incremental. Just like in life, we creep and crawl before we walk, stand, and run. It's kind
of that same gradual process. But over the course of time, kids will open up, but they will do it on their timeframe, not yours, when they feel they can trust you. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don't want to
take any more of everybody's time, but how important is it that we're developing that rapport and trust in the context of the group, in a group situation with their peers? TIM KNOSTER: You mean kid to
kid rapport. It's equally important, but the thing that as -- let me rephrase it just so everybody heard the question. How important is it to look at the, and if I misinterpret it in the
re-paraphrasing, please stop me before I go any further in responding to it. How important is it for that kid to kid relationship and rapport to also be nurtured or brought along concurrently with
your interaction with the student? Obviously peer to peer relationships are not only important, but they're very, very powerful. In reality, we know a lot more powerful sometimes than our interaction
with the kid, especially as kids get to adolescence and peer pressure and all those types of things. So that's important, but I keep coming back to what are the things that I can most directly
influence? I can influence my behavior, control my behavior and my actions. Now if I have a kid that I think, and this wouldn't be an atypical profile perhaps. If there's a kid that I'm connecting
with, perhaps that kid is also a bit of an isolate or a loner within his or her peer group. Obviously I want to be looking for the opportunities to kind of facilitate connections constructively this
way as well. But that's going to require some different engineering on my part than just me looking for those little windows of time to provide the interaction. The other thing about this, even though
you didn't ask this, it stimulates me to say this. All this is is a task analysis of a social interaction. So if you have a kid who has real social skills deficits or skill fluency issues, you can
take this exact task analysis that you would use for yourself and use it as your curriculum to teach social skills. Teach a kid how to have an interaction. Teach the kid how to approach somebody to
play, how to ask to share, body language, affect, touch, tone of voice. All those types of things. They're basic human interaction patterns. This where is it's human communication 101, these would be
basic elements in teaching human communication or whatever you want to call it, 101. So you can actually use this as a way to guide direct instruction in teaching social skills. I know of a number of
teachers in emotional support classroom programs that do exactly that, that they not only use these procedures to build rapport with their kids, try to facilitate kid to kid relationships by actually
teaching these skills through simulation, through role play, through different types of things, okay. Does that address your question? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. TIM KNOSTER: Okay. Please. AUDIENCE
MEMBER: So if I had a teacher that told me that at the beginning of each school year, she had some guiding questions where she asked the kids to -- TIM KNOSTER: They fill out. AUDIENCE MEMBER: To fill
out like questions asking what do you do when you're not in school? TIM KNOSTER: Sure. AUDIENCE MEMBER: That they write these questions [inaudible] to look at that card just to see what they -- that
she might use that subject for a conversation. And there* TIM KNOSTER: Exactly. In other words, the comment was, in case people didn't hear completely, was essentially there are, to summarize, there
are proactive ways to just part and parcel is a standard way of starting off the school year, gather information about your kids, about things they're into, interested in, or whatever. And what's
always fascinating then is that when you can bring those things into and incorporate, kids are like, well, how did you know that about me? They forget they filled the card out or whatever. I know one
of the things that I do, again, with 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th graders, is one of the things I try to do, because I only see them maybe two times a period or two times a week on Tuesday and Thursday
for like an hour at a shot and I'll have a bunch of classes, you know, like everybody. I'm more like a high school than an elementary. But I'll make a point to learn everybody by their first name
after the first week. So that when I'm interacting with them, even though I'll see like 130 kids in a semester, after the first week I want to be able to call Jane, Jane, Sally, Sally, Sammy, Sammy,
and Juan, Juan. And they're like, well, how did you know my name? And I was like, well, I have a class list. Yeah, but how did you know my name? Well, it was important for me to learn your name. And
they're all in teacher prep and I'll say, now why do you think it's important for me to learn your name? And they're like, well, it probably makes you a more effective interact or. I said, and that's
exactly what I want you to do with your kids. If can't model it, I have no right to teach it, right. So I mean these are just simple little things that if you could incorporate proactive things into
whatever context you're working in, it tends to make your implantation of individualized outreach a little bit more time efficient if you already have that bank of information about things that kids
are into. It gives you a starting place, a launch pad. It might not be the ending point, but it's a starting point. Rather than starting totally from scratch and have to being Investigator Clouseau
digging around to find out what's this kid into. And then sometimes be careful what you look for, right. Because you find out, oh, I didn't realize they were into that. Other questions or comments on
rapport building before we kind of look at expectations and reinforcement structures here? Please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I've always found a good way to get to those hard to reach links is field trips,
field trips where -- TIM KNOSTER: Outside of the normal routine. AUDIENCE MEMBER: And outside of their -- the normal box. Like for certain kids, you take them to a barn or take them to a hiking path
where they're used to anything that's there. And they kind of have to depend on each other and all of a sudden, kids that are kind of goofy in the classroom, well they're real good science kids and
they know all the bugs and they know the rocks and they know the -- TIM KNOSTER: Right. There's kind of things that are out of the typical norm or flow of things provide really nice opportunities. But
I want to be really clear, you don't want to put all of our chips into that because they're low frequency. You can't be doing a field trip every day or every week or every month, especially these
days, right, with testing and assessment and all that. But if you put these little pieces in place in the ebb and flow of the day, it probably makes even more accessible when you do have those field
trips or things out of the norm, you're just going to have more fluent interaction or opportunities for those interactions. That's a great suggestion and idea. It makes perfect sense. Yes. AUDIENCE
MEMBER: I also found sometimes the harder kids that are poor not only having a conversation, but needing to accept that they don't want to have them. TIM KNOSTER: Exactly. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm not a
teacher, I'm a psychologist. I get a lot of the kids when they've already been having the problems. And some of the kids just won't say anything. TIM KNOSTER: Yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: And usually I find
they'll start opening up to me when that first or second interaction, I don't push it. If they don't want to say anything, they don't have to. And then usually when you're -- TIM KNOSTER: I mean, if
you think about it, I mean, the notion of, again, reading body language, context clues, and all those types of things, you can pretty much pretty quickly gain a sense are they going to be willing to
have a brief interaction or not? And if they're not, don't force it because you know you can't force it, right. We'll go back to Erin, Erin, right? Make sure I'm getting the name right. Go back to
Erin. I can't reach down her throat and grab the words and pull them out. I shouldn't if I could anyway, but I can't -- I can't make her have an interaction with me. So if her affect and her demeanor
and the way she's interacting or not interacting with me suggests now's not a good moment, then move on. Just let it go. Kind of meet them at their space and pace and place rather than forcing it on,
okay, I've got 15 seconds, let's go. You know, right on, let's have -- okay, good, boom. Move on, right. That's not how it works, especially with kids that are hard to reach, okay. Again, they're
going to let you in on their timeframe, not yours. And I know firsthand that's frustrating. It is. It's hard. It's really hard work. But it's essential work. If we don't do it, we know the academic
stuff isn't going to flow real well after that with certain kids. Now the second major component part of this preventative approach, keep in mind we're just looking at prevention right now. We've
looked at rapport. We're going to look at establishing expectations. This approach to establishing expectations at the classroom level is exactly the same approach just contextualized a little bit at
the classroom level. So let me kind of, relatively quickly I think, kind of walk you through some of the basic elements of establishing expectations. For those of you doing school- wide, which is all
of you, you are already doing this to varying degrees, probably mostly starting in non-classroom settings. But some people start in classroom settings as well. So you've already got experience with
this. One of the key things at the classroom level, I would argue beyond as well. But let's just stay focused on the classroom, is trying to look at things from the standpoint of the kids'
perspective. We're tuning in to what we'll call WIIFM, What's in it for me? In other words, I know I want my kids to behave because I have certain things, or reasons, why I want them to behave and why
I need them to behave. But that rationale isn't going to be maybe the same rationale they have. In other words, I want the kids that I'm working with in a classroom to see the value in meeting
expectations as opposed to, from their perspective, as opposed to just meeting them because I said these are the expectations, right. We're going to come back to that concept in a minute because there
are some very concrete things that you can do to actually facilitate that to occur, to make it a little bit easier. And my hunch is all of you fall prey to this. I know the older I get, the harder it
is to relate from a kid's perspective because we get bigger generational differences as we go along. So there are a couple of techniques or strategies you can use to get at this that makes it doable.
The core of establishing expectations are the same basic principles that you looked at school-wide. You want to select three to five positively stated broad expectations. You know, the classics: be
here, be ready, be safe, be responsible, be respectful, be polite, be all you can be, be whatever it's going to be. Right, all the -- whatever it is that you're going to use. Now if, and we'll return
to this in a little bit too. If you're in a school doing school-wide, when you distill this into the classroom, it should be the same three to five. I know sometimes you say, well, do I pick my own
three to five? I said heaven forbid, no. Please, don't you create your own three to five because you got three to five school-wide. Use the three to five. If they're positively stated and broad,
you're just going to operationally define them in your classroom, right. Don't create a different set of be this, be that, that I wouldn't say is incompatible but can be confusing. Don't create your
own set of those. Now most of you are in schools that are doing school-wide. If by chance for a couple of you that aren't in schools doing school-wide yet or maybe isn't even looking at school-wide
yet and talking with colleagues, I always say, the bottom line is in the classroom then, you create your three to five. Come up with your three to five. That's your kind of sphere of influence. That's
what you deal with. Second step in the process, same as it was school-wide, identify or prioritize your contexts, the situations within which you're going to define those three to five. And then
you're going to operationally define them. Now again, just for illustration purposes, my hunch is this is just going to be redundant, but as George talked about earlier, it builds fluency. To
understand why it's important that we define these things in various contexts. Let's take something like be responsible, right. How many schools in here have be responsible as one of theirs? Some of
them probably, yeah, a bunch of you. So we have be responsible. And understandably, we all kind of intuitively can say well, you know, kids kind know intuitively what that means. Or this staff kind of
know even intuitively what that means. But when you start to look at being responsible in different contexts, what we discover, not surprisingly, is that it can look and sound different based on the
context. For example, let's say classroom. Let's think of an individual situation where kids are supposed to be working independently and quietly on a task or maybe even taking an assessment or a
test, right. It's an individual thing. Okay, let's get some descriptors out here. What would your kids look like in a classroom, pick any classroom you want, if they were being responsible doing
independent task at their desk? What would they look like and sound like? Give me some descriptors, operational descriptors. What would they look like or sound like to you if you were the teacher
observing them? Which is what you're doing when you're teaching. What should they be doing? Please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: They'll be sitting upright. TIM KNOSTER: They'll be sitting upright. AUDIENCE
MEMBER: They'll be working quietly. TIM KNOSTER: They'll be working quietly, right. They'll have their material -- the appropriate materials out, right. What about starting and ending tasks? Start on
time, finish on time. Focus on their work. All these types of things. These are measureable types of things, right. Now let's take be responsible in that same classroom, but let's change the context.
The context is now they're doing a group activity. What would they look like or sound like doing a group activity if they were being responsible in that same classroom? Some things will be similar,
but some things will be really different probably. What are some -- what would they look like and sound like? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Looking at each other. TIM KNOSTER: Making eye contact with each other,
listening to others. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Inside voice and then outside voice. TIM KNOSTER: Talking inside voice or six-inch voice or whisper voice or small voice or however you want to describe it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Their movements would be careful or quiet. TIM KNOSTER: So there'd be movements and sharing of -- see, if they were sharing, moving, looking, and talking and they were doing an
individual test, what might you think they're doing? Cheating. Totally the opposite of being responsible during an individual task. So this is why identifying the contexts and then defining within
those contexts become so important. It minimizes, doesn't totally negate, but it minimizes the gray space. And I would argue for what it's worth and I mean this sincerely, respectfully, but sincerely,
as much for the teachers as it does for the kids. As much for the teachers as it does for the kids in terms of reinforcement procedures. Once we've defined those, and the basic question one asks and
you're going to do a quick activity here in a minute. We're doing an abridged activity with this. So for those of you that have done this a fair amount, you're going to do it one more time. For those
of you, this might be relatively new to you. You'll have some time to do this, is we ask the question what would they look like or sound like? Because that tends to lead you into action, statements,
or verb oriented statements. You had a question or comment? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I do have a question. TIM KNOSTER: Yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: For school-wide rules creating the lesson plans -- TIM KNOSTER:
To teach, yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: To teach. TIM KNOSTER: Right. AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible] TIM KNOSTER: Okay. AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible] TIM KNOSTER: We're going to get there. So I'm going to defer
your comment to a little bit later, but not much later because we're going to get there. That's one of the ways I suggest you get to the WIIFM, is how to engage the kids in the process. You could do
it either way. But I think one way is far more effective and efficient than the other way. But you could do it either way, okay. So I will get to that. Once you've defined them, obviously posting
them. Now I'm sure nobody did, but just to be clear because I know George would shudder on the flight home if he thought somebody did this. He didn't say this morning, don't post your expectations. He
just said, school-wide PBS is more than just posting things up on the wall, right. So we do need to post them. We need to have them there as visual reminders for the kids, visual reminders for
ourselves as well in terms of what we're trying to catch the kids doing so we can reinforce or encourage. We want to also provide direct instruction in those expectations ideally through simulations.
Those simulations will look different. They'll be structured differently based on the ages of the kids, the context or ebb and flow of how the classroom operates or the school within which the
classroom operates. We also then want to make sure, and we'll get to reinforcement in a little bit. But then number seven here. We also need to have clear kind of things we're going to do in terms of
air correction procedures. If kids have behavioral mistakes, which they will. Inappropriate behaviors, which they will. How are we going to respond to those things? And we'll look at those as well.
Now what you have here, and again this is difficult to see in the back. But if you take a look at the materials that are at your tables that we laid out here over break, you should find a -- there
should be an ample number of packets hopefully, fingers crossed. Tried to duplicate more than enough just to make sure. Bless you. This material is in the PowerPoint on your thumb drive as well. You
obviously don't have this hardcopy in front of you. This is just one example or illustration of expectations. In this case, we have be ready, be responsible, be respectful. This is for an elementary
school. And in the context where arrival at school, individual work, teacher talking, group activities, and changing activities. Also when you go into the PowerPoint materials later on for some of you
that may look to do that, there's a middle school example, there's also a high school example. For those of you that have the teacher's pocket guide, one of the books that I published with Brooks a
while ago, these are the same ones that are in the appendices of that as well. So they're not new per se or anything like that. Here's what I want to do though. I'm going to have you actually spend a
little bit of time working with this. And again, for those of you that are very familiar with this, again, redundancy's going to build a fluency so that's going to work for us. I've given you in this
packet a set of different materials. The expectations exercise are white sheet on the top, gives you one of two options to choose between. You can pick whichever one works for you. Does not matter at
all to me which one you go with. The first option, option one, is using the entire school as a unit of analysis. So it's more of a school-wide application. Option two is a classroom application within
a school that's doing school- wide, okay. Now understandably, some of you might morph option one to create a one- B, or option two to create a two-B. I'm okay with that. It's just I can probably give
you less explicit direct feedback on it because I don't know the school you're envisioning when you do that. But you pick either of these options, whichever one you want to focus on. If you want to do
this task individually, fine. You want to do it with a partner or in a pair or even at a table if you're all one team, that's okay too. Whatever works for you is fine. I'm not going to read these
verbatim to you. You can do that on your own. But move down to where it says The task. Attached to the packet you're going to find a yellow sheet. So if you turn to that second page, you're going to
see a matrix. And then behind that is a green and a pick sheet, or pink and green, I don't know what order yours are in. Okay, the task which is on the cover page. And if you want to tear these apart
if that's easier for you, that's fine too. The first task is you're going to transpose your three positively stated behavioral expectations from either option one or option two, whichever one you
select. You're going to transpose those expectations onto the yellow sheet in the column that says expectations. So I'm going to actually use this up here to point, because this is nothing more than a
matrix short of the lines. You're going to take -- say you do option one, you're going to take your three expectations and plug them down the side. If you do option two, you're going to take those
three expectations, plug them down the side. That goes on the yellow page. Then across the top on the yellow page, which is step two of the task, you're going to identify your contexts based on the
information you have in the little narrative will guide you towards what contexts would make the most sense. Option two, you have a lot more flexibility on the context, whatever makes sense to you
based on the classroom you're envisioning. Option one, the contexts are relatively self-evident given the narrative on the discipline referral patterns that are described there. So that's what we're
going to do first. After we do option one and option two, then we'll take the next step. So what I'm going to do is give you a couple of minutes here to read through the options, pick which one you
want to work with, and then just do step one and step two of the task. Transpose your three to five, identify your contracts across the top, okay. Try to resist defining them yet. We're going to go
there but we're going to an abridged activity with that. We're not going to do the full blown thing. I'll be circulating around, so if you have questions or need help and just to check in with you as
we go. Okay, I'm going to give you about maybe three to four minutes tops to do these first two steps. The first two steps won't take us a lot of time. Okay, thank you. All right, let me pull you back
here large group. Now we're going to take that third step or third task in the process. So depending on what option you selected, if you went with option one, which was the school-wide option, you're
going to be working on the green forms. Some of you have figured that out already, great. If you haven't, you're doing green. If you went with option two, which is the classroom unit of analysis or
focus, you're on the pink one. I think that's pink, yeah. Pink. On the pink form. In either case, what I've already done, let's just talk about the green one first, then the pink one. Then I'm going
to kind of cut you loose for a little bit more time here than what I just gave you. With the green one, the school-wide one, I've already preloaded or preselected two of the four contexts for you.
Hallways during transitions. And for what it's worth, when I was circulating around, some people had hallways, that's fine. But when you look at the narrative, you don't have a problem according to
the data analysis in the hallway all day. It's hallways during transitions so that makes it a little bit tighter. Analogous to remember when George was talking this morning and he talked about the
bumper boost in certain discipline referrals, but then we looked at, oh, wow, these are happening on the bus and in particular on two buses. You can really scope what you're going to do a little bit
more efficiently and strategically that way. So hallways during transitions helps us to do that. And then the second one I've identified for you is classroom. You can pick, if you're on the green
sheet, you can pick any two of the expectations that are already preselected, okay. Pick whichever ones you want, doesn't matter whatever you want. Knock yourself out, go for it. Plug those two in,
okay. On the pink one, on the pink form, I've preselected two contexts for you based on the information I've given you as well. Now particularly for classroom teachers, if you want to morph this
activity to more directly relate to your classroom, I'm fine with that, all right. Feel free to do that. But if you want to work off of the kind of the standard scenario, that's fine too. Whatever
works for you is what I would want you to do, all right. And then you're going to pick two as well of your expectations because I'm not going to give you sufficient time to go through a number of
them. So whether you're on the pink or the green now, what you're going to do is you're going to start operationally define those two expectations across those two contexts. You may find, not
surprisingly, some redundancy. That's not a bad thing. In fact, that's a good thing. If something is relevant in multiple contexts, that actually just means it's really, really important. And then you
have some redundancy and overlap, actually makes it easier to remember as well for everybody. But don't force redundancy, okay. And probably it won't happen given the context that are selected here
for you to work on. I want you to try to come up with three to five bullet statements in each cell or each box on the pink or the green, whichever form you're working on. So not just one or two, three
to give. And then we'll talk about why three to five or at least more than one or two in a few moments here. Does anybody have any general questions with the next step in the task? Okay, so we're
going to operationally define when you do this, you're simply asking what would the kids look like and sound like if they were meeting the expectation in that context. And remember, affirmative
statements, right. In other words, let's say like hallways during transitions. What was the major problem behavior on the green on? The foul language, the swearing, right. Well, we know we don't want
the kids to swear. But please write the affirmative of what you want them to do, not what you don't want them to do. There's a lot of reasons for that, but the primary one is this. Whatever you focus
on is what the kids will focus on. So for right now, everybody in this room, I want you to do whatever you do in the next ten seconds, the next ten seconds, do not, do not think of a Snickers candy
bar. Get it out of your mind, don't think about Snickers candy, don't think about candy bars, don't think about food, don't think about Snickers. Right, now of course what everybody's thinking about?
Food, Snickers. If you don't like Snickers, something else, right. In other words, what you focus on is what the kids will focus on. You don't want them focusing on don't do this, don't do this, don't
do this because you'll never create a long enough list because there's always -- I mean, you know, there's always a kid that comes up with, well, that's not on the list. Well, yes, Johnny, poking him
in the eye with a pencil is not on the list. You're right, not on the list. I'll add it, right. And then they'll come up with another one. So affirmative ones, three to five. Go ahead, I'm going to
give you about five minutes or so to work on this and then I'll come around to you. About a half minute, okay, 30 seconds. All right allow me to kind of bring you back large group here. Now I know
some of you want to keep going on what you're doing. I absolutely get that, understand it, respect it, or whatever. The idea of the abridge activity is, again, just to kind of to allow you to get your
hands probably further dirty with the process. All of you have some experience with this. The key with each of these cells where you were coming up with your bullet statements, beyond them just being
affirmative and that you might have some redundancy in here is that when you define a given expectation, it's not that any one bullet statement that you come up with will be the end all and be all by
itself. In other words, being responsible in the classroom isn't going to get comprehensively defined with one bullet statement. The key becomes though when you come up with a number of bullet
statements together, they kind of create -- and it's a decent analogy to use. Like when you go outside at night and presuming it's a clear night and you look up in the sky, you see these bright things
called stars, right. Each star by itself is important in a value. But what's really kind of interesting is that some stars create a constellation or a pattern, right. What you're creating are mini
constellations or patterns of operational statements to define your expectations. So it's not that any one bullet statement by itself is going to be the end all be all by itself, but it's the
combination of this plus this plus this plus this, yeah, that's being responsible in this context in the classroom. Or that's being responsible in the hallways during transitions. Or that's being
whatever it happens to be. You're going to have some overlap. You're going to have some redundancy. Now of course you would define this in further detail more comprehensively for a full
implementation. But I want to talk a little bit about where you kind of, or how you could, go about engaging the kids in the process which comes back to the question, what's your first name? AUDIENCE
MEMBER: Kelly. TIM KNOSTER: Kelly. That Kelly asked, or commented on, as much a little bit earlier. What I usually suggest to teachers is that you pick the three to five. Now if you're in a school
doing school-wide already, remember, those three to five should be the same three to five, right. You pick them. You pick the three to five. You pick the context because you're the person with the
inside access to the data, the experiences in terms of what are the contexts or situations that have historically been the most challenging or slippery as slopes, so to speak, in terms of behavioral
issues with the kids. So if you think about it like a picture frame, you frame the picture. But then engage your kids in the process of helping you to operationally define the expectations within the
classroom. In other words, the activity you just did, not in the exact same form of course. But you could with older kids, but you have elementary. So depending on the kids, it might not work with
high school. You could do a little bit more of it. But engage the kids in the process of defining it. When you do that, you accomplish a number of important things, but two of them are really, really
critical. The first one is that by engaging the kids and asking them to think about what would they would look like and sound like if they were meeting the expectation in this context, you're actually
providing some direct instruction in the expectations. Right, in other words, you know you need to go there anyway, so why not engage the kids in an interactive activity to get you there in a way that
they can have some fun with it? Depending on how artistic a given teacher is or less artistic a given teacher is, there are lots of ways to go about this. You can be real theatrical and do all sorts
of things with it or you can be pretty matter of fact and straight forward and I don't want to say humdrum, but pretty linear about how approach it too. Whatever fits the teacher's teaching style in
that classroom, which is the context, is going to kind of govern how that goes about. So one thing you accomplish by engaging the kids is you're actually doing some of the frontend teaching. The
second thing you accomplish, which I would suggest is equally important is you're addressing what we call locus of control. If you want to call it student motivation, fine. You can't motivate
somebody, but there are things that you or I can do as teachers that can help to motivate and there are things that we can do that can hurt motivation. The reality is this. Every single one of us as
human beings tend to buy in more or are willing to hang in and try to do certain things if we feel we had a say in the process. All of us have been in situations where we've been given something, a
directive, where we had to do it. And even if the idea makes perfect sense, the fact that we were told rather than said, well, wait a minute, does my opinion matter in here at all? Tends to diminish
our buy in. Tends to atrophy, or chip away at, our degree of motivation to engage in the process. So by engaging kids in helping you to define things, you're actually empowering them somewhat with
constraints and parameters, of course, in terms of the process of having input. And the likelihood is that the more kids feel they had a say in something, the more they will see value in that thing,
the What's in it for me? The more it's just handed to them and directed to them like you're in my class, this is my class, this is how it runs, and that's the end of the story, the less locus of
control or empowerment you've given to students. And ultimately, what we want kids to do, whether they're third grade, fifth grade, tenth grade, seniors, or adults, is we want them to become
self-governing. We don't want to have to have us running around catching them doing things right all the time telling them good job, good job, good job, good job, right. We want them to be able to
self-govern based on self-motivation and some skill sets. So in terms of engaging the kids, I'd say one, you pick the three to five too. You pick the context or the teachers you work with and then
engage the kids in helping you to do define them, right. Makes sense? Questions on that before we start to look at reinforcement procedures that'll take up to break. Please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What I
think would be really cool is if you had it almost like a checklist then for you to context and had a small group where you picked it out and go -- TIM KNOSTER: You can -- I have seen it done so many
ways and so many ways far more creatively than I ever could have imagined. And the reality is the -- those of you that are classroom teachers, you know this. The more you engage the kids, they come up
with ideas, you're like, I would have never thought of that. It was pretty cool, right. I mean, the key is to provide the structure within which to do that. But the key is to engage them. That'll get
you generally where you need to be in the most efficient manner. Now the this component part of these preventative approaches is this issue of positive reinforcement or acknowledgment. In other words,
while we want to establish expectations, one of the reasons we're establishing them is we want the kids to meet the expectations, right. We're not just establishing them for their own sake. And in
order to do that, we know that a large part of direct instruction, whether it's academic or behavioral, requires direct instruction including feedback in the form of reinforcement for acquisition
and/or fluency issues. So let's take a look at this notion of catching them being good. On your thumb drives remember I alluded to this before. You'll have a series of four tools, right. Tool one is
rapport building. Tool two is positive consequences or positive reinforcement. Tool two has a task analysis or a breakdown of all the component parts involved in delivering contingent reinforcement.
The biggest difference between tool two reinforcement and tool one rapport building, reinforcement is contingent, which simply means what? What does contingent mean? They have to do something. They
have to earn it, right. Like grades. They're contingent, right. Rapport building, that's something you're doing proactively. If you make building rapport with a given kid you're having difficulty
connecting with contingent on something, good luck. Because I mean, that's the reason why you're targeting this kid to try to build some rapport to begin with. So you're proactively with rapport
building giving your attention during those non- instructional times. Reinforcement though, that's contingent reinforcement or positive consequences. With respect to reinforcement procedures, I know
all of you have familiarity with it. A couple of basic aspects of reinforcement procedures though. And these are things that can really pay big dividends when you get to the intervention stuff we'll
look at after break. First, tell the student, or for a couple of you, the client or the patient for in-patient situations, tell the person what they did was correct. I can't think of one instance
where I would ever tell a teacher or give a teacher feedback saying, don't say good job, presuming of course what the kid was a good job. But it would far more efficient, effective, and precise to say
good job at working on that problem. Good job at getting here on time. Nice work on doing whatever. In other words, label the praise. The more we can have become habit labeling our praise, the more we
help kids create cause-effect relationships, or at least correlations in their mind's eye. That will really be important when we look at intervention procedures a little bit later on because
intervention procedures will have built in to it aspects of reinforcement, but we want to make darn sure we label our praise as to what we're reinforcing. We don't want to be having the kid think
you're telling me good job because I was strangling little Johnny next to me, right. That's not what we want to do. So make sure you label the praise. Secondly, stay close when acknowledging
appropriate behavior. And somebody alluded to this a little bit earlier with the comment, I don't know your name, sir, but about smiling and eye contact in instruction and those types of things. All
of the component parts of rapport building, the affect components, what you look like, what you sound like, all those things are built into when you look at it, tool two. You want to -- if you're
providing reinforcement, you want to make sure that you look like you're happy, not upset. You want to have all -- you want body language and verbal language to actually connect with the kid or the
client of concern. Also jumping down to this last one. Provide the positive consequence within now three to five seconds is a general goal or rule. That doesn't mean if it's at six seconds, an alarm
goes off and says eh, don't do it anymore. But you want to try to provide the reinforcing statements and/or procedures in close as time proximity as possible to the behavior of concern you're ideally
trying to reinforce. Those of you that are teachers know a kid that fits this profile really well. Again, my wife's a kindergarten teacher so I always pull stories from her all over the place. I'll
call the kid Sammy. My wife, Marsha, has been working with this kid Sammy who really has some social skills deficits, let's leave it at that. Got some real challenges. And it's mostly deficits as well
as fluency, but a lot of deficits based on his life experiences so far. So she and other people in the kindergarten pod have been really working with Sammy to get better doing a variety of different
things that would be appropriate social skills for a kindergartner. So my wife has the duty of -- bus duty this one given week and she sees, while she's helping kids load on the bus or whatever, she's
not just taking care of her kids, but a bunch of kids. And she sees Sammy actually bend down, reach over, and help a little girl that her backpack spilled as she was getting up. He reaches down and
he's like helping her get stuff. You know, she's like, you know, she's telling me at night, the one night we're having dinner. She's like she's about to cry. She's this excited that this kid is
actually doing something that is exactly what she's been trying so long to get him to do. But then he hops right on the bus and he's on his way, right. So it's a Friday, of course, luck of the draw.
Comes back in on Monday and she's like, you know, I'm going to make a point as soon as I see Sammy to say, you know, go up and talk to him. And she comes in. She says, I went up to him, she told me
this Monday night. She goes, I went to him, I said, Sammy, remember when you were getting on the bus? And his first response was, what'd I do? Right, what'd I do? Because that's whenever -- and she
goes, No, no, no, no, remember -- I forget what the girl's name was, but she was getting on in and her backpack. You reached over. He's like, huh? What? No. Couldn't be me. [laughing] I didn't ride
the bus. My mom picked me up. You know, I mean, some kids, you know them, right. The longer the time goes, the less they can connect the dots. Some kids, god love them, they can tell you what happened
on October 2nd at 8:15, right, when it started to snow, when the alarm went off. I mean, and other kids are like if it went on ten minutes ago, another life, another kid, another movie, right. So the
quicker, the better. That's the key, but label the praise. Quicker the better, label the praise. Now along these same lines the other thing and then this'll lead us up to break is this notion of what
we call the four to one ratio. How many people have heard of the four to one ratio? A bunch of you, right. The four to one ration to me is kind of like rapport. We throw it around so whimsically but
we never define exactly. But what does that actually look like in a classroom that has 30 kids in it or 20 kids or 18 kids or whatever the magic number is? Now the concept itself is not that hard to
get our head around. The four to one ratio simply means, and some people have argued it five, six, or seven to one. Four to one is the easiest lowest common denominator, so that's the one I usually
shoot for because I'm like if we can get that, we'll probably be in pretty good shape with a lot more kids. It simply means that for every one time you have to intervene directly with a kid who's
engaging in problem behavior, probably not so much the pet peeve stuff, but like significant problem behavior where you have to stop and redirect them, which we'll look at after break. For every one
time with a given kid for that, you need to catch that kid four times doing things appropriately. And here's the key, within a reasonable timeframe. Now of course, what's a reasonable timeframe? It's
different from kid to kid. That's the key. That's the hard part of it. So let me kind of walk and talk you through a scenario with this four to one and then that'll lead us up to the break, okay. So
your name is Pamela. So let's say Pamela is a student in my classroom and on average, technically baseline, right. On average, her level of misbehavior is about once a week. About -- if I think back
in my mind's eye, maybe I have hard data on a sheet, that would be wonderful. But in reality, it's probably intuitive. I'd say on average about once a week, Pam gets a little bit rambunctious, a
little bit rammy, and I'd say, Pam, stop. Take a breath. I want you to -- so I got to go through a stop, redirect procedure on average once a week, right. It would be nice if it was no times a week,
but hey, she's human. And every now and then, we have this. Here we have Charles, right. Charles, about once a day on average. Is that about right? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is that all? TIM KNOSTER: Is that
all? Yeah, is that all? That figures. Yeah, people who know Charles are saying, that's not right. But about once a day. On average, once a day he gets a little bit rammy, right. He's just all over the
place. And I have to kind of stop. So I got once a week here, right. We got once a day. And then Marlin, or Martin? My contacts are going. Marlin. Sorry, I'm going to pick on you. The first thing is
in my head, I'm not saying this to Marlin and I'm not looking like this to Marlin, but I'm saying, can I get through one stinking class period? Just one class period where I don't have to say to
Marlin, Marlin, stop grabbing Marissa's stuff, or, keep your hands to yourself, or just one class period? Can I get through one? Right. Now obviously who's my high maintenance kid, or higher
maintenance kid? Marlin, right. What do you think if that pattern persists over time, how's the connection and the rapport going to be working? Yeah, not as well as it will with the other kids, right.
So let's not lose sight of that. What's a reasonable amount of time here with Pam? Pam, right. Or Pamela, whichever. What's a reasonable amount of time to get the four to one? How frequently was she
misbehaving? I got a week. Now I want to be clear about this, is it going to hurt if I reinforce her more frequently than that? Absolutely. That's the not the goal of -- okay, you only get four this
week. [laughing] But you know, a week as a teacher, I mean, that's a pretty big kind of margin for error, isn't it? I mean, I ought to be able to catch her four times in a week. I can almost do that
without even thinking about it. I've got a big window of time here to get the four to one with her, right. Big window. Charles, what's my window of time? A day. Smaller window. Not this small, but
smaller, right. Four times a day. Two in the morning, two in the afternoon. Three in the morning, one in the afternoon. I don't know, but I got a whole day to work with here, right. Marlin. [laughing]
How big is my window? Class period. Luckily, yeah. Hopefully I don't have a lot of -- sorry, a lot of Marlins, right. A class period. See, in other words, I have to differentiate the frequency, or
time interval, of my reinforcement procedure based on what the student's need is, right. Here I know -- I mean, I -- trust me, as a teacher, I would wish, hope, pray, and do whatever I got to do to
say, boy, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish Marlin didn't need to be redirected once a class period. And I can wish about all I want. I can fantasize about that all I want, but the
reality is the only thing I have control over is what? My behavior. If I want him to constructively change in behavior, I know one of the things that I need to do is help him experience the four to
one, which means my windows of opportunity are much tighter. When I'm giving an instruction in the class for the group to start to get to work, where do you think I'm not sitting? In his lap. But
where do you think I'm kind of near when I give an instruction? Marlin. And then as soon as Marlin starts to flinch to get his book out, I'm like, good job at getting to work right away. And then I
move on, I stuffed one in my pocket and I move on. And then I may come back to Marlin in two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, but I know I got to get four there, right. Now here becomes the
obvious question. I understand it because I know I ask this really loud the first time somebody introduced to me to this concept a long time ago. But wait a minute, that's not what? AUDIENCE: Fair.
TIM KNOSTER: Fair. I'm going to have a rebellion on my hands. Here's the issue of fairness. And if you look it up in the dictionary, fairness doesn't say everybody gets the same thing at the same
time. Essentially if you think about fairness in the form of reinforcement procedures or educational programs, everybody gets what they need, need. Not want, there's a difference. I have this
conversation with my 17-year-old all the time. There's a difference. Both four-letter words, right. But they are different. But if everybody gets what they need, then it tends to work out in that it's
fair. So let's come back to -- over here to Pamela, or Pam, whichever -- I didn't ask her what she went by, I'm just jumping back and forth with them. What if Pam -- thank you. What if Pam, for some
reason, is starting to feel taken for granted a little? What's probably going to start to happen with Pam that wasn't happening before? Yeah, we're going to start this now. Pam is probably not going
to pick up a chair and throw through the window. She's not going to go full goose Bozo on us here overnight because that's not anywhere near in her pattern of behavior in the past. But she's going to
be a little bit more fidgety than she's been before. I mean, it would be really nice if our kids came with little captions, right, over their head. Or better yet, if they'd raise their hand nicely and
say, Mr. Knoster, I think your frequency of reinforcement is not adequate here. Would you please ramp it up a bit? Right, that would be nice if they did that. But they don't do it that way. But they
do tell us that, don't they? Because their behavior is indicative, it's a form of communication. So if that happens then I just need to probably go over and not give her four every class period, but I
just have to maybe periodically get to her a little bit more persistently or consistently, or frequently than maybe what I was doing before. The issue of fairness and reinforcement is kind of like
food. Good thing to talk about right at break, right. If somebody has a full belly and they feel relatively satisfied, they don't get too bent out of shape if somebody else gets something to eat and
they didn't because they're full. On the other hand, if I'm starving and somebody offers Pam something to eat and they know I didn't eat and I'm sitting there, I'm not only not okay with that, I'm
probably what? Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to say it. Frustrated. That's what she said, frustrated. I'm not happy about that. Well, that's because I'm hungry. So if kids are feeling like they're
getting adequate acknowledgement and adequate connection, most kids are not going to get overly bent out of shape because somebody else gets something a little more frequently as long as they feel
their need is getting met. Now if they start to feel they're being taken for granted, oh yeah, you're going to have an issue you have to deal with them. Most kids are okay with that without even
talking to them about it. Occasionally you get that one kid or two kids that are like, they're the fairness police. And they want to have a conversation with you, so you politely sit down with that
kid, right, and you have a conversation with them. I mean, you're not divulging anything that's probably that confidential if somebody -- so I'm coming back to Marlin, sorry. But if other kids are in
the class with Marlin, they probably have a sense that Marlin's already got a history of some behavioral issues because they probably had their hair pulled already. In other words, they've had the
experience. This is not like -- I'm not getting out if Marlin hasn't -- I'm not saying, oh, here's his IP to document why I'm doing this. But kids figure this stuff out pretty quickly and pretty
intuitively. And you can actually have reasonable conversations even with young kids about this if you're honest and straightforward. But what really helps the conversation is if you have rapport with
them. So Pam is a kid I have good rapport with. She's probably going to be willing to more take it face value the fact that I'm saying that so and s. She's like okay, that's cool, right. Now she's a
kid that's a high knee kid and she feels her needs getting met -- not getting met, then she's going to be really upset. And you know what? She'd have a right to be. She'd have a right to be. All
right, let's take a break. I got ten after, so let's come back at -- I can't even do that, 25 after, okay. Give me 35 minutes, 25 after, and then we'll look at the intervention techniques and kind of
pull together and wrap up. All right, allow me to kind of bring you back large group here. First let me start by again thanking you for coming to these types of events is, I know, tiring and tedious
especially when you're used to being on your feet and not just a platitude, but I don't envy you sitting. I get to walk around, but I mean, you guys have been really focused and very helpful to me
today in terms of this venue. So I really do appreciate that. About maybe 25 minutes to a half hour to go here and then we're going to wrap it up. And then if anybody wants to talk about anything more
specifically individually afterwards, I'll be glad to do that afterwards. One quick kind of a reconnect to reinforcement procedures and this four to one ratio notion and then certainly if people have
questions or comments about it, we can talk about that before we get into intervention or reactive responses. Back to the example I gave you with the three hypothetical students that I walk through in
terms of scenario and figuring out how big a window of time does one have to achieve the four to one. The key is, the four to one becomes a constant with everyone. In other words, as a teacher I want
all of my students to experience the four to one. But what looks different is the time interval within which I deliver the four to one. That's what gets differentiated. So it's not like you know, any
given student doesn't need the four to one, it's just that some kids have much bigger windows of time. Another way to say that, some kids are just much more independent and resilient than other kids.
Other kids are absolutely totally dependent on it's like there's an umbilical cord connected between them and to us in terms of what feels to us constantly telling them, yes, you're doing a good job.
Yes, you're doing this. Yes, you're doing that. So the key is everybody kind of achieves the four to one. That becomes the target or the goal though, but it's different from kid to kid based on
circumstances. Obviously the more you have insight and experience with your kid, the more efficient it is to navigate how big a window of time you have. Questions or comments at all on label praise,
reinforcement four to one? There's basically principles which I know you're all very familiar with already, but just a couple things to kind of hone in on or focus in on more precisely before we jump
to the next point. Everybody good? All right, and everybody always wants to know, well what do you do when a kid does this? What do you do when a kid does this? What do you with a kid who does this? A
lot of times that's actually, if this were an in-service with teachers that sometimes an activity I'll actually start with it is okay, come up with all the things that you want to know what to do when
kids do them. And then we'll kind of work our backward to that in terms of saying -- the one thing is you can't -- you want to be planned in advance as to how you're going to respond. But you -- that
doesn't mean so scripted and rote that you know everything kids are going to do because they'll always trump you. Somebody will always come up with something that you're like no matter how long you've
been in the field, you come home and you're like, wow, didn't expect that. You know, where did that come -- I've never seen that in 20 years, or ten years, or eight years, or 27 years. Never saw that
one before. Couldn't anticipate that one. But if you have standard ways in which you redirect students, what it allows you to do is generalize that practiced almost any set of circumstances that
you're confronted with and if you're putting in place those preventative pieces that we've been emphasizing here with that 80:20 balance, when you do have to redirect, it makes it that much more
efficient and powerful so you don't have to redirect as many times perhaps as you might have had to in the past. In terms of inappropriate behavior, the first thing I would suggest that's important to
do in terms of planning in advance in terms of how to respond is to think about how am I going to categorize inappropriate? Generally speaking, there's two types of inappropriate behavior. Now by
types I don't mean forms in terms of what they look like. So I'm not talking about punching, hitting, spitting, stealing, all that stuff. But two kind of general types, or domains, if you want to call
them that. One is what we would call inconsequential behavior, sometimes called junk behavior, right. Sometimes called nuisance behavior. You could call it pet peeves. Or you could call it what I
affectionately call it, pain in the butt behavior. It's the stuff that shouldn't be happening but it is, but by itself it's not a major, major deal, right. So that's the one type of inappropriate
behavior is junk, nuisance, inconsequential, pain the butt, whatever you want to call it. The other type is problem behavior, or challenging behavior. Both types of behavior should be responded to
through different types of interventions. So what we're talking about with interventions now are reactive procedures, but one set of reactive procedures for nuisance or junk behavior, and another set
of procedures for problem or challenging behavior. So the first decision that a teacher has to make, and we all have to make it on the fly, is when you see a kid engaging in some type of inappropriate
behavior, you have to classify it up here in your mind's eye, is it junk or is it problem, right? Now some things are no brainers. Some things are clearly problems. But a lot of times there's those
gray area behaviors, things that you're like, well, not really sure. Here's from a practical standpoint, and again, I'm a teacher first and foremost. So I'm a pragmatist. From a pragmatic standpoint,
what I found is that on a day where I'm feeling particularly good, more resilient and things are going well, I might be more inclined to look at a certain behavior as a junk behavior versus on a day
where I'm just tired and worn down, feel unloved and unappreciated, a junk behavior might actually look like a problem behavior to me on that day. Now here's the nice thing from my perspective of how
to understand these procedures. As long as you've put in place the 80:20 balance, and if you miscall junk as problem, it's not going to make a big deal. It's not the end of the world. Now if you're
not getting the four to one, you're not getting the 80:20 balance and you're misjudging on top of that, kids are going to feel persecuted and they're going to make you pay for it, understandably,
right. So the key thing here is you're going to make a judgment call on your mind's eye, is it junk or is it problem? Once you make the decision, go with it. Don't second guess yourself. Deal with it,
but deal with it in a consistent and rather straightforward fashion with the following procedures. Please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What about some people consider most all behaviors problem behaviors? TIM
KNOSTER: Right, yeah. Determining if something is junk or problem, it's kind of like the old saying, maybe some of you have heard this before. It's kind of like pornography. I can't define it, but I
know it when I see it. Everybody kind of views different things differently. So you might have a teacher that's more inclined to look at anything inappropriate as problem behavior. I would probably
still argue that as long as they're getting the 80:20 balance, it's probably not going to really hinder them dramatically. But I do think that they're going to struggle more at getting rapport and
sustaining it over the course of the long-term. But if the 80:20 is not being achieved, that's not only going to be counter-productive in terms of behavior, but it's going to really kind of pull away
or tug away at the rapport aspect of things. So let's take a look at these two. I'm sorry, yes, please. Go ahead. AUDIENCE MEMBER: As a coach, when you're trying to help a teacher. TIM KNOSTER: Right.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How do you help get that down? I know what 80:20 is like. TIM KNOSTER: Right. AUDIENCE MEMBER: But you've got educators out there that don't see the difference. TIM KNOSTER: Right.
And a lot of times, again, I want to come back to something George said earlier today. It's not so much about that they may not understand it, but they may not have the support structures in place or
the encouragement systems in place in fact to help them see that. And it's kind of analogous to what I alluded to before that on a good day, I'm more likely to act in a way that when I look back at it
in hindsight, I'll be like, you know, hey, I did a pretty good job today. On a bad day, if I look back at it in hindsight a day or two later, I'm like, oh god, you know. That was not a good day. I
overreacted to that. I missed that. I missed that. I missed that. I missed that, right. So the reality is though to try to get a higher proportion of days where I'm feeling like it's constructive and
successful, which is then in turn going to help me be more resilient as a teacher. So from a coaching standpoint or an external facilitator standpoint or an internal coach or facilitator standpoint,
one of the common things that I know I'll encourage people to do is try to gain a sense of what the person -- the teacher's perspective is in terms of how they view their circumstances at that point
in time. I had this conversation with a gentleman, I'm not sure if he's in here now or not, over the first break. But it's related to the conversation that we had had in that if you have a situation
where someone appears resistant maybe or you know, is saying, well, why do I have to do the four to one, or why do we have to do this or why do we -- what I'll usually try to do is use, again, kind of
a functional assessment approach to get a sense of, okay, well describe to me kind of what the ebb and flow of what you do now is. And then they'll kind of talk about how they manage their class or
whatever. And then I'll politely say, not as bluntly as this, and how's that working for you? I mean, I'll say it more nicely but I'll say, "And how's that working for you?" You know. And from my
standpoint and I think this is true in general for those of you that have counseling backgrounds, this will fit with a therapeutic side. You can force somebody to go to therapy forever. But until
they're willing to acknowledge they have an issue, that they want some help on, that it's worthwhile their investment of time, I mean, you can hold them at gunpoint to therapy, but they're not going
to benefit from the therapeutic process. It's just not going to happen. I mean, they might comply by going, but they're not necessarily going to, I don't even know if it's this, but get better as a
result of it because they don't see a need to get better. So from a coaching standpoint, I usually try to get into conversations with them about, you know, okay, kind of how do you feel about how
things are going not for the kids but for you? Do you go home at the end of the day more often frustrated or not frustrated? Do you go home at the end of the day angry at kids or happy with kids? Do
you go -- end of the day, do you kick the dog or not kick the dog when you get in the door? When you go home, do you end up losing it with your own children at home because you're totally exhausted
more often or less often? We all have bad days, but if somebody -- you know, there is some aspect of, without making it too clinical, a therapeutic or cathartic component of that of saying, okay, you
know, yeah, this is what I'm doing. And you know what? Increasingly I'm not liking the results of what I've got. Okay, now you can actually maybe engage in something and say, here are some things
maybe if you try these things out, you might find that it's not going to be better overnight, but you find a little bit more of feeling successful with what you're doing by doing these things. So
that's typically where I would start from a technical assistance or training standpoint. Now in terms of the two of inappropriate behavior, the firs type junk or inconsequential behavior. The most
effective way to deal with this is through what's known as either planned ignored, systematic ignoring, and/or sometimes called pivoting. What that simply involves is the following. And I'll use the
middle table again just because it makes it easier for everybody here at this point in time. I might come back to, it was Pam, right? Okay, to Pam here. So let's say that students are supposed to be
working independently and quietly on a task. So they -- everybody here gets to work right away. So if you guys would pretend you're working right away. I know you're working, but let's -- like you're
working on a piece of paper. Except Pam here is not working. Now Pam is not engaging in problem behavior where she's disrupting everybody else and she's not been off task for the last year and a half
of her life, okay. This is -- you know, she's off task for maybe a half a minute, 20 seconds, 40 seconds, judgment call on this, right. Now on a good day, I'm probably going to look at that and say
junk behavior. On a bad day, I might look at that and say problem behavior, right. So let's deal with the junk behavior. Let's say it's a good day. Rather than approaching Pam directly about it,
because what I don't want to do is inadvertently kind of throw gas on a flame or feed attention into something or something that's not necessarily what I want her to do. I'm going to strategically
find somebody in close proximity, in this case I'd go as close as possible, so either Amy or -- what's your name? Bridget. Amy or Bridget. I would target Amy or Bridget and I would simply pivot to
them. This is where the term pivoting comes from, it's like basketball where you can move your pivot foot, right, like this. So I'm going to come in here. I'm going to reinforce Bridget for being on
task. And then as I withdraw, see I'm here, I'm reinforcing. So I'm using a tool two procedure, but I'm watching Pam. I'm just not watching Pam, right. I don't want her to know I'm watching her but
I'm watching her. So I'm here reinforcing. As I withdraw, if she goes on task, bang, I pivot, I'm right here, I reinforce and I move on. No big deal, right. Indirect or pivoting or planned ignoring
has in it proximity. Proximity is one of the main things. For what it's worth, again, even at 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th graders, when I get a large mass lecture of say 75 or 80 students in an intro
class, always the joy to draw for a semester, I'm pivoting all over the place. I mean, I'm moving and shaking and moving all over the place just using proximity and just trying to keep kids engaged or
whatever if it's a large block of time. Smaller classes, more easily managed, right. Bigger classes, harder. Same type of thing. So you simply reinforce pivot withdrawal, she's on task, reinforce
right away. So all an indirect procedure is, and that's what this is, in the tools, this is tool three when you look at them. A tool three procedure is an indirect intervention. It's still an
intervention. It's still reactive, but it's indirect, not direct. It's indirect in that I'm going to someone else, reinforcing, she's on task, boom. If she isn't on a good day, pivot a second time. On
a bad day, I withdraw, she's off task, boom, problem behavior deal with it. I'm right here. And then I'll go into a tool four which I'll talk you through briefly here in a minute. The key is to try to
systematically use the procedures. Now for some of you, how many people in here work with kids in one on one situations? Some of you probably. And some of you do group and one on one. With one on one
situations, you can only use the planned ignoring part unless they have an imaginary friend that you can visualize to. Pivoting requires more than one person you're working with. So if a kid is
engaging in junk behavior and you're working one on one, just try to ignore and plough through the junk behavior and look for positives to reinforce in terms of that. Well, you don't have somebody
like Bridget, right, or -- was it Amy? Or Amy next to Pam in order to then use for that. But you can still use proximity and still use the ignoring component. That's the only difference. But when you
got at least some type of group, and we'll define a group as more than one on one. So it could be a group of two, group of three, group of 20, whatever it is, you've got kids or clients that you can
pivot with in proximity, right. Now how long is off task behavior junk behavior? Judgment call. Absolute judgment call. And the judgment call may be different from day to day because you're a human
being and some days you're more run down and have less resiliency. And on other days, it's longer because you're having a better day. I mean, to say anything else would be disingenuous. There is a
human element to this. But the key is proximity and simple pivoting procedures. That's all a tool three procedure is, right. Now there are circumstances or situations where you can't ignore certain
behaviors, in particular, problem behaviors. So let's take a look at those types of circumstances as well. Okay, with problem behavior, there are a number of steps involved in what we would call a
direct intervention. When you look at your tools, this is a tool four procedure. And again, just to reiterate, you'll notice that tool two has tool one built into it, tool three has tools one and two
built into it. Tool four has tools one and two built into it as well. That's not happenstance, that was done by design, okay. With a stop, redirect procedure, which is a tool four procedure, it has
three major components. First we have to stop the problem behavior from occurring. Then we have to redirect the student engaging in the problem behavior to something else that's acceptable. And then
once they comply with our redirection, we have to then provide positive reinforcement or acknowledgment for their compliance with the redirection. Here's where the label praise really becomes really,
really important from back earlier when we talked about it. What I usually suggest to people, so if you're working with staff back in the school to kind of simulate and work through and learn some of
these procedures a little bit more systematically or precisely, I usually suggest for people just starting to learn the procedures to actually use a script, and a script is very short. It stop X and
it's do Y. Now let me be really clear about that though. X is a variable, right. Every time I go and actually work with teachers and the next thing, somebody gets so literal and they'll go up to a kid
and they'll go, stop X. You know, and I just. And everybody laughs and they're embarrassed and we can laugh with each other. We say, no, X is a variable. X is, you know, spitting, slapping, kicking,
swearing, whatevering, right. Now it sounds simple to say stop X, do Y, and then do the next step in a moment. But keep in mind that when it is -- when the instance arises where you need to use a
direct intervention, first of all as a teacher, I'm not happy. This is not a good thing, right. I don't want to have to do a lot of tool four procedures or stop redirects. Secondly, this might be a
kid that I have had a history of needing to stop redirect more frequently than other kids, which means my threshold or tolerance level, I might have a shorter fuse with this kid than this kid because
that happens because I'm a human being. It's just kind of the way it is. I'm not say it's right or wrong, it just is. It's a reality. So when I go into a stop X, do Y, I'm already kind of pre-oriented
in terms of my thoughts and my feelings of kind of being wired up already. So as I do this now, I'm approaching a student who's engaging in problem behavior. I'm approaching as quickly as I can
without leaping across a table or sprinting across a room unless somebody's going to get hurt of course. And as I'm doing this though, I'm approaching the situation with the student and as I'm doing
this, I have to multi-task a whole lot of things whilst keeping myself, and I will emphasize the word in control. So what I want to do, I'm just going to use the same group here. So you know, Pam, I'm
picking on you now because you're the student with the problem behavior. So she's engaging in a problem behavior. Everybody else is doing something appropriate. As I'm approaching her, I'm looking and
I have to be able to label in my mind's eye what I'm going to say the X is, right. So I have to look at the problem behavior and just like with labeling reinforcement or labeling praise, I want to
label the problem behavior. Stop grabbing, stop kicking, stop spitting, stop scribbling, stop tearing, stop screaming, stop whatevering, right. As I'm saying that, I'm thinking what am I going to
redirect her to do? Now I mean I could say I want you to go over there, stand on your head in the corner and cluck like a chicken. I mean, I could pick something random, but you know, it has to be
logically related. Like keep your hands to yourself on your own materials and do your work, right. Something like that. So it's a stop X, but while I'm saying stop X, I'm processing do Y. And as I'm
doing this, I'm in close proximity to her. Then keep in mind now, I'm kind of revved up, right. Stop X, do Y. So here's kind of the common mistake that can sometimes happen. I come over, I said, keep
your hands to yourself and do your work. I told you to -- I didn't even give her a chance to process it. All of a sudden I'm like, why didn't you do it a week ago? Right, because that's what I want
her to do is a week ago. So you get here and you're all kind of ramped up and you get here, stop X, do Y. You need to wait, pause. I usually breathe, breathe. Make it a big breath, or three short ones
if you're really, really, really revved up. But breathe. But wait, notice I haven't moved away, right. Stop X, do Y has proximity. Different than the pivoting procedure. With pivoting, I'm moving,
right. Moving around, not making direct eye contact. Don't want her to know that I'm really tuned in on her. With a direct intervention, totally different. I want Pam to know that nobody else in the
world exists except her right now. I don't want her to have any confusion that I'm talking to Amy with my stop X, do Y. Now with some kids you might have the tendency to say I want you to look at me.
I would not get too worried about them looking at you with eye contact as long as you know you have their attention. Now if you're concerned about having their attention rather than making her look at
me, I might help her to look at me. And she looked right up. I'll give you a dollar later, no. I mean, she looked -- I mean, as soon as you start to, you know -- now based on your knowledge of your
kids, you'll notice I invaded her space a little bit. With some kids, you might not want to do that. I understand that. These are things that you have to make judgment calls on in terms of how you
apply them. I'm just giving you the basic mechanics. You have to tailor them based on your knowledge of your kids. So in this case, stop X, do Y. So stop grabbing Bridget's materials. Keep your hands
to yourself and do your work. And then I just wait and pause. I hover essentially. She complies, I reinforce. Thank you for keeping your hands on your own materials and doing your work and then I move
on. If she doesn't comply, what would be my next step? I know you're thinking throw her in a headlock, but that's not what we're going to do. I won't tell you what to think, but don't do it. What
would be a logical thing? If I give her a stop X, do Y, keep your hands to yourself and do your work. And I am standing here and let's say she doesn't start to escalate and grab material. Yeah, but
she does that. What would be a logical thing for me to do next? I know you want to throw her in a headlock. Yeah, just come back with a broken record or skipped CD technique. Now the key with this,
we've all done this and I'll be the first one to admit it. Especially this -- it should always come with a disclaimer. I won't say don't try this at home, but try this carefully at home with your own
children because it's so much easier for, I think, most people, I know for me, to intervene with people I'm paid to intervene than my own kids. Is that you go into your stop X, do Y, wait, pause,
right. She doesn't comply and then I come back, I said, I said to keep your hands to yourself -- ratcheting up the noise level unless he's really hearing impaired does not help. It doesn't help. In
fact, it's kind of like taking a drop of gasoline on a flame a little bit and it has the exact opposite effect. I'm not trying to jazz it up, I'm trying to calm it down. A tool four procedure is
nothing more than a redirection. It's not a punishment. It is a redirection procedure. The other thing is when I get into the stop X, do Y, another kind of common sometimes misinterpretation or error
is that then the student might say, well, why? Or they might want to you might want to get into a discussion as to why it's important to do that, not them. A stop X, do Y, you want to stop it,
redirect it. Now if I want to have a conversation with Pam later, fine, absolutely, but not right now. A good way to think about tool four or stop, redirect is it's kind of like fire intervention with
the fire department. I mean, let's god forbid this building was ablaze and all of a sudden the trucks came and the firemen and firewomen started running in the doors and they came. And as soon as they
burst through the doors ready to save us, they stood in front of the doors and they all started to say, I wonder how the fire started? What could we do to prevent these types of things in the future?
It would make no sense, right. Total disconnect with the context. Put the fire out, please, then let's have the conversation. That's what tool four is. Put the fire out. It's not a place for
quasi-counseling. It's not a place for lots of discussion. It's a stop X, do Y. Once they do the Y, boom, move on. If I want to sidebar with her later, have a contract with her later, talk with her
after school, do whatever, fine, absolutely. That's not inappropriate, just not in the moment. That's all a tool four is is a stop X and then a do Y redirect. So in terms of interventions, the two
primary interventions, and these are, keep in mind, all this is tier one stuff, right. Not talking anything about tier two scenarios or tier three scenarios. These are good, research-based slash
evidence-based approaches to managing group behavior, prevention and intervention, 80:20 balance, ideally 90:10 is even better. But minimum 80, maximum 20. When you do have to react and respond, do it
in an efficient, matter of fact, cut and try fashion. If it's junk behavior, indirect intervention. If it's problem behavior, direct intervention. And then one last point on the direct intervention
and then we'll certainly open it up to questions or comments. Let's say I have to redirect Pam multiple times. I can always change the do Y statement. Let's say that not only did she kind of sit
there, put her arms on her -- across her chest and refuse to do work. Maybe she continued to grab Bridget's stuff or started to throw something across at Erin or whatever the situation might be. I
could always say, stop throwing materials, I want you to take your work and I want you to come over here now. I could change the redirect. I could redirect her to an individual workspace. I could
redirect her, again, based on the circumstances to a quiet space. I could redirect her to go to the principal's office, that's a do Y. You can always change the redirect based on what the student is
doing. In other words, you're going to adjust what you do in response to how the student responds to what you do, right. If they comply, you reinforce. If you they don't comply, redirect again.
Redirect again. You're going to somehow quell the situation so you can move on. If this becomes a persistent dance that Pam and I have on a regular basis, things are getting worse not better, and I'm
really with fidelity trying to get that 80:20, then maybe I'm going to look at some tier two strategies here for Pam and maybe a couple other kids that might need it. But I'm not going to put tier two
in place for everybody because they don't all need it. I'm going to try to individualize a little bit more or target a group a little bit more depending on, you know, what the interventions of concern
might need to be. Questions, comments, anything along those lines trying to respectful of your time here, but I did want to leave at least some block of time here for questions or comments. Please,
real loud. AUDIENCE MEMBER: As far as redirection is concerned, how many times do you recommend redirection before it has to be? TIM KNOSTER: Again, if you're hitting the 80:20 and the four to one, my
hunch is you're going to have to redirect a lot less than you might have had to with a kid in the past. But two, again, these are judgment calls. I wish I could say, six. Right, I wish I could say
that but I really think when people say, here's what it always is, they either are lying to you or trying to sell you something. Neither is a good situation. I think you've got to say, here's the
basic principle of practice of how I'm going to redirect. But with one kid, I might redirect six or seven times. With another kid, once. I might change or alter how many times I'll redirect or how few
times, right, based on the circumstances and the history with the kid. But the key is you still use the redirect procedure consistently. Louder isn't always better, in fact, it's usually worse.
There's a difference between assertive and aggressive, right. For some of us that have good voices for projection, assertiveness is less challenging than those of us that might be a little bit more
meek, mild, and passive in terms of our voice modulation and our demeanor. With some individuals, they have to tone it down so they don't appear aggressive, which would be me. I mean, that's kind of
the pattern I fit. I have a decent voice to usually express. With other colleagues I work with that are excellent at doing this stuff, they have to ramp it up because they almost kind of sound meek
and mild. And what you don't want to do with a redirect is not have the kid or client think it's a request. There's a difference between keep your hands to yourself and do your work versus keep your
hands to yourself and do your work. You're in a big question mark on the back side. All of a sudden I'm saying, you know, please, please, please, pretty please. That's not what a redirect is. You're
not begging and groveling. You're saying stop X, do Y. This is not a choice any longer, right. Stop X, do Y. But there is no magic in my book. I mean, maybe somebody else would have one, but that's
above my pay grade. I don't know what it is if it exists. Other questions or comments. Yes, please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just in terms of -- I'm working with my staff this year, they've been doing the
positive behavior thing for two years now. TIM KNOSTER: School-wide? AUDIENCE MEMBER: School-wide. TIM KNOSTER: Yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's my first year in the building and just kind of seeing some
of the roadblocks that have come in into play and of our biggest conundrums, or one of my that I perceive to be an issue, is when do consequences come into play? Because -- TIM KNOSTER: By
consequences, consequences for staff or consequences for kids? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Not the staff. TIM KNOSTER: Okay, but I mean, you think about it, that's why I wasn't sure. Okay. AUDIENCE MEMBER: So
when you're looking at junk behavior versus -- TIM KNOSTER: Problem, right. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just need input in terms of -- TIM KNOSTER: Yeah, I mean, the world -- I mean, while people have
different philosophical bents on this, world is full of naturally occurring consequences. If I walk out and cross the street and don't look both ways, I increase the likelihood dramatically. I get hit
by a car. That's a natural consequence in the world we live in today. A hundred years ago wasn't an option because cars weren't on the roads, right. Maybe I get run over by a horse, but you know, the
reality is there are natural consequences. Consequences should be part and parcel of what occurs with both school-wide and classroom-based management. But the consequences should be naturally
occurring and relevant to what the problem behavior was. For example, having a kid sit down and write a thousand times, I will never, you know, hit another kid again, is so counterproductive on so
many levels. And most people understand that, but what happens is when we lose self-control of emotion and anger, people end up blurting things out that make no sense at all. Classic one at home and
parents dealing with kids, you're grounded for the rest of your life. Well, of course they're not grounded for the rest of their life. But that's what came out because I lost maybe control as a parent
at that moment in time. So now you got to retract from that somehow and you have to get creative. The more you can focus on naturally occurring consequences that fit the situation. Kids disruptive in
class, maybe he does lose some recess time or he loses whatever in order to complete the work he should have completed. If a kid does something that's offensive to another kid, an apology probably
should be a part of it. And maybe the apology goes beyond just verbal behavior, yeah, I'm sorry I punched you, you know, like that. You know, but maybe they have to write an apology out or maybe
better yet in some instances the kid has to go out of his way to do something nice for this kid in the next two to three days. In other words, social restitution, things that make the environment or
the people a little bit closer to the way they were before the problem event occurred, but things that are logically and naturally related. But consequences absolutely should be built in. If you'll
remember back on the expectations component we went over. One of the eight elements or items there, the last one was consequences or how you're going to address behavioral errors or when kids mess up
behaviorally. And for what it's worth, the same thing does apply for adults and staff. I mean, there are consequences for all of us, you know, in life, right. Some people would call that manipulative,
I don't know. I just -- if I don't show up for work, I don't get a paycheck. That's about all as far as I need to know to understand consequences to exist, right. I mean, it really is that simple.
Other questions, comments? Anything for the common good. Please. AUDIENCE MEMBER: In your handout, do you have research for the four to one? TIM KNOSTER: I don't have the references there, but if you
email me, I can send you some stuff that would steer you towards that. Yeah. Yeah, I try to keep the PowerPoints and the handout materials pretty like, where people could just take them and run with
them and grab, so I don't put tons and tons of research behind them in terms of the lit and the bibs. Other questions or comments? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. TIM KNOSTER: Okay, thank you
very much. You guys have been great today. Thanks a lot.
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