Presentation 4

Mark Le Messurier, New Year 2019, educator workshop 4 of 12

The 4-goals of 'mis'behaviour - savvy ways to re-interpret, re-classify and work with tricky student behaviour; through a positive behavioural support lens (3 hours)

This is a practical, discussion-based workshop for all educators. What I've planned is a way to think about behaviour, the underlying drivers, and helpful interventions to deal with it more effectively. Sorry the title is a mouth full!

I'll introduce a '3-step design' as way to raise a deeper awareness about 'mis'behaviour (I prefer the idea of seeing 'mis'behaviour as a 'mis'firing), understanding it, reading it, classifying it and managing it with improved quality. I'd ask each teacher to come along with a student, or two, in mind that they worry about and/or is tricky to manage. The goal is that by the time educators leave they'll have something useful.

To do this let's review the work of Adler and Dreikurs (1960's). They showed us how to identify behaviour, how to classify it and how to work with it more effectively. They developed a framework called the 'ladder of discouragement'. It's the pathway that all human beings take (adults in groups as well as children) to find social recognition, or to feel as though they belong. Each rung on the ladder is a deeper level of despair and is reflected by a deeper level of difficult behaviour.
The trick is once we classify where a student may be operating - an attention seeker and/or power seeker and/or revenge seeker and/or displaying inadequacy or feeling hopeless - we hold a much better chance to introduce truly appropriate interventions and develop new skills.

STEP 1 -
Make a hypothesis - consider, what are the behaviours?
What's driving them?
What is this student trying to establish, trying to get to, or trying to get away from?
After all, behaviour has a purpose. It is happening to meet a need. We need to be clever enough to sort this.

STEP 2 -
Next, identify what the student is really struggling for. Is it, attention or power - or perhaps both.
Are they trying to 'pay you back'(revenge) or is their behaviour about an inadequacy or sense of 'hopelessness' they are feeling?
Does their behaviour suggest an impairment, disability, a trauma-based response or an underlying mental health issue?

STEP 3 -
Best improvements come from educators who are prepared to;

• manipulate their relationship and environment to better meet the perceived needs of students
• teach and reinforce new skills to students, ideally underpinned by a school culture doing precisely the same. In this way, that student's 'faulty logic' is more naturally replaced by behaviours that work better for them, and for everyone. Without this their 'faulty logic' simply compounds. This is why connecting with students and teaching new skills counts for so much.

Finally, let's touch on the 'red flags' likely to indicate a young person is suffering from a trauma-based history. I'll present a handy guide to work more effectively with students showing trauma-based.

Educator workshops are intended for staff working in schools, for clinicians such as counsellors, psychologists, OT's, speech pathologists, social workers and youth workers working in private practice and for parents running home school. To arrange a workshop at a time that suits your staff, simply contact Mark:

Mark Le Messurier
Phone (08) 83320698,
email mark@marklemessurier.com.au