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Educative Time-Out

 A controversial topic in educational psychology and classroom management is the concept of a time-out. While most people envision a time out as a student sitting alone in a dark corner, facing the wall, with their head down in depression and embarrassment, that is not the purpose of procedure of an educational time-out in 2022.  In the classroom, the purpose of a time-out is to remove a student from an environment that is reinforcing their negative behaviors and allow them a space to recenter themselves without the reinforcers. During this time, they will have the opportunity to calm down, and self-assess their current situation and behavior. This time-out can be within the classroom, out outside of the classroom. When implemented effectively and appropriately, time-outs are significantly beneficial at eliminating numerous challenging behaviors. Next time your child comes home explaining the time-out process for his classroom, instead of picturing that student with his nose a...
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Challenging Behaviors

 Students, and children in general, are not perfect. If we as adults struggle to get through our work week without feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, exhausted, and frustrated, how can we expect the children in our lives when they have even fewer coping skills and experiences managing difficult emotions? How can we expect them to learn the lessons of self-regulation, if we as the adult role models in their lives have not?  It is important that as teachers, and as parents, that we don't hold these children to higher standards than we hold ourselves, but to remember that they are human as well. They are fully capable, and entitled, to strong feelings, difficult emotions, and challenging behaviors. As the adults in their lives, it is up to us to get to the root of what is causing those behaviors, provide the supports necessary to assist them in changing those behaviors, and make sure we are modeling the appropriate reactions we expect out of them. 
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Challenging Behaviors

 As educators, and as parents, we are quick to respond to a child's positive or negative behaviors. Especially the negative ones when we are trying to mold them into the best versions of themselves. It is so easy to see a challenging behavior, and in a desperate attempt to try to teach them that is not appropriate, we miss the idea about teaching them instead what is appropriate.  What do I mean by that?  All behaviors stem from somewhere. A root cause. By just focusing on the behavior we don't want to see them display, addressing only that behavior, and issuing a consequence or punishment to not see it displayed again, we are doing a disservice to them. Studies show that this will only work in a short-term window and there is no long-term benefit or learning provided this way. Instead, as educators and parents, we need to dig deeper than behavior and determine what the root cause is. Only through identifying what CAUSED the behavior, eliminating that cause or teaching th...
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My Child Was Referred to a Tier 2 RTI Intervention. What Does That Mean?!

 You just got off the phone with your child's school, only to be told that your son or daughter has been referred to a tier 2 intervention under their school RTI model. They probably said something along the lines of how they have been progress monitoring your child for some time since he wasn't making the necessary growth that was expected. Through different in classroom interventions and reteaching, you were probably told your child was still struggling to make progress. Thus, the tier 2 placement.  What does that even mean? In RTI (Response to Intervention) there are 3 tiers of instruction delivery. The first tier is the teaching that occurs in the classroom with the entire class. Think of this as the lessons that occur each day. Students are regularly assessed to determine how well they are learning with the instruction that was provided to all students. After instruction and practice, if your child is still struggling to understand the concept and make gains, they are ref...
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