I love the idea of “acceptable replacement behaviors.”
The theme of this text seems to be allowing students more independence and feelings of belonging in the classroom. By giving students the respect and opportunities they deserve as learners in a diverse classroom, providing them with ways to improve their own personal success in the classroom is extremely important.
One way (which I have seen in my own classroom), is providing students with acceptable replacement behaviors. I have seen this modeled by my own Cooperating Teacher, but would like more guidance on how to effectively use this with students of all types. For the mean time though, I have begun to use this with a number of different students in my class, particularly the ones labeled with IEPs. These particular students are sometimes unable to control their behaviors, instincts, reactions, blurt-outs, etc, like I would want them to. Therefore, I use the idea of “acceptable replacement behavior” to not reprimand them, but more importantly, to provide them with guidance to change or transform their behavior.
For example, if student A is walking down the class swinging his arms and yelling out (while all the other children are walking in a semi-organized line), I may say to student A, “By looking at your classmates, do you notice some behaviors which I might be thinking are good behaviors?” If the student remains oblivious and says, “No” then I will move to, “What are some behaviors which you think I might think are acceptable for the hallway?” This allows us not to have a critical conversation in which the student feels lowly or defensive, but more a conversation where the student thinks that they themselves are coming up with good behaviors.
In my own opinion, I think this allows students more automaticity in the classroom – it allows them to develop more skills in self-monitoring, helping them to think through their behaviors and develop more reasonable logic in being able to control and practice good behaviors.
I really like this way of managing classroom behavior, too. I, however, have seen that it is a little more difficult to use if the whole class is not on task. There has to be an example students or group of students to point out as the correct behavior. If the students never see the right behavior, then how can they know. I think this will play out really differently in our own classrooms. We will be able to teach the right behaviors to them at the beginning of the year, so we can enforce the behaviors we want throughout the year. I think my CT and I have really similar ideas of how students should behave, but I think it will still be different when I have complete ownership over classroom rules from the beginning of the year through the end.
Hey Melissa!!!
I loved your example, and I agree with you the idea of “acceptable replacement behaviors” is awesome. In my own classroom, we have tried this and unfortunately are failing at the moment. My thought is that because our kids are not use to us reacting this way, they are still a little confused. Also, as teachers we do not implement it as consistently as we should. Another thing is finding the time to have these critical conversations with students. My goal though is to work on these things because I feel that it is important for the children to eventually get to the point that they can self-monitor and manage themselves.
~ Amanda
I certainly want to implement acceptable replacement behaviors in my classroom. The student that I am doing my case study on presents a particularly challenging situation. He is constantly talking. I think he would talk all day everyday if we let him. In his opinion the best environment for him would be one in which he could talk to anyone he wants to whenever he wants to. In this case, he does see this as acceptable behavior. Even though he annoys the rest of his classmates to no end. He just doesn’t see how disruptive his talking really is to the entire class. I have begun using a check system on his desk but I want to find a way to have one of these conversations with him as well…..