Excerpted from Chapter 7 of Positive Behavioral Support in the Classroom: Principles and Practices, by Lewis Jackson, Ed.D., & Marion Veeneman Panyan, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2001 Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The implementation of a viable behavior support effort depends on strategy as much as planning. Planning provides the initial forecasts that allow educators to act in a responsible manner; strategy makes possible the necessary movement through the murky social and political realities of schools.

Dörner noted that von Moltke, a 19th-century Prussian field marshal, defined strategy as a "system of makeshifts" that provides for the

Further elaboration of an original guiding idea under constantly changing circumstances. It is the art of acting under the most demanding conditions... that is why general principles, rules derived from them, and systems based on these rules cannot possibly have any value for strategy. (1996, pp. 97–98)

When the behavioral issues are severe and the degree of concern is high, effective strategic action often requires the presence of positive relationships with the other participating educators and the key administrators in the building. These relationships become the cornerstone of the successful plan when bumps and hardships occur along the way. People are generally more willing to pass through difficulties with a student if they have a positive relationship with those who have instigated action on behalf of the student. Part of what creates such a relationship for special educators is demonstrating over time a willingness to provide the necessary supports for the classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, and others who carry out an intervention. This can involve regularly making accommodations for the special requests of classroom teachers and others, such as agreeing to co-develop specific lessons and activities for a classroom teacher or teaching the class on a day when the general educator has an emergency. It can also involve graciously accepting a setback with a particular student, such as when the student's behavior becomes sufficiently out of control that the classroom teacher demands some form of relief through removal. The process of taking a loss must be viewed as a temporary setback, however, and not the final outcome of a failed plan.

The student's day-to-day movements and activities within classrooms and other environments are the data that lay the foundation for strategic action. Of course, behavioral data only tell a small part of the story. For example, a source for especially important data could be how certain team members feel about and react to an intervention that is in progress. In other words, closely monitoring stressors, which can include the anxiety or fears of the people who are implementing a plan (Albin et al., 1996), often provide a better indication of how a plan is faring than the behavioral data.

Based in part on the work of Jackson and Leon (1998a), six key activities associated with implementing an intervention are described in the following subsections. Certainly, if the primary purpose of an intervention is to simply enhance one's practices or if the degree of concern about the behavior is minimal, then the activities described next may occur informally and in a substantially abbreviated form. To provide clear and useful explanations of the underlying processes and issues, however, the following descriptions reflect more serious behavioral concerns.

Put in Place Educational and Environmental Changes

The fixed decisions, fluid decisions, and recommendations that are related to educational placement, instructional activities, and prevention must be communicated to the people who will enact them. Even with the best of plans, it can take weeks to get these processes started and have them occur regularly. This period is especially critical for the student. Not only is he or she operating under new expectations and experiencing potentially novel activities, the student is also likely feeling the effects of the inconsistencies and errors made by the educators who are still learning the plan. It is not uncommon for even very good plans to fail during these early weeks because people do not allow for mistakes during the start-up process.

Put in Place Professional Development

Schools sometimes encourage educators who need a particular kind of information to attend an in-service training session. The training may use real-life examples that fit the content of the training, but these examples may not match the complex and varied situations that the participants face with specific students. Especially for highly motivated teachers, certain kinds of information can be acquired through workshops of this type; certainly, protective restraint procedures have been taught in this format for years. For behavior support efforts to be most effective, however, the training that is provided should be tailored to the steps and procedures prescribed within a particular behavior intervention plan.

Put in Place Incident Response and Crisis Procedures

Decisions about the proper management of crisis situations must be communicated to everyone who is a part of the student's education. If crisis issues are addressed as part of the support process, all of the involved educators must have a clear knowledge of their options and the steps for returning normalcy to a classroom.

Although this book emphasizes the long-term goals of the support effort, a negative undercurrent will likely appear in the school community if incident response and crisis support fail. Members of the broader school community may be glad to hear that a student is attending more classes and has made a friend, but they can turn against the support process quickly and without warning if they believe that behavioral incidences are not being handled properly or are jeopardizing the learning or safety of others. Hence, particularly during the early weeks, the ways that adults handle problem behaviors — especially crisis situations — must be carefully monitored, frequently revisited, and collaboratively discussed.

Effective crisis support requires a school to behave as a community rather than as an aggregate of classrooms and individuals. If only a single person is trained in crisis support, such as the paraprofessional who works with a student, the crisis support process is in jeopardy from the start. Effective crisis support requires a coordinated effort in which a variety of individuals are trained to play a variety of roles in the support process. Moreover, keeping the larger school community informed — at least with respect to knowing that a plan does exist and that proper crisis management processes are in place — can be useful for containing the rumor spreading that is bound to emerge in any human community.

Ensure Critical Communications

A complex support process requires a network of participants, each having specific information needs in order to carry out their part of the plan. Mechanisms for ensuring the initial communication of the plan's steps and procedures, plan revisions, and information on progress can include regular meetings between specific participants, written communications, and informal contacts initiated relatively frequently by the educator most responsible for plan conduct (e.g., special education teacher, psychologist, counselor).

Ensure On-Demand Problem Solving

In a complex behavior support effort, two types of situations that evoke discomfort in those implementing the plan are bound to arise: 1) when the educator did something not identified in the plan and 2) when the educator did what the plan required, but the results were not as anticipated. Both of these situations are remedied by opportunities to reflect and problem solve with others, either immediately or at the end of the school day.

It is useful to have a specific format that all participants follow for quick, on-the-spot reflection and problem solving. The tam could agree on using the following three-step process, which is partially based on the six facets of understanding discussed in Chapter 6 (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998):

&Mac183; Describe and characterize what happened.
&Mac183; Use questions to organize reflections about explanation, interpretation, perspective, and empathy (see Chapter 8 for questions that can be used in this process).
&Mac183; End the session with reflections that center on application and self-knowledge.

Evaluate Change in the Learner and the Community

Although on one would seriously question the importance of keeping data on progress, the format and focus of measures remain critical, unresolved issues in education (e.g., Singer, 2000). The dilemma has two parts. First, as previously mentioned, past classroom management practices have often emphasized quantitative data, and this has been translated by educators as frequency counts of problem behaviors, coupled with sometimes superficial reports of learning progress. Relying on these types of data can pose a serious threat to behavioral support. Teachers should instead rely on rich descriptions of behavioral incidents, embedded within a sustained focus on progress toward the long- and short-term goals of the intervention. Second, many educators use their data exclusively to assess whether the student is improving and not as a mechanism for evaluating the support process. It is common to find situations in which the available data emphasize student noncompliance with the plan but there are no data on the integrity of plan implementation. Instead, educators should treat data that show continuing problems as evidence that the behavior intervention plan needs revision, and they should also keep data on intervention processes.