Welcome to Behavior Management where everything's made up and the point's don't matter!

My students. I love my students. If you asked me the number one thing I learned from them thus far was? “Welcome to behavior management, where everything’s made up and the point’s don’t matter!” Now if you’re not quite finding this comical yet let me tell you two things:

1. Go watch an episode of “Whose Line is it Anyways?”

2. My students all have point sheets.

Still not laughing? Well, if you’re not one of my co-workers, you’re probably not yet, if you are one of my co-workers, starting to giggle?

Working as a behavior interventionist in a program designed for students with emotional and behavioral challenges I get to experience the worst of student behavior regularly. In fact, that is what I am there for, that is what my job is all about, intervening when our students go off the wall. I am there to get students back on track so that they may go back to class and learn. Working as a behavior interventionist you start to develop an appreciation for well-planned plots, like the day one of my students held a computer hostage and made demands for it’s safe release (chocolate milk by the way he was demanding chocolate milk). But still, the core thing that my students have taught me is when it comes to behavior management is “Everything is made up and the points don’t matter!”

Working with my students I have developed this new love for behavior and behavior management that I previously was unaware that I had. I am constantly challenged and in return I spend a large part of my time trying to find new resources, implementing new techniques and attempting to develop my own behavior management system. I actually find it quite enjoyable, it’s this large puzzle that is constantly evolving, and in the end, I see change happen (or always have the hope to). Now, I would be lying if I also didn’t tell you that it is also incredibly stressful at times, but overall I wake up everyday excitd to go see my students.

So what about these points? Well, like any “good” behavior management system we have daily point sheets. The student’s behavior is recorded on the sheets all day long and the students earn points for good behavior. On the flip side they loose points for bad behavior. Well, sadly, by the time the students are with me they no longer care about the f***ing points, and many times, they are with me because they have lost their points, and this core nuclear reaction has gone off with-in them that caused their brain to melt and now I am with a student who is trying to crawl out a window just because they lost their points all over swearing in the classroom. And I wish I was exaggerating. Really though, by the time they are with me my students could not care less about their point sheets, the normal system of incentive behavior management has been throw out the window and the student is about to go next. My students do impulsive things like swear, loose a point and then implode (Now I have many many many reasons as to why this occurs, but we will talk about that another time) The number of times I am talking a kid out of crawling out the first floor window is comical. I could say I average 1-2 a week.

So when it reaches the point that on some days I have three students running the halls, another screaming at a door (and who is even behind that door you’re screaming at?!?) and one with me whom I am just trying to keep in the building (please don’t climb out this window because I am in teacher clothes and don’t have my walkie) the fist thing that pops into my head at the most in-opportune times is Drew Carry announcing “WELCOME TO BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT where everything’s made up and THE POINTS DON’T MATTER!” because in the end, they don’t. The student does not care about their point sheets, and no matter how many times I remind them of earning their points, it always ends the same, the points just don’t matter.

So this is how I started my journey wondering about and trying to find what behavior management really is, how do I best work with my students to see them make real progress and change, and find out if in the end, do the points really matter?