Behavior De-Escalation for Instructional Coaches with Sam Parmerlee, ep. 233

Behavior De-Escalation for Instructional Coaches with Sam Parmerlee, ep. 233, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:00

Hey, coaches, it’s time for the event of the year, and this year it’s even bigger. The simply impact Summit, formerly simply coaching Summit, is my favorite coaching conference of the summer, and this July, it’s even more incredible. Administrators, teachers and all school leaders are invited to the summit. There will be sessions designed for different audiences to make sure everyone gets what they need to have an amazing school year. Keynote speakers like my friend Nicole Turner, Dr Jan Birkins and Carrie Yates, authors of the science of reading book, shifting the balance and Dr Sean Woodley, behavior and management guru will share their knowledge and inspire us. And I can’t wait. I’m presenting high impact coaching strategy improving the effectiveness of the coaching strategy that you already use. This session will walk you through this coaching strategy that will create the biggest impact on your teachers and classrooms. You’ll learn when to use each one, how to make each one effective and purposeful, and all of the tips I’ve learned when using these strategies with teachers, if you felt like co teaching or observations just aren’t cutting it, this session is for you. Save your spot for the simply impact summit this July, 14 through 16th, so you don’t miss out on all the incredible learning and fun. I love a good PD, but I really love a good PD from home. Register for the summit and get all the tools you need to make the school year a great one. Head to buzzing with miss b.com/summit to save your spot, the sooner, the better for awesome pricing.

Chrissy Beltran  01:19

Hey, Coach, I recently discovered an amazing technology for instructional coaches that will help you coach individual teachers, teams of teachers and across your school, all while saving you time and growing your coaching skill set. Iris Connect is the bridge between individual growth and team development. With this tool, you can safely and securely record and upload lessons, summarize them with incredible AI technology, and find the exact moment you need to discuss with a teacher to support their growth instead of spending hours in a handful of classrooms making minimal impact. You can use Iris connect to guide teachers through the basics with a personalized PD Plan, and then you can meet with them when they’re ready for the next challenge. One of my favorite things about Iris Connect is that you can create a bank of exemplary practice videos within your school or district, and they’re totally safe and secure. Teachers can share what works for them, reflect together and build a culture of collective growth and improvement, plus, it’s the solution to the problem we all have scheduling the post conference. Instead, you can connect anytime with your teachers with time stamped comments and written or video feedback so they can go back and see exactly what you’re talking about in their lesson. Video coaching is truly the future. Head to Iris connect.com for a free trial, plus, when you mention this ad, you’ll get 10% off your first user license, whether you’re a lead teacher, coach or a school leader. Iris Connect is your trusted partner in professional learning.

Chrissy Beltran  02:39

Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissie Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode.

Chrissy Beltran  03:03

Hey coach, and welcome to episode 233, of instructional coaching with Miss B today with my guest Sam Parmalee. We are talking about behavior de escalation for instructional coaches. This is part of my mini series on school wide behavior and management practices that work. It was a very, not surprisingly widely requested series. I do have a podcast series already out about behavior and classroom management, so you can check that out in my previous episodes. But this is new content that we are adding because we are digging further into this topic. It’s so important, if management doesn’t happen, nothing else happens. So it’s so important to me that you have the tools that you need if you are looking to provide modeling support or behavior support in a classroom that does not have a lot of management going on, maybe it’s very reactive. You know, reactionary management, which means we yell at kids instead of teaching them what we want them to do. I want you to grab my free behavior classroom management program for coaches. It’s a very easy download you can grab it’s for free if you head to buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 233, you can scroll to the bottom of this of the page and grab that download, because it’s stuff that I have tried in classroom, things that I have learned over the years, and I really believe it’ll be helpful to you. So grab that download if that’s the focus of your work right now. And let’s welcome my guest. Sam parmarly, thank you so much for being here today. Sam,

Sam Parmerlee  04:30

thanks, Chrissy. I’m so excited you invited me on, and I’m so excited to talk about all things, behavior, awesome,

Chrissy Beltran  04:36

that’s what we’re here for. So we’d love to get to know you first. If you could share a couple of things with us. Who do you help and how do you spend most of your time and energy at work? Yeah.

Sam Parmerlee  04:46

So I am currently a behavioral consultant for a district in Indiana. So I serve about a district of about 10,000 students right now. I previously was an ED self contained teacher before moving into this. Role. So now this is my fourth year in the role, and so I serve the whole district. I do professional development surrounding behavior. I work with students with really challenging needs. I work with school teams to develop plans and help with student success. I work really closely with our administrators and our leadership team as we think about changing our beliefs around challenging behavior and what that means. And I have a really unique model that I love. I actually have seven instructional assistants or para professionals who work for me, and so they actually go out into the school buildings, and they work with our most challenging students to try to help build plans and provide some positive support for them.

Chrissy Beltran  05:41

I love that. That sounds great. I love the focus on behavior that’s so supportive of teachers and coaches. So what is a hobby that you love to do? Because I’m on a mission this year to share hobbies with people, because I feel like we don’t make enough time for the things that we love.

Sam Parmerlee  05:55

Yeah, I I’m super glad you asked that, because I think so often in the field of education, we lose sight of that. We’re a human before we’re a teacher, professional or leader. But yeah, I love to run in my free time, so I’m actually training for my fifth half marathon right now. I love, yeah, I love to read books. I love to spend time with my husband, and we have a cute little pug, so we are pretty pug obsessed over here.

Chrissy Beltran  06:23

So yeah, I love that. I have to have to talk about my dog. I just got a dog recently. We’ve had dogs my whole life. I’ve never had a day without a dog, but I have anyone. She’s this way that she’s a bernadoodle, Bernice mountain dog and poodle, and she’s like, big, and she’s only four months old. At this time, she’ll be a little older when this comes out. When this comes out, and she’s already massive, but so excited to see how big she gets, because it’s going to be the biggest dog I’ve ever had. So I’m kind of, I’m dog obsessed right now myself.

Sam Parmerlee  06:51

I love that. Obviously, our pug is the opposite. I just call her a little potato on toothpicks. So she’s very cute, and she’s actually 15, so she’s we call her our old little pug lady. So yeah, we love spending time with her and taking her on walks in our neighborhood and stuff.

Chrissy Beltran  07:09

All right, thank you for sharing that. So we are looking at behavior today, and we’re talking a little bit about behavior de escalation, and you know what behaviors we’re seeing. So to get started, if you could share a little bit about the kinds of behaviors that we’re behaviors that we’re seeing in schools that might require more support than what the traditional classroom teacher is prepared to provide, which, honestly, as a teacher, I was prepared to provide very little. But you know, if you can kind of elaborate on that,

Sam Parmerlee  07:35

yeah, I think that’s a really great question, because I think we’re living in a time and an age where we are seeing a huge shift in our classroom dynamics, and they just look different. We’re seeing students who are coming to us with more significant trauma. I think we’re seeing a lot of social media and technology influence on our students, and, quite frankly, a negative influence. Sometimes it’s really hard, especially as we’re moving into the AI generation and that artificial intelligence, students have a really hard time differentiating the real versus the reality and versus what is artificially generated, what that looks like, and sometimes mimicking some of those behaviors at school. I also think we see a lot of the inequitable, inequitable opportunities for our families that create barriers for our students. And so many of our families are going through really hard times, challenging moments. They’re working multiple jobs, they can’t make ends meet, and they’re really just trying to survive. So our families are in survival mode, and there are students with significant behavior and survival mode. I also think we’re still seeing a lot of the COVID epidemic. We’re still seeing a lot of our students come to us with a lot of those lagging skills. You know, they were basically quarantined for a significant amount of time, which we know has long term impact socially, for not only us as humans, but for kids, as in that crucial developmental age. So I think there are so many things that influence student behavior, right? We can’t just say it’s just this one thing, but I think the important thing is for us to recognize that our classrooms just look different. They feel different, and they are different. We know that. And so how do we change? And what are we going to do differently to circumvent that?

Chrissy Beltran  09:23

So I know some of the work that you do around this area is around equity. So what, in what ways is equity an important consideration as we’re thinking about behavior?

Sam Parmerlee  09:32

Yeah, that’s a great question, and I love to talk about equity, because equity is really the heart of true behavior and discipline. I think so often we look at behavior through the lens of sometimes saying, Well, this student is just engaging in this behavior just to annoy me. They know what they’re doing. They have control over this, right? And sometimes there are those situations where it might be in that way, but we truly have to. Think and rework our own perception of behavior to say, what actually does this behavior mean to me as an educator? What is the student trying to tell me? And a lot of the equity that we’re doing with behavior is reworking our own bias and beliefs, which is really, really, really hard work. That’s the hardest part of it, I think so often too, that when we start to think about behavior through the a different lens and look at it through it’s a signal for help for students, they’re trying to tell us something. This isn’t typical behavior. So what does it mean for them? Then we can really start to shift and say, You know what? The student isn’t just engaging in this behavior just because they’re trying to annoy me. They’re doing they’re doing this because they’re struggling. They have no clue how to communicate. Oftentimes, the behavior is the only way a student knows how to communicate their needs or what they need, and so it’s really a signal for us as educators to say something’s not right. We’ve got to wrap them up in support and really get down to what is the core of why the student is engaging in this behavior, and what does that look like for them to be able to provide them that support?

Chrissy Beltran  11:09

Yeah, I think those are really good points, even as a parent, that’s work that I’ve had to do myself, is understand that behavior is communication and and that kids are trying to tell us things, and we are receiving them through our own lens of experience and the way that we were raised, or whatever experience we have with behavior. Many teachers go into the classroom and they don’t have any preparation on behavior. I did not have a classroom management course in college. This was a long time ago, but I’m gonna guess that’s still happening in many teacher programs, and the few things that I learned about management were not very helpful once I actually started teaching, and that’s really the area, one of the areas I struggled in the most as a new teacher, because kids were coming with behaviors that I was not expecting, having not had those behaviors myself as a student. And so we’re looking at things through a lens of our own experience, and then so much of like, oh, the way we were parented can come into play, because that shapes the what, what you think about behavior and students and kids and how they learn and grow. So I feel like so much of this, it’s like, almost like, baggage that we have to sift through as educators to figure out, okay, why is this bothering me so much? What is really happening? Is it really helpful for me to lose my temper as well? If the child is having a meltdown, is that going to support like, how is I’m putting gasoline on a fire if I do this? But But in those moments, you don’t always think that way, so it’s like work we have to spend time doing before the behaviors happen.

Sam Parmerlee  12:36

Yeah, you make so many great points there. And one thing that really resonates with me is that true behavioring and changing student behavior actually starts with ourselves, not with the student, and that’s oftentimes when I’m going into situations. Sometimes the mistake that we’re making is we’re saying, all right, we need the student to do X, Y and Z. Then when they do this, they’re going to do this right. And we script out these plans, which are really helpful. We need them, but sometimes we have to take a step back, right, take that bird’s eye view and say, All right, but how I’m going to do the work with myself first? Because I have to think differently about that behavior. I have to have the different intention with that behavior. Because so often when we look at the behavior and say, Woof, that’s we just perceive it as negatively. We respond negatively, and so we really need to see it as positively, and that’s the only way that they can communicate or tell us that I just don’t know how to manage my emotions. I don’t know how to manage my behavior, and I need your help.

Chrissy Beltran  13:39

Yeah, I think if we can train ourselves to interpret behaviors through like translating them into communication that makes sense to us, that can help. So one of the things that coaches do with teachers is they may help them plan management procedures or behavior practices. They can work with teachers in these partnerships to help support the way that management is implemented, and sometimes teachers aren’t super excited about that support, honestly, because it may be offered out of like, oh my gosh, this classroom is out of control. So we’re going to send somebody to help you, and that can put the coach in a difficult position. But how can a coach positive, like, proactively and positively create these management or behavior practices with teachers in a way that supports kids in advance and hopefully prevent some of the more extreme behaviors?

Sam Parmerlee  14:27

Yeah, you bring up a really good question. But something that resonates with me is this is a lot of my role right now as I’m going in as a supportive role, as a coaching role, and something that I always keep in the forefront of my brain is that this educator, this support person, this professional, this administrator, is doing the best that they know the knowledge that they currently have. And so as I’m going in from that coaching or that leadership perspective, I’m always thinking about what knowledge do I need to give to this person to expand it? It so that they can think things differently. Because oftentimes, many of our teachers aren’t doing anything wrong. They really just need to think about, how can I do it differently to meet this profile of students? And so a lot of times when I’m going into classrooms, I love to go in and do some of those observational pieces, but I’m really front loading with the teacher, like, I’m not coming in here to judge you. I’m coming in here as just a fresh, fresh set of eyes. I’m trying to get a different perspective so that I can live your world right. Teachers want us to do the hard work with them, and so when we’re coming in as that leadership role, it’s important that we live in their shoes. For a little bit, I’ve had situations where I’ve gone into classrooms and I’ve, like, taught for part of a lesson or for part of a block, just to try and live it and see if there’s anything that resonates with me. So anytime that we can really do the hard work alongside teachers or or try to live in their shoes, I feel like that gives teachers buy in to say, yep, this person really does want to support me and not just come in here and tell me everything that I’m doing wrong. I also think too, I really keep saying it, but we know our classroom is different. We know our students are different, then we have to give teachers permission to do things differently. I think we think so often about the profile teachers we have right? They really want to do well. They want to do what’s best for students. They want to make families proud, their administrators proud. But sometimes we have to say, I’m giving you permission to do this differently. I’m giving you permission to look at your students and say, You know what, this is a hard class this year. You have the permission to think, what am I going to do that’s going to make a really meaningful impact for the students that might not look like my cohort next year, what my class looked like last year, or maybe what my teacher across the hall is doing?

Chrissy Beltran  16:53

Yeah, that’s a good point. I remember one year as a teacher, I had a challenging class, and I had to go out and learn something new. I was like, I am not going to make it. We’re not going to make it this year if I do not completely change my approach. And so learning, like, I learned whole brain strategies, and then I modified them to, you know, suit the way, like my teaching style and the kids that I had. And it changed so much after, after actually trying a different approach. But nobody else in my school was doing that. And I think that empowering teachers to say, yeah, what? What have you seen that you think might work? What can we what do you want to learn more about that we can go find out about? Because there’s so many different approaches to management. And I think that sometimes we come in the problem, you know, coaches are sometimes assigned to come in after things have gotten so far out of hand that it’s hard to be proactive. I mean, you still have to set up a proactive plan, but you’re kind of like reacting to all the stuff that has already happened. I remember also once I was working with the teachers my first year of coaching, and this teacher complained every time she talked to me, every time she said anything, it was a complaint about her students and their behavior. And at the time, I was like, Oh my gosh, like it was just, was like, I would have felt so heavy, like it was just dragging me down. And I was just exhausted, you know, and I didn’t want to even go in that room, because I was like, Oh, she’s just going to be yelling, and she’s going to be horrible. And later this teacher told me, you haven’t helped me. And I was like, You know what I mean, I had modeled some lessons, but then I’d kind of like darted out of there because I was so anxious, like, just the very setting made me anxious, and I realized I hadn’t helped her. I all those complaints. She was trying to say, I don’t know how to do this, but I didn’t know. That’s what she was trying to say. I thought she was trying to say, look at how bad my kids are, you know, because that’s what it sounded like. But underneath what she was complaining about was the true root of the problem, which is she did not know what to do, and she thought she was asking me for help by complaining about her kids. And I was just like, not hearing it that way at all, and so I learned over time, oh, these complaints are like cries for help, but they’re for people that don’t know how to ask for help.

Sam Parmerlee  19:08

Yeah, that’s a that’s such a perfect way to describe, really, as a leadership person, or somebody coming in through that coaching experience. We don’t have a one track mind when we come in and coach people, because we’re coaching humans, right? We’re not robots. Teachers aren’t robots. They have feelings behind their emotion. They’re pouring their heart out into these classrooms. And sometimes teachers have no clue how to ask for help because they have they don’t know where to start because they’re so overwhelmed, right? They’ve got 24 little smiling faces looking at them. And so a really good point you bring up is that we really have to acknowledge the really the feelings from our teachers that they’re bringing to us. But also a lot of times before I’m going in into those coaching sessions, or I’m meeting with teachers, or I’m meeting with teams, oftentimes I’m meeting with the administrator and saying, Tell me about this team. Team, what do you know about this teacher? What do you know about this person? What makes them tick? What’s the best approach? Because I don’t have a one track approach. When it comes to coaching, I really want to let that teacher or that team take the lead, and then I’m going alongside and supporting them through that. I’m just not a believer that I’m going to come in and lay down the law and strong arm and say you’re going to do X, Y and Z, because it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for kids and it doesn’t work for adults. And so I’m really trying to do not only am I analyzing student behavior, I’m trying to analyze teacher behavior, right? And how can I pair myself alongside them so that they feel supported by me? That’s a good approach.

Chrissy Beltran  20:39

So then, okay, whenever let’s look at actual student behaviors and how we respond to them, what are some of the mistakes that are made in the moment with student behaviors? Or, I mean, I guess it could even be something that’s planned that actually escalate student behavior and make it worse instead of better. Yeah,

Sam Parmerlee  20:56

there are lots of things. We can always leave a situation and say, oh my gosh, what are all the terrible things I did wrong, right? And we as teachers will spend forever in our brain saying, What did I do wrong? How can I do better next time? And so I really just kind of picked four things that I feel like were kind of the biggest struggles that I see with teachers, and they’re things that you can do to change your own behavior. So the first one is trying to establish control over the behavior, or matching or overpowering that student behavior. I always remind myself when I’m coming into a challenging moment with the student, that students behavior is often showing me the exact opposite of what they really need. So a student doesn’t need me to come in and lay down the law, give them the expectations, try to overpower them, yell at them, right? Have that body language that shows I’m the adult in the room. A student really needs that exact opposite approach. I’m coming in as a care front approach. I’m coming in to listen. I’m coming in to seek to understand. And that really is a little bit of reworking our own beliefs, maybe what we did have growing up, right? So that’s really a direct example of, how do I rework my own beliefs about behavior into the situation that I’m in? I think oftentimes, too a lot of times, when we’re in those challenging moments, we really see that student in crisis term behavior and say, oh my gosh, I am losing control over the situation, and that teacher guilt kicks in, right? I’m losing control. My administrator is going to think terrible of me. They’re going to come in and do a walk through right in the middle of this challenging moment, right? We get all those anxious thoughts, but really we need to remind ourselves that we are the ones in control of our own behaviors. We can only do things to ourselves to influence student behavior. We can’t control student behavior. And so really being mindful that I have to be in control of my own behavior, I think another thing too, thinking about predictability. So whenever I’m responding to kids in crisis, I try really hard to be very predictable to students, because predictability is regulating and so oftentimes, when we’re going into crisis situations, we often might be always doing something different, because we’re trying to find that one thing that works. But I really try and tell teams, find an approach for that student. Everybody do that same approach for a good four to five weeks when they’re responding to that crisis. And let’s look back at the data and see how that influences it, because what we know is that when kids are in crisis and they feel unpredictable, what they really need is the opposite, which is predictability. And I think the last thing that I really try and harness with people is recognizing that power struggle with students. When am I picking up that rope with that student, and I’m getting into that struggle with them, because that is really, really hard, and we have to be really in tune with our own emotions to say, You know what, I’m frustrated with the student right now, but I’m not picking up that rope. I’m not engaging in this power struggle. I’m going to step back. I’m going to continue to be predictable. I’m going to continue to harness and have control over my own behaviors, because I know that’s actually what’s going to deescalate that student.

Chrissy Beltran  24:15

Yeah, thank you for sharing those. I think we can probably, each of us relate to a few of those things at least?

Sam Parmerlee  24:21

Yeah, there’s a there’s a lot, and I just, I feel like I always try to harness back on ourselves, our own control and our own behavior, because that, to me, is the true agent, or the true change that really influences student behavior. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  24:36

something that I shared with teachers over the years is the only one we can control in the classroom as ourselves. We have no control over any other person in that room, so all we can do is, like, control our reactions, or control the way we set things up. We cannot. You can’t control a kid to make them do stuff as tempting as it is, and then how and as often as we try to do that without realizing that’s what we’re trying to do, and it doesn’t work. It often. You know, like I said before, fuel to the fire. So yeah,

Sam Parmerlee  25:02

I always, yeah. I love this quote. I can’t remember where I saw it, but it says you to remind yourself that this behavior is happening in front of me and not to me, yeah, right? When a student is in crisis or that challenging moment, it’s just happening in front of me, right? They’re not meaning anything against me, even though sometimes it feels like that it really is just a behavior happening in in my presence. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  25:25

yes, they’re not trying to give you a hard time. They’re having a hard time. Is one that I’ve seen as well. Yes, I love that one too. I remind myself of that often, even in parenting. So okay, if a coach is called in to a situation that is getting out of hand, or if they happen to be in a classroom and they see a situation that’s getting out of hand and there’s kind of a crisis, sometimes they’re the ones responsible for trying to de escalate that crisis, but then they aren’t also trained in how to do any of this. So then what are some strategies that they can use? You mentioned predictability, but what could some of those strategies that they choose from to try to create a predictable approach? What could that look look like?

Sam Parmerlee  26:06

Yeah, absolutely. I actually have a whole guidance document, or really a pamphlet on 50 strategies to de escalate and regulate. And so I pulled kind of my top five strategies out of that. So it’s like 163 pamphlet document on different activities, things that you could use in those situations. So my top I brought my top five. I think my number one is a tap in, tap out system. I love this system because oftentimes whenever, for example, if the teachers in a challenging moment with a student in a coach or a support or an admin comes in to step in. A lot of times, what I’m first doing is I am tapping in with that teacher and having them tap out of the situation. Because I think it’s so often we ask our teachers to be in those challenging moments with kids for far too long. And if we’re not making any movement with the kid, we really just say, You know what? I’m not the person to de escalate or regulate that student. I need to move on, and I need to have somebody else come in and tap in, because I’ve got other students that I need to go manage or teach. So I love the tap in, tap out. We use that all the time when I was in the classroom, and then we use this in a lot of our buildings across the district that I work in. I’ve talked about this a little bit, but again, showing the student the opposite of what they’re showing you. So when students are, you know, destroying classrooms, or they’re engaging in that aggressive behavior, we really have to hone in on our own behaviors and really show students that we’re the calm regulating force so we can transfer that regulation to them. The third one I love this concept is really pausing and responding to the behavior and not reacting to it. Because there’s a difference. There’s a difference between me reacting to the behavior and saying, you can’t be doing this. I’m going to have to call your mom. You’re going to lose recess for the day. I’m done with this. You do this every day, versus saying, responding to that behavior and saying, I know you’re having a lot of emotions right now. I don’t know how you’re feeling right now, but it looks really hard for me. This is a really challenging moment for you. How can I help you? There’s a difference between those things, and students feel that difference. And so oftentimes when we’re going into those crisis situations, the first thing we do was we walk in and we just want to react right away, right? We want to have an action plan right away. But, but I really tell people, pause, pause, stop, and just think, right. Look around the room, look around the area, look at the student, and really analyze and think before you’re going to go ahead and make some comment or suggestion to that student, because those 30 seconds of think time, or that pause time for us can oftentimes be the difference between when we’re reacting to the situation or responding to the student. I love really thinking about validation and connection and so really using a lot of validating phrases with students whenever I’m responding to them. So a lot of times I’m thinking through that brain based de escalation. And so thinking about the student isn’t acting out in behavior just because they want to. They’re acting out in this behavior because that’s the brain state that they’re in right now. And so when students are in crisis, they’re usually looking through their amygdala, the little being in their brain that has all the emotions. And so it’s so important that we recognize this is their brain state talking right now. This is why they’re so upset. And what we know about the amygdala is that’s the emotional control hub of the brain. And so things that support, that are validating phrases for students, right? This seems really hard, right now for you, I’m so sorry this is happening to you. Wow, that sounds really challenging. I can’t believe this, right? Even sometimes that are things that might be very miniscule to students, we really have to honor and show them that we care about. Them, we see their feelings, and we see their emotions. And so those are just a few, a few strategies that I feel like are so important when thinking about students, but also just thinking about that this is just a tiny little human behind some behaviors. Since I sometimes think that we we forget about that this really is a small human. This is somebody’s baby. This is somebody’s child that they’re trusting us to to de escalate and regulate and build that connection with. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  30:28

I think, I think that’s such an important point. And are many of us kind of revert to like, like you said before, reacting to the behavior stacking on consequences. And whenever we stack on consequences, I feel like in the moment, it feels like, Yes, that’s right. I’m telling them what’s going to happen. They know this is a consequence for this behavior and but it doesn’t achieve the result we want. Even long term, for sure, it doesn’t achieve that result. But even short term, it doesn’t, because then the kid’s like, okay, you’ve told me now three things that are going to happen, because I just lost it, and I can’t undo that. So what is the point of me trying to do anything at all? You know, whenever I have

Sam Parmerlee  31:11

complaints, sorry and sometimes our consequences in those moments can be kind of inappropriate, because we’re not recognizing that. We’re in a super dysregulated brain state, right? And we just get frustrated and say, well, now I’m taking your recess now, I’m taking your recess a whole week now, two weeks, right? And we stack it on, and then we go home that evening and we think, I just took that kid’s recess for the next two weeks. Guess what? I’m spending the next two weeks with that student, you know, managing during that recess time. Yeah, that’s why it’s so important to just pause and just think. You know, your response in a situation is so crucial, whether you’re going to escalate or de escalate the situation. We as teachers have the power to really control the climate in the room and the environment.

Chrissy Beltran  31:59

Yeah, as you were sharing that it reminded me of, is it the Breakfast Club? Is that the movie where the principal is like, now you’ve got two weeks of Saturday detention, all right? Six weeks, so now, like, this kid is like, the rest of his life, he’s in Saturday detention. Okay? What are you holding over his head in the future? Now, yo, now you’ve got nothing left. You just, you just blew everything, that you had any tools, not that obviously Saturday detention didn’t work in the first place because he was already there. But, you know, it didn’t. What do you have now, as a possible consequence, you’ve dumped all the awful things you can think of, and kids just are like, like, in the moment, you know, you might think it’s working and it’s not working. It’s kind of like the whenever I moved from fourth grade to third grade, we were told by the third grade teacher that we needed to do a clip chart. And I had never used a clip chart, and I tried it and I hated it, because I was like, I didn’t want to move a kid down, because I knew once I moved them down, yes, oh, they can move back up. It doesn’t matter that child doesn’t think they can ever move back up. And so that, because they’ve seen it enough to know, you know what I mean, so they it was like, so defeating it was defeating the whole point of what I was trying to do. And so I just hated that clip chart. And I think that that’s kind of the habit that we get into is we have certain kids who are used to consequences, and then that’s the only tool that we use to try to, quote, motivate them to be better and avoid those consequences, but they don’t believe they can be avoided, so then there’s no point.

Sam Parmerlee  33:37

Yeah, when we this goes back to a concept of when we see the negative, we seek the negative, and that’s why it’s so important for us to really rethink that behavior through a different lens, especially if we have those really challenging students in our room who we are always giving consequences to. Right? We’re giving consequence consequences. The behavior is not changing, and sometimes it takes us to step back a little bit and say, Am I just seeing this, this student, through this negative consequence lens, and that’s now the only way I can see them. We’ve done activities with teams where, where we’ve struggled with the student, and we’ve really tried to pull back and say, All right, we’re going to pull out a sheet of paper and we’re going to list all of when you think about the student, what are all the things that come to mind? And so teachers will make, you know, teachers teams will make this list. And so then after that, then we say, all right, based out of that list, which attributes are positive or negative about that student, and have teachers really reflect and say, wow, this really challenging student. I have the only thing that I can think of, 80% of the things on my list are all negative things about the student. And so that was actually an activity that’s in my 50 strategies of de escalation, regulation binder, but one that we’ve, we’ve done with teams as we’ve as we’ve tried to really rework thinking about the perception. Perception of the student, right? It’s a human first before their their their behavior. And I’m not going to sit on here and say, I’m I’m the most perfect person in the world. I have been a teacher. I’ve been in those challenging moments, and I have made all the same mistakes that I’m talking about today. But I think it’s so important that we recognize that we’re also human, right? And it’s okay for us to make those mistakes once or twice, but it’s not okay for us to continue to live in this Oblivion that this is my practice and I’m going to keep doing it, even though we know it doesn’t change student behavior.

Chrissy Beltran  35:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think an awareness of of why we need to make the changes good. And I love that activity of having teachers write what they know about their kids, because they may notice only negative behaviors, and then they might also realize I have not actually tried to get to know much about this child, because the behaviors are so off putting that we are being deterred by those behaviors. But then that’s that same cycle where, oh, you don’t care about me. You’re a teacher who doesn’t care about me, and I’ve had teachers who don’t care about me before. So what is even the point? So like we contribute to this cycle, we get stuck in it with these same kids who get promoted every year and they get flagged. You know, a little note from the previous teacher, cannot sit with this person, cannot be in the class with this person. We do all these things to separate them, you know, we do like basic things to try to set them up for success, but we don’t change the way that we approach kids, and so then they get the definition of teacher is just somebody who makes you do stuff you don’t

Sam Parmerlee  36:25

want to do. Yeah? That’s a really great point. And I think, I think sometimes too we we hold students to higher standards, and sometimes we might hold ourselves Yeah, or we sometimes ask kids to do so many things to change their behavior, but we don’t think, wow, what do I need to do to help this student succeed or be successful, right? And that goes back to that equitable piece. Students with challenging behaviors need just as much chance or opportunity to be able to be successful as our students with academic needs, social deficits, language deficits, we just we have to look at them through that silo as well. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  37:03

yeah. That’s so great. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. How can people learn more from you if they’re interested? And then you’re welcome to share you mentioned your your your list of 50 strategies. You’re welcome to share how they can access that as well. Yeah,

Sam Parmerlee  37:16

absolutely. So people can follow me on Instagram. I’m at the Ed queen. I’m also on Tiktok at the Ed queen. If you go to my Instagram page, I have a link in my bio, and it has a link to my blog, has a link to my teachers, Pay Teachers store. You could go to my teachers, pay teacher store. I have a lot of professional development resources, and one of those is my 50 strategies of de escalation and regulation. And so it’s really a training packet for teams to use to think about behavior through a different lens and think about discipline in a different way. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here today. Yeah, thanks, Christina. It’s been so great to chat with you.

Chrissy Beltran  37:55

You know, I think I always have, I often have a behavior series on the podcast, because I spent so much time struggling with behavior as a teacher, and then I struggled with how to support coaches and behavior as a coach. And I, you know, for the majority of the time my classes were really well behaved, but those individual students that were just little powder kegs, I couldn’t always figure out how to get to them in a way that I thought was going to make a lasting impact. You know, my classroom was well managed, but I struggled to reach certain individual kids that I still have regrets about. And if you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you might have those regrets too. And so then as a coach, I felt like management was such a personal thing that I didn’t know how to have those conversations. And so I love the way that Sam shared some strategies that we can use and some exercises we can do that can help us have some of those conversations with teachers. Because if we can support those individual kids who are most likely to really struggle down the road because of their self regulation. Oh my gosh, what an impact we can make in those classrooms forever and in their lives. So I’m so glad that she shared these strategies with us today. If you are looking for how you can support classroom management as a coach, you can actually get my classroom management for coaches. Download. It’s got three principles that I teach kids behavior expectations and then how I go about requiring those things. And it’s really positively framed. I found lots of success with it whenever I work with teachers and with kids. And so if you want to grab that, you can go to the show notes for this episode, which is buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 233, and you can scroll down and get the behavior classroom management free download, and that will be, hopefully helpful to you as you are working with classrooms. That might be a great way for you to start if you’re unsure how to get started. Next week, we’re starting a new series. Over the summer, I tried to do sort of a day in the life of an instructional coach series with some special code. Coaches. And so next week, we’re starting off by talking with a coach who coaches at multiple schools or buildings. So if you are a district level coach or a coach who is shared by multiple schools, this is a great episode for you, and if not, I think you should still listen, because she had some really great suggestions about working with different administrators, building relationships with teachers. It’s really great stuff. So definitely jump back in next week to listen to that episode, and until then, happy coaching. Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with Miss b.com to grab some free downloads. Become a VIBee and check out the podcast show notes. Happy coaching!