A Change in Plans

"It is not what is poured into a student that counts, but what is planted."  -Linda Conway

Two weeks ago I thought that I was finished collecting data for my action research case study.  I was ready to move on to the next step in the action research process and begin analyzing my data.  Although I had some doubts about my intervention implementation  and its positive affect (or lack there of) on my students behavior, I was not anticipating what happened once I stopped it.  After the first day back at school without the intervention, things with my student took a turn for the worse.  We are talking full meltdown mode for three whole days.  He was disrespectful towards peers, teachers, and anyone else who happened to run into him.  He was very weepy and appeared to be overly agitated and in a bad mood.  He also got in trouble at recess twice and was written up for physically harming a peer.  Now, I understand that there are a great many factors involved in the behavior and mood of my student, but over the past 6 weeks or so, this behavior was rare.  At fist, I blamed it on lack of sleep.  He just appeared to be so tired and sad, and I have seen him like this before at the beginning of the year.  My initial thought was to start problem solving with his team.  His classroom teacher and I discussed possible factors that could be contributing to his unexpected behavior.  We brainstormed what we could do to support him, and also what we could do to reverse what was happening after all of the work we had done together in order to give him what he needed to succeed.  It was at that time that it hit me.........

My student thrives on a structured routine.  The past 6 weeks have not only been incredibly structured for him, but he was used to his daily routine with the inclusion of the behavior self-reflection intervention that I had implemented for my project.  I started to get a little excited, even though i was so bummed out that everything had fallen apart.  Did my intervention plan really have a positive effect on my students behavior outcomes?  Did I implement a strategy that is meaningful to the behavioral success of my student?  I couldn't be sure because I also  had to take into consideration that I had changed his routine abruptly after 6 entire weeks.  Maybe i should continue collecting data for a few weeks while the intervention is not in place in order to show any difference in behavior (positive or negative).  I decided that I needed some help with this conundrum, so I looked to my professor for some guidance.  With her help, I have decided to collect data for two more weeks, which makes my data collection time frame 8 weeks long.  I am hoping that this extra data will help me to truly see if the intervention that I implemented in the hopes of changing my students behavior worked in a positive way.   

"Learning is finding out what we already know.  Doing is demonstrating that you know it.  Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.  You are all learners, doers, and teachers."  - Richard Bach

Celebrate Research

"Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own."  - Nikos Kazantzakis

As I begin up my sixth week of data collection for my action research project, I feel that for what I need, I have enough data  to analyze for this project.  When I first sent in my proposal to HRC I wanted to collect data for 6 weeks, but then I second guessed myself and felt that in order to have a clear picture of the intervention strategy I should collect data for 8 weeks.  Now that I am wrapping up my sixth week of daily data collection, I believe I have what I need.  I reviewed my time management plan and I am right on track with what I had initially hoped for in terms of time.  Although I am a little ahead of schedule in my data collection, I am right on the money with my DSIL and website.  In my last post I expressed a lot of things that I would have done differently if I could do the project over again.  While I do agree with those reflections, I feel like I need to celebrate all of the things I did right!  Over the past two weeks, I have seen some amazing growth from my student and I wanted to post some of the things that I implemented for this project that have had a positive effect on his overall behavior.   

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Here you can see the pocket schedules that I created for my student.  He has trouble remembering his daily schedule so I can switch these out each day and make amendments as necessary for presentations, schedule changes and any other activities so he always knows what to expect.  I have found that this has drastically cut down on daily anxiety that was occurring with my student because of the unknown in his transitions from subject to subject.  They also have Velcro on the back so he can keep it in place on his desk. 

   

 This is the "safe place" that I created for my student in the small space between the file cabinet and his teacher's desk.  There is a small pillow inside that he can sit on when he is having a meltdown, or in his terms, a "blow."  He helped me pick out the space and also helped me hang up the curtain.  I wanted him to have a spot inside his classroom without any visual stimulation.  When he is having a blowup, he is so overstimulated that the only way he can focus his energy is through anger.  When we first set it up, he needed several verbal cues to go there when he was having a meltdown.  After two months though, this is immediately where he goes if he is feeling that uncontrollable anger.  He also uses it when he is feeling extra sad or frustrated. 

Here are his "Be Cool" cards.  These are located inside his safe place, and also in my binder.  Once he has calmed down, he is supposed to "be cool," and choose one of the tools to use in order to calm down so that he can talk and process what happened.  This is part of my data collection points (self reflection journaling).

Now that I am nearing the final days of my data collection, I can begin working on analyzing it and developing my findings from this incredible experience.  I have truly enjoyed it so far, and look forward to the rest of the process as I organize my data.  Wish me luck!!! 

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats

Never Ending Thoughts

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement, nothing can be done without hope and confidence."  -Helen Keller

Hello!  It has been about two weeks since my last post, and things are going pretty well!  As I continue to collect data for my research project, some things have come up that I wanted to note.  It seems funny now that I had this perfect vision of the way I envisioned how my research project would pan out.  When I began the action research process, I was so sure of my ideas and the ways in which I would collect data.  I developed this perfect scenario in which I would implement a new strategy with the student that I work one on one with.  I would then collect data which would show me that the strategy yielded perfect, positive results, and my student would magically display positive behavior because of what I implemented.  I am currently in week 4 out of 8 in my data collection period.  As I have been moving forward in my action research, I have also taken a lot of time to reflect on my actual project as well as what I want to get out of it to take with me on my own teaching journey.  I have come to realize that this process is an ever evolving one.  My own research is most likely not going to be perfect by any means, and I may not get the results that I had initially envisioned or hoped for.  

So many thoughts have crossed my mind since I began collecting data, including the contemplation of whether or not I chose the best data collection templates for this project.  Looking back on the summer course when we learned about the triangulation of data, I am beginning to wonder if I should not have been documenting positive behaviors with my student during our reflection time as well as negative behaviors.  While we do spend our entire day based around praise for positive behavior, I have started to think that it could have had a more positive impact on daily reflection time with me if we documented "good stuff" as well as the "bad stuff" - which is what my student has termed talking and journaling about negative or unexpected behaviors throughout the day.  The problem that I have run into is that the behavior sheet I am using to collect data for reflecting about unexpected behavior does not have any space on it to document positive behavior.  It is very specific to reflecting on negative behavior, and I wish that I would have thought about this prior to submitting my HRC proposal.  While I do believe it is an excellent way to reflect on unexpected behavior, perhaps it would have been worth while to develop my own sheet to reflect on positive behavior too.
  

With all that being said, I also wanted to reflect on the fact that my strategy was implemented not too long after I also implemented a points system with my student based off the FBA that was conducted in October.  While it is great that I am able to use his points system as data, I think it will be hard to decipher whether any changes in my students behavior resulted from the self-reflection strategy that I implemented, or the points system based off avoiding behavior in the classroom.  I think the difficult part in this issue is that I may never know which strategy worked best for my student.  

Although all of these thoughts have been whirling around in my mind for a few weeks, I have made the conscious decision to keep my head up and carry on with the research as planned.  I need to stop second guessing my initial ideas and have faith that my plan will prove to be successful, even if it is only to give me experience in action research. 

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of becoming."  -Goethe

The Journey Begins

"Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there."                              
- Marcus Aurelius

Most general education teachers can probably look back on their years of teaching and pin point at least one student who was difficult to work with because of his or her challenging behavior in the classroom.   There may not have been an official diagnosis for the student, and the teacher may have exhausted every resource while trying to get through to the student.  Although there has not always been a specific diagnosis associated with certain challenging behaviors, it is important to recognize that certain emotional or behavioral issues can be extremely challenging for students as well as the teacher.  While this may be the case, many teachers have the same goal for students who have an emotional or behavioral disorder (EBD) which is for the student to be respectful and learn how to deal with emotional build up and outbursts in a positive way. 

My research topic stems from the idea that self-reflection may be a useful strategy to implement when working with students who have behavioral issues, and more specifically students who have been diagnosed as having EBD.  My position this year involves working primarily as a one-on-one aide to a student who has been diagnosed with EBD.  While this topic was not one of my initial interests or ideas during the 680 summer course, I have become passionate about not only learning about EBD, but figuring out effective strategies to use in the classroom for my specific student.  From all of the literature I read through and researched last semester, I have learned so much and have gathered a great deal of pertinent information from which I have based my capstone project.  I have picked through and chosen strategies to utilize based on personal observations as well as trial and error during most of the fall semester.         

As week three of my data collection begins, I am finding that the journey I have embarked on will be hard, it will be emotionally draining, it will be intense, but I must remind myself that it will be worth it. 


"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world." - Heather Cortez