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During recent years, the response to children choosing challenging, disruptive or hurtful behaviors has been to identify long lists of escalating consequences, punishments or exclusionary practices like detention, time-out, and in-school or out of school suspensions.  These approaches are intended to teach someone a lesson, remove them from the environment they disrupted, and protect the others in the school.  A collaborative and optimistic approach to addressing inappropriate behavior starts with the premise that people want to be accepted, connect and do better – if only they knew how.  They don’t have these skills, so they’ve learned to use what works for them to defend their feelings or avoid things they can’t do well.  Often, their brains become “wired” to react strongly to emotional triggers that they have not yet learned to manage.

So, helping school adults to respond with curiosity and thoughtfulness when a student, parent or colleague says or does something that upsets them, is one of the most useful SEL skills we can use in our personal and professional relationships.  When a school develops a collaborative, proactive approach to inappropriate behavior, we see skillful adults whose first response is to be curious.  They notice a difficulty that someone is experiencing and instead of pointing out the inappropriate behavior, they simply express curiosity to collect more information.  For example, “Ashley, I’ve noticed you’re having difficulty working with Tom during science labs.  Help me understand what’s happening.”  Ashley may have thrown the lab report dramatically on the floor and yelled, “You’re useless!” at Tom. However, recounting her behavioral choice is not where we start.  (That would elicit a defensive response.) We start instead, with trying to identify what led to the behavior.  

The request for more information (“What’s happening?) is followed by listening for and acknowledging the person’s feelings and then trying to connect those feelings to needs that are not being met well.  For example, “It sounds like what matters most to you is having Tom complete his part of the work. Do I have that right?”  This simple, empathic approach encourages people to tell us more about what triggered their behavior or what they need help with.  Then, the listener can express their own concerns about the behavior chosen, and invite Ashely (who now does not feel attacked) to collaborate with them to find a solution that will work for everyone involved.  That includes agreeing on a plan to make reparations for harm done to others.  This conversation happens in private, between the adult who observed the challenging behavior and the child – not the assistant principal.  The student senses the concern and support of the adult and has not been humiliated.  A trusting, dependable relationship forms.

The alternative approach of sending students out of class or imposing consequences before understanding the situation, severs relationships between school adults and students and often leads to more isolation, frustration, anger and defiance.  When staff learn to notice needs, they can find ways to allow a child to stay in their room or in school, while providing the time or alternate safe place to calm emotions before discussing the event.

When examining our discipline procedures, we can look through a different lens to notice when we are using control-oriented, punitive approaches that are uninformed and usually escalate a conflict.  Replacing them with collaborative practices does not condone inappropriate behavior. Instead, it helps us to notice patterns of behavior and explore with the student what skill they might need help with in order to make a different, more beneficial choice.  Safe schools recognize that most students who choose challenging behaviors do so because they have lagging skills that they need our help to strengthen. Excluding them at a time of need often makes matters worse. (SEE COLLABORATIVE SOLUTIONS TO CHALLENGING BEHAVIORS RESOURCES)