Literacy Research

Quick Tips on Bully Prevention

Goals and Expectations for an Effective Anti-Bullying Program

•  It should be implemented school wide with all students (i.e. children with disabilities and neurotypical), teachers (ESE and General Education), and administrative staffs involved. 
• It should be based on a Social Emotional Learning program to help build self-awareness and self-management skills.
• It should be part of the daily curriculum in all classes.  Especially with inclusion becoming mandatory and in the works, it is a great time for all teachers to implement an anti-bullying program in their academic curriculum as part of social growth.  
• It should be a program that promotes involvement from the parents of both sub-groups (special needs and general education students ) and in understanding that it all starts at home and the conversation we have at the dinner table.
• It should have parents involved in the implementation of an effective anti-bullying program by having their special need children involved in more community social events.

The Desired Anti-Bullying Program

• Intervisitation:
  
  • Principals and teachers should be given the opportunity to visit and learn about other school's Anti-Bullying Programs.  This will help in tweaking problems shared among their colleagues and share new ideas to add to their own program. 
• Monthly principal support groups:
  
  • Principals should be able to meet up once a month in a conference type of social event to learn from each other about major bullying incidents, up to date information on trends in shared evidence based research strategies used to help prevent bullying in a school environment.  
• Principal peer coaching:
  
  • Experienced and inexperienced principals should be able to partner-up to exchange information and mentor effective strategies and techniques that would be later spread out to their own school staff. 
• Supervisory walk-through:
  
  • With the support of the principal, data-driven educational walk-throughs should be held in a consistent manner to help bring effective feedback to teachers on the principal's observation of real-time techniques being used.  In addition, this is a great way for teachers to bring up important conversations with a question on the effectiveness of their methods and outcomes.  
• District institutes:
  
  •  On a district/ city-wide level, districts policies on anti-bullying prevention are applied and should be recognized to keep the program effective.  If the Anti-Bullying program is transferred to a student's local library to the recreation center, this can help in creating an anti-bullying culture across the board. 
• Principals’ study groups:
  
  • Continuous education and research can be conducted on the top effective strategies in the city/school wide Anti-Bullying Program.  If principals from several schools promote a program that is based on data, this data can be analyzed in a team based approach with a large sample which can become an active action research study that principals can use as evidence on what work well in their schools. 
• Individualized coaching:
  
  • Just like teachers,  principal's need educational assistance with the help of a more experience individual.  Individualized coaching can help with issues on a smaller scale compared to looking at all schools, one school will be focused on and it's unique incidents/issues.   
  
  
  
  
  

5 Quick Rules for Staffs to Remember

• Unified Goals: Staff must understand and remember the big picture that if bullying is not tackled it can affect the academic performance of a class as a whole.  With such distraction in a hostile environment, it is hard for  students, in general, to focus solely on the academics that is being taught on a daily basis in school. 
• PBIS: As part of the Anti-Bullying Program, teachers and staff should implement a Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) system which has been known to help in the reduction of problem behaviors that can be associated with bullying by promoting teamwork among school staff members and basing effective decision making on data collection. 
•  Anti-Bullying Education: Teachers, students and staff must understand the importance of the ant-bullying philosophy by being educated on what bullying is, how it looks in real life situations, how to prevent it, how not to be just a by stander and how to be models for good behavior themselves in a socially conscious school community that understands the inclusion of all students, especially those with special needs.  Administrators can do this by providing teachers with continuous professional development workshops on Anti-bullying.  In addition, provide visual and clear policies of ant-bullying exceptions and consequences throughout the school campus. 
•  Importance of Role: To implement an effective program, teachers and staff should understand the importance of their active involvement in daily adult supervision in large group meeting areas (i.e. playgrounds, cafeterias, assemblies, and hallways).
•  Parental Involvement: We can never forget the importance of parental involvement when implementing such an important program on the school campus.  Teachers and staff should have an effective communication system with parents when it comes to what is going on with their child, education on what bullying is and how to prevent it, to suggested home activities to help bring the discussion of what bullying is at home and how special needs children should be treated and included in social events (i.e. birthday parties, sport games, etc.). 

Quick Facts About Diversity and it's Influence on the Community and School

 From a teacher's perspective, the teacher wants their student to be able to absorb knowledge that is being taught.  But what happens when the student is just not getting it, what do you do?  Listed below are some factors that may be an influence in your school that prevent such open communication between the student and the teachers.  In addition, could your student/child be at risk for low school performances?  And is there a reason why your child may not be receiving early intervention that may be crucial to the beginning of their school years.  Listed below a few quick facts in these areas that you just might find interesting and can help you when making decision when it comes to a child from a different culture and what they may face.

• Disproportionate representation
• Student of color are disproportionate represented in mental retardation (MR), emotional disturbance (EB), and learning disabilities (LD) compared to hearing, visual and orthopedic impairments.  In addition, out of a population of students from ages six to twenty-one, only 14.8% are African American; however, 20% of kids in special education services are African American (Irvine, 2012).
• Similarities (and other important factors) among multi-cultural and special education
• English Language Learners receive delayed referrals for special education until they are English proficient.  This means they are exposed to disability assessments and interventions later in their schools years instead of as an early intervention (Hibel & Jasper, 2012).
• Immigrant children are less likely to receive special education services and are at high risk of poor school performance later in their school years (Hibel & Jasper, 2012).
• Schools contain a multicultural population of one third with eighty-seven percent of teachers being white females.  This can create a culture gap between schools and communities.  And in turn can cause a lack of connection among the students and the teachers, which can also cause misplacement in to special education services due to the lack of understanding of other culture’s behaviors, etc.   In addition, such misconnections can cause hostility, confrontations and alienation between the two bodies (Griner & Stewart, 2012; Irvine, 2012).  Cultural misunderstandings can make a child more than likely to be enrolled into special education services (Irvine, 2012).
• Students of color were more than likely to be referred for special education services based on behavioral reasons than academics compared to their white counterparts (Irvine, 2012)
• If high risk students (immigrant children, English language learners and low socioeconomic status) were placed in early intervention programs, they have a more than likely chance to perform well in school in addition to completing school (Farkas et. al, 2012)
• Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
• Cultural Responsive Teaching  Should (Griner & Stewart, 2012; Irvine, 2012):
• Recognize different cultural attitudes and ways of learning.
• Connect the home experience to the school.
• Be versatile in learning styles.
• Teach students to be proud of theirs and other cultures.
• Make sure all skills and subjects taught in school have been integrated with cultural rich materials and resources.
• Remain positive with high expectation of the students in a caring environment.
• Engaged and motivated to learn the cultural rich content.
• Welcome and encourage community and school collaboration.

References

Farkas, G., Hillemeier, M. M., Maczuga, S., & Morgan, P. L., (2012).  Are minority children
disproportionately represented in early intervention and early childhood special education?  Educational Researcher, 41(9), 339-351.

Griner, A. C., Stewart, M. L., (2012).  Addressing the achievement gap and disproportionality through the use of culturally responsive teaching practices.  Urban Education, 48(4), 585-621.

Hibel, J. & Jasper, A. D., (2012). Delayed special education placement for learning disabilities among children of immigrants.  Social Forces, 91(2), 503-530.

Irvine, J. J., (2012).  Complex relationships between multicultural education and special education: An African American perspective.  Journal of Teacher Education, 63(4), 268-274.

A Teacher's Guide: Best Practices for Communicating with Parents with Children with Disabilities

Who are your parents and how can you get to know them?

• The parent role is an important role.

•  Let's not forget who the parents are.  They are individuals who know their child inside out and should be treated this way.  Parents are your number one resource in understand your students.   Never forget to address any concerns with your student's parents. In addition, don't forget to show respect just like you would with the administration staff.  You can address the parents by Ms, Mrs.  and Mr. Keep a professional approach during meetings.

• IEP and the parents.

•  The Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) , a four piece legislature literature, has allowed parents to be actively involved in their child's educational lives.  In addition, it allows parents to play a major role as advocates since children with disabilities are allowed to have free appropriate public education, called FAPE. FAPE allow children with disabilities to enroll into public schools  to receive special education and be provided with accommodations.  Subsequently, you are more than likely to engage in a parent-teacher interaction about your student's education.  However, this doesn't mean that these communications have been done effectively. This page will help you in approving your communication skills with your parents.  As mentioned before, parents have so much knowledge on their children and this will be of great use for you.especially in Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings where parental involvement is encouraged. IEPs individualizes a child with disabilities education by looking at several objectives to help them reach their educational goals.

• Procedural Safeguards.

•  Parents have rights as regulated by the IDEA 2004 called procedural safeguards.  These safeguards help protect parents and their children with disabilities.  These safeguards allow parents to do things from view educational records, participate in meetings, get prior notification of changes to their child's education, consent for changes or continuation of procedures, and dispute or disagree to educational changes involving their child.  

• SEAT Training

• Sometimes parents can become overwhelmed with all the procedural process to protect their children with disabilities when it comes to their education.  Special education advocates can step in to lend a helping hand.  Additionally, parents can become advocates as well.  The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA), an organization helping children with disabilities and their families by making sure legal and civil rights are protected and enforced, host a training called Special Education Advocate Training (SEAT).  SEAT is a formal year long training program to help individuals to become special education advocates.

• Schedule conversations.

•  We all have obligations.  And don't forget parents are juggling projects, task and responsibilities just like you.  Just like you would do in a professional manner, schedule conversations with your parents. Come up with an agreeable time to communicate.  This way you are not doing such important talks in the hallways, cafeterias or outside where there is a lot of people and distractions. 

• Time is precious.

• As mention before, time is a very important aspect of our lives.  So be aware of your parents' time.  Be prepared with information you want to present to them.  Make sure your ideas, concerns and questions are concrete and ready to be evaluated by the parent.  This will definitely will help make your communication times more effective and have more time to brain storm as a team to solve problems. 

• Balance the conversations. 

• Effective communication with parents involves balancing good news with bad news.  A parent who has so many obligations may shut down or dread your phone calls when they know they will only hear negative comments.  Effective communication will be shown when the parent is able to give a great amount of feedback.  This will be very helpful especially if you need to one day talk to your parent about more serious matters, the parent will feel more part of the team and more willing to communicate. 

In the classroom. 

• School and Community Collaboration

•  A new perspective can help close certain gaps when it comes to school and community collaboration.  Not only learning about the student is important, but their background as well.  Take the initiative to learn about your school populations' cultural background.  Take that information and make a cultural based curriculum where students will find some relevance in their education to apply it to their daily lives, this is known as cultural relevant teaching. Holding school wide functions using this perspective can help in the process of understanding your students and their parents. In addition when it comes to major social issues, you can help create a more just society by being involved in your children's lives. 

•  Evidence-Based Practices

• Sometimes, some teachers don't know what to do with a child with a certain disability or what they can implement to help that child become success in school.  For example, a teacher may have a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)  in her classroom.  Children with ASD have problems with social interaction and communication.  How should a teacher successfully teach this child should be taken into consideration.  In relevance to teaching children with disabilities, the teaching curriculum should be seen as a very important and possible area to construct.  There are many research out there to support teachings that have helped children get the most out of their education.  Evidence-based practices are intervention strategies that are empirically supported to be an effective way to teach children with special needs.

• Home and School Partnership

•    Studies have shown that parental involvement in their children's education can actually influence a child's educational performance.  Prerefferal  Intervention Teams (PIT) which is a group of people that get together and collaborate on solutions to help their child exceed in school. PIT can actually help in resolving certain issues without it escalating to bigger uncontrollable problems.

Helpful Links

•  Center for Parent Resource and Information
•  Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates: SEAT
•  Guide to the Individualized Education Plan
• How IDEA Protects You and Your Child
• The Autism Helper

Eating items that are not food...

• What is Pica?
• Research
• What they used to do about it?
• What to do about it now?
• Functional Analysis
• Preference

What is Pica?
Pica is basically the consumption of non-edible items.  Some children like to place certain object in their mouth, because they like the texture which is a brain stimulation for them that excites their senses.
 
Research
Piazza et al. (1998)  was a research article about Pica exploring the reasons for Pica, to find out what it was controlled by, and possible treatment for it.

What they used to do about it?
In the past, treatment for this was by using DRO, as mentioned previously in my blog, it's when attention is  presented to other appropriate behaviors (not necessarily related or in the same category as the behavior) that is not the problem behavior.  You can look at the glossary for further definition.  So when a child would place a rock in her mouth, would be blocked, but no other attention was given towards that, such as giving her something else to eat or play with or shows gestures of approval or disapproval.  Instead, every time she/he showed desirable behavior the parent would give all the attention towards that behavior.

What to do about it now?
Now, after the function of the behavior is analyzed.  The parent, which is informed by the behavior analysis would block them and then replace the stimulation with a more appropriate object (like food, chew tube, etc.). (1) to supply the oral stimulation the child wants and (2) to teach them an alternative appropriate behavior.  But the parent will not only provide the new stimulation only after the inappropriate behavior.  They have to be continuously be introduced to it, to teach them that they use "this" instead of "that". 

Functional Analysis
But as the study has suggested, you can't just give the child anything, a functional analysis must be done by a professional BCBA to find out why they are doing it, what causes them to do it, and what reaction that we provide keeps it going.  Because if you want the job done, you have to do with right.  You have to understand the reason for the behavior. Plus, some of the children use pica not only as a stimulus but to get something else they want.  Such as attention or another substance.  This can be done through you giving them attention immediately after the undesired behavior occurs, and you give your child a drink after you tell them to expel what's in their mouth.  So, they have learned to do this to get a "drink".   All behaviors happen for a reason.

Preference
In addition, you can't just replace the behavior with just anything, becasue not all kids like the same thing, and you must find items that strongly have a power over them compared to others that don't.  And of this a professional BCBA would do a preference assessment to determine what works best.  These steps help insure a treatment plan with less trails and errors to effectively take care of the problem behavior.

There is another option...

• Punishment = Last Choice
• What is DRO?
• Ok, So What Do I Do with the Inappropriate Behaviors Then?
• Patience
• Consistency & Immediacy

Punishment = Last Choice
In my previous post, you noticed that I talked a lot about punishment, and how it's the least effective form of long term results.  Meaning, no timeouts, spanking, yelling extremely loud, grounding your child for a month, etc.  And with all the frustration that I had with this (because I used to do it), what other option do I have?  The thing that frustrate some parents is that they were raised to use such teaching methods for their kids, and most of them are labeled under punishment.  And if you can't use these "punishments", it might feel like you've been doing things all wrong and now you have to start all over.  Change is hard, but of course if we look at the big picture we will learn it's for the better.  So instead of punishment we use reinforcement. And a great way to do this is with DRO.

What is DRO?
DRO stands for Differential Reinforcement of Other Behaviors.   Which basically means you will immediately pay more attention in a positive manner to appropriate behaviors that your child will present.  For example: your child puts their shoes on, throws something in the garbage, says "pleases" and "thank you", you get visually excited about it.  You are showing them which behavior are accepted and which ones that are not by showing obvious visual differences.  You can have them keep track of these accepted behaviors through the use of charts and tangibles (items they can have physically).

Ok, So What Do I Do with the Inappropriate Behaviors Then?
A great way to handle these unacceptable behaviors is through a learning technique.  Generally you would be blocking the behavior through interrupting it and redirecting the behavior to something more acceptable.  For example, she/he has  a tantrum.  They begin to yell, cry and scream.  Immediately show them the appropriate behavior during this inappropriate behavior (interrupting them) and say (redirecting) "If you feel mad...say you are mad.  If you want something...say what you want" or if they are too young to understand that, say "Say 'I'm sad'" to try to have them repeat "I'm sad".  Then have them say "I want my toy".  The point of this is to have them replace that problem behavior with something that is socially more acceptable.  So that when they are in school or playing with other children, their interaction with others will be in a more acceptable manner. At the end causing less chaos and less phone calls of your child hitting someone else, bitting, etc.

Patience
Just like in my previous post, remember the importance of patience.  Some children learn fast, while for others it may take some time.  Every child is different and that is ok.  You know your child.

Consistency & Immediacy
And the most important thing with all this is: Consistency and immediacy.  Always providing the same consequence after the behavior and right away.

Your patience vs their treament plan...

• ABA Therapist
• Your Patience
• Prioritize
• Functional Analysis/ Assessment
• Treatment Plan
• How long? Forever?

ABA Therapist
As a person who practices applied behavior analysis, I can say for my colleagues that parents are so excited to finally get a chance to meet us and can't wait for us to work on their child's behavior problems.  But we can't forget that all factors can affect the child's behavior.

Your Patience
How much are you willing to put in for the best result?  Are you interested in the quickest method to get rid of a problem behavior now that only last a short time or are you willing to test your patience for a behavior treatment plan that takes time and will last longer?  That's a tough question, especially if you deal with it on a daily basis and it effects your child and your daily living.

Prioritize
One thing I always suggested is to place all behaviors on a scale.  Which behaviors need immediate intervention and which ones do you wish to work on, but can still tolerate?  In addition, the most important question when you are "picking" the behaviors to work on is: Is it a significant social problem?  Does it disrupt his daily life?  Impairs his/hers social interactions?  Is he/she distressed by it?  Because, what maybe annoying to you may not be OK to intervene, just because "you" are annoyed by it.

Functional Analysis/ Assessment
All behaviors have a function (a reason).  All behaviors need to be assessed to find out the function. Because, a good treatment plan depends on the function of the behavior. 

Treatment Plan
Once this has been figured out.  A treatment plan will be implemented (applied) and monitored with data collection  (is the frequency of the behavior staying the same, decreasing or increasing?).  Frequency of behaviors can be affect by events in the environment (death, separation, new stimulus, etc.).  So some treatment plans may take months with  a whole lot of data collect.  But all of this is done to make sure we are doing the right thing with concrete evidence. 

How long?  Forever?
So is my child going to be in treatment forever?  No.  We will be able to determine if it's working or not.  If not, we choose a different treatment plan.  In addition, during the treatment process your child is taught new or alternative behavior to help him/her apply their new skills in different situation (generalization).  But it takes time.  It takes time to learn to ride a bike.  It takes time to drive a car.  It's going to take some time for your child to learn the new behaviors.  But are you ready and willing to go along with the process, step by step?

For further reading check out this article based on a research study that observed parent patience whose children were going through behavior treatment programs : http://news.emory.edu/stories/2014/10/marcus_delayed_discounting/
or the actual research article (with subscription) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=call+n+AND+delay