Teaching Coping Strategies

 On Tuesdays I meet with a small group of fifth graders to follow the Unstuck and On Target curriculum, which addresses executive functioning skills such as using coping skills, creating plans around set goals, and dealing with the unexpected.

When I do this group with younger grades the coping strategies usually center around taking deep breathes or going to get a drink of water. The much younger grades can even refer to Daniel Tiger and Elmo's coping strategies of belly breathing or counting to four before you roar. This group of fifth graders however is more mature and somewhat beyond my typical go-to list.

As I listened to one student talk about how her family responds to her irrationality with food because she often forgets to eat I found myself describing the term 'hangry'. Because, let's be honest, this is a common adult problem. If you are a person who forgets to eat and then gets cranky you should probably be able to identify when you get 'hangry' and be able to fix it yourself. Just as much as you should know to take a deep breath or get water when you are angry in kindergarten. I once worked for a women who often forgot to eat. It was commonly known that you should only approach her 20 minutes or later after meals. Anywhere between 11:00 am and 1:30 pm was a danger zone because most likely she hadn't eaten lunch yet and you would be yelled at. Wait until after she'd eaten? She was lovely.  Hangry is a real thing. We should all be able to recognize it in ourselves, right? It was not a term I expected to be describing to a group of fifth graders, but it seemed appropriate at the time.

As I wrote it on the board another student looked at me in horror. "Isn't that just comfort eating?" he asked, "Are you now telling us to eat our feelings? We're all going to get fat." The other group members looked at me curiously, as though in their mind I was suddenly the witch in Hansel and Gretel, out there trying to fatten up children.

Cue the talk on our individual differences in our coping strategies and how I am NOT telling them to go home and eat whenever they are angry or frustrated. Listen to your body, know yourself, and no, don't just eat your feelings! But don't forget to eat! Daniel Tiger anyone? The whole stumbling discussion found me wanting my own coping strategy- Starbucks.

Can't vs Won't

For the past year I've been participating in a research study out of Georgetown University and Children's National Hospital looking at the executive functioning curriculum, Unstuck and On Target. I can't say enough about this curriculum and the impact I've seen it have on students with high functioning autism and ADHD. Yet one of the greatest benefits I've gotten from the program is how it has been able to shift my thinking about these students and their behavior.

One of the concepts the curriculum has taught me and my coworkers to consider is looking at a student's behavior and asking, "Is this a can't or a won't?" We often see a student's behavior as a won't- when we ask the student to do something and they just refuse to do it. We ask them to keep their hands to themselves, get started with their work, organize their desk, go with the flow, and adapt to changes in rules and schedules on the fly. When they don't follow our directions it often looks like they made a conscious decision to ignore us. It looks like they are playing with their pencil to avoid getting started on their work, or that they are arguing with us over a change in a rule to be difficult and get attention. We think that they focus on one topic or ignore a direct instruction because they are fighting for control in their lives. And sometimes that is true, but sometimes it's not.

Putting the pieces together on student behavior

Sometimes their behavior is a can't. A student can't get started on his work because he doesn't have the executive functioning ability to organize his thoughts at that moment. So he sits there, looking like he's avoiding doing work, when in fact he wants to start but doesn't know how. A student can't disengage with one idea in his head and continues to come back to a certain topic despite the fact we've told him to move on.  In these cases the student behavior is not about getting attention, controlling the environment, or escaping from situations or given tasks (which is often what we look for when we're identifying the causes of misbehavior) but an inability to organize one's self to follow the rules and direction- even when the student really, really wants to do exactly what was asked.

This one question- is it a can't or a won't? has changed the way my school looks and responds to student behavior. Just asking it allows your mind to shift from thinking that a student is intentionally driving you crazy to wondering what behaviors you can teach to help the student regulate and organize himself.

Last year I was talking with a childhood friend who was recently diagnosed with autism. I was shocked at the diagnosis and was arguing with him about it. There was no way. The friend is now extremely successful, went to a top college and graduate program, and is now making more money than I will ever see. On the outside it looks like my friend has it all together (and he does, I don't want to imply that people with autism can't have it all together). In arguing with him I brought up all those debates he had with teachers over the years, all the assignments where he did the opposite of what the teacher asked while still following the exact directions the teacher gave, and all the moral stands he took against things in our school. His peers had always assumed he was anti-authority and just so much smarter than the teachers that he was always finding small ways to prove it. My friend turned red as he listened to me talk. "That's not how it was at all," he explained. "In every moment you just mentioned I wanted to follow the rules more than anything. I wanted to blend in and do what the teacher said. But I couldn't. There was always a reason. When I did what I did I was often doing exactly what the teacher said- it just wasn't what she wanted. Or I was trying to clarify what the teacher wanted and it came across as arguing." This struck me like a slap across the face. I couldn't stop thinking about it (I still can't). Even as his peers we'd assumed he was making a conscious decision to do these things. It became a part of how we saw him. But it wasn't a choice he was making. It was a can't.

What students are calling out to us for help through their behavior and we automatically think they are making a conscious decision to break the rules? We assume their behavior has a motivation behind it and we react to the motivation. When you change the lens you use to look at student behavior you suddenly realize areas where you can actively teach skills instead of simply modifying the environment or drawing a line in the sand.

Our job is always to teach, whether we are teaching how to read or how to behave in school. We can teach students how to have cognitive flexibility, how to respond to frustration, and how to problem solve. We just need to check the lens we are using to study the behavior and insure we are seeing it clearly.

"That's me. Sad." My personal reminder to respond to students' emotions

When I arrived at the door of a classroom to pick up my reading group of upper elementary students with intellectual disabilities I was met by some unhappy faces. It was a Friday afternoon after a very long week (the first full week we'd been in school since January because of all the snow days) and it was clear that the week was just as long on the students as it was on me. One of the students in particular was having a bad day.

He mopped into my room, begrudgingly sat down at the table with his book box, and reluctantly went through the lesson. He got up occasionally to get a tissue to wipe the tears from his eyes. After he completed the assignment he spontaneously drew a picture of himself, crying. "That's me," he labeled. "Sad."  Once he had my attention he stood up and walked over to the feelings target we have hanging on our wall from the Unstuck and On Target program. "I'm number four" he stated. "Four."

I've worked with the student since September but I've known him for three years now. I don't think we've ever had a conversation about emotions. What he likes, his weekend, what happened in his reading book, but never how he's actually feeling. Then again, he is usually a fairly happy fifth grade boy.

I looked at the picture, the feelings target and then at his writing. It wasn't his best work. In fact, he'd left out a lot of words out of his sentences. My entire goal for the activity was for him to write complete sentences, so I was going to have to ask him to redo the work. Then again, he clearly was not in a space to begin to re-write. "Why don't you write about how you feel?" I suggested. He nodded vigorously and then got to work, head down, pencil flying across the page. He filled five pages of pictures and writing, drawing how he felt, how he wanted to feel, and writing phrases and sentences with his thoughts. He included numbers from the target- 4, 4, 4, around the pictures to reinforce how he felt. Some words he wrote even included, "Go home to cry. I'm done. The end."

When he finally put his pencil down he was smiling. I went over each page with him very seriously, taking time to make eye contact with him and ask questions about why he drew what he drew and what had happened that day. At the end I asked him how he was feeling now. "Happy." he said. "Happy?" I asked, almost confused because he was not anywhere close to happy when he entered the room. I pointed to the target just to make sure that's what he meant. "Yes, number 1."
Taking a risk I asked him to go back to his work and re-write it. He did, almost perfectly.

The break to write about his feelings didn't detract from his academic work. It let him decompress, get his emotions out, connect with me, feel as though someone cared and then, get back to work. When he left my room he was smiling, which was a stark contrast to the crying boy who had entered. It was such a strong reminder to me of how important it is to respond to what our students need and remember that they are human beings.

You Have the Power

  While working through the Feelings Target from the Unstuck and On Target curriculum with a group of fourth grade students I was trying to get the students to identify how they feel when they are a number five, and what they can do to get back to being a number one. After an enlightening discussion on what each student feels like when they are in the five range I tried to change the conversation into what we can do when we feel that way. One student interrupted me, "But Mrs. Lipstick," he interjected with a matter-of-fact sincerity, "I have anger issues." 

Exactly my friend. That's why we are here. Now let's talk about the power you have over your actions.