August 16, 2019 | UHCL Staff
Some kids in school are able to stay focused. Others might need a little help — or maybe a lot of help — to stay on-task in the classroom. Kenya Myles, who is earning her Master of Arts in Behavior Analysis at University of Houston-Clear Lake, was inspired to work with teachers on creating alternatives to punishment to effect positive behavior change after recently completing an internship in Clear Creek Independent School District.
Myles said that the key to her positive behavior modification strategies was to catch students being good. “I have worked with students who have slipped through the cracks and the teacher couldn’t get them to do anything,” she said. “I worked with a student who didn’t like things being taken from him. He would hit, run away, or snatch it back. He was never taught to actually hand something to a person, and that having something taken away doesn’t mean it was gone forever.”
She said she was able to reintegrate him into the classroom by teaching him to wait until the item was returned to him. “During that waiting time, we would insert the instruction. We were able to replace the negative behavior with the behavior that was worthy of the reward — which for him was receiving his item back,” she said. “Some people call this the ‘positive opposite.’ You give them a preferred consequence for doing what you want instead of a penalty for what they weren’t supposed to do.”
It’s important, explained Myles, to first do a behavior assessment and find out why the behavior is occurring. “We also need to find out how the teacher is responding because what they’re doing might actually reinforce the behavior,” she said. “For example, I have worked with students who use language that is not acceptable. Swearing is hard to ignore, but I advise the parent or teacher to stop giving attention to swearing and teach the child to get attention in other ways.”
After working with a student who used inappropriate gestures and touching that the teacher could not ignore, Myles said that she found out that attention — even just eye contact — was valuable enough for him to continue the behavior. “We found out that if we wrote some sentences on a piece of paper with the appropriate things to say in front of him, she would simply point at the sentence he should use and then she would respond to him,” she said.
In behavior analysis, Myles said, it’s different working with students one-on-one than it is for teachers in the classroom. “We make suggestions, we review them with the teacher and we make sure the suggestions are feasible,” she said. “We try to integrate new ideas into the process and ask what’s worked in the past. We emphasize the use of reinforcement-based interventions. Some kids have learned that if they disrupt, they get sent out and they get out of doing their work. This strategy helps teachers find ways to show kids that problem behavior won’t work anymore, and that if they reinforce the appropriate alternative behavior, maladaptive behavior will decrease.”
As part of the Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Speaker Series, Myles will discuss reinforcement-based strategies in a presentation titled “Catch them Being Good: Alternatives to Punishment for Decreasing Problem Behavior” on Nov. 16, 10:30 a.m., in the university’s Bayou Building Garden Room. Find out more about the Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities and register for the CADD Speaker Series online.
