ALCOT Part 1

Robert Pennington Author

03/16/2021 Added

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ALCOT Part 1

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[00:00:03.720]Hi, welcome. I'm Rob Pennington.
[00:00:05.580]I'm a professor of special education
[00:00:06.757]at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
[00:00:09.400]and I'm really excited to be here today.
[00:00:10.940]Today we're gonna talk about building better programs
[00:00:12.930]for our students' extensive support needs
[00:00:15.040]and I'd kinda like to lead off with a picture.
[00:00:18.960]So this is me in 1990-ish, I think.
[00:00:23.140]I was maybe a practicum student
[00:00:25.530]and it reminds me that I've spent over half my life
[00:00:29.680]in education as a special educator.
[00:00:33.250]So I was a peer tutor in grade school.
[00:00:35.830]I was in Future Teachers of America in high school
[00:00:38.620]which is not the coolest club to be in
[00:00:40.457]but I was so passionate about it.
[00:00:42.240]My dad was a teacher.
[00:00:44.580]I was developing that identity as a teacher early on.
[00:00:48.550]During college as an undergraduate
[00:00:50.270]I did some one-on-one work in homes
[00:00:52.430]with small children with autism,
[00:00:53.900]did respite work with families, tutoring, coaching,
[00:00:57.690]and then I started teaching and I taught elementary,
[00:01:01.090]middle school programs for kids with severe disabilities.
[00:01:04.130]I worked within districts
[00:01:05.310]as a district kind of support person.
[00:01:07.470]So a lot of coaching, a lot of helping teachers.
[00:01:11.341]And then I had this great opportunity to work as a director
[00:01:15.230]of an autism state technical assistance center,
[00:01:18.502]the Kentucky Autism Training Center,
[00:01:19.470]and during that time I was able to work with teachers
[00:01:22.140]in rural and urban communities to develop their practice.
[00:01:25.370]And so that was pretty fantastic
[00:01:26.510]'cause I got to see different groups of people
[00:01:28.900]working really hard with different access to resources.
[00:01:33.140]When I went to University of Kentucky,
[00:01:34.590]I still kept working in schools
[00:01:36.280]and most of my academic career
[00:01:37.870]has involved working in schools.
[00:01:39.530]My research is in schools.
[00:01:40.800]I teach classes within teacher preparation programs
[00:01:44.590]and I still consistently even this week engage
[00:01:47.580]in consultation with schools.
[00:01:49.310]And so again, this is important to me
[00:01:52.880]and across all these things, all these experiences,
[00:01:56.990]I've learned one thing
[00:01:59.180]and this is not gonna be a surprise to you, right?
[00:02:01.160]But that teaching is hard.
[00:02:02.477]And I kinda like to frame all the work that I do
[00:02:04.710]in teacher preparation, teacher support,
[00:02:06.510]with this kind of acknowledgement that the things
[00:02:08.700]that we ask teachers to do are almost impossible.
[00:02:12.070]This ideal teacher that we create in our heads
[00:02:15.760]that should be able to easily juggle everything,
[00:02:17.940]they're always happy with what they do,
[00:02:20.860]is really difficult to achieve, I think.
[00:02:25.120]You think about the daily practice of a teacher.
[00:02:26.670]Think about your daily practice, right?
[00:02:29.000]There's so much involved.
[00:02:30.520]You've got to teach a standards-based curriculum,
[00:02:32.400]make sure kids demonstrate progress in that curriculum.
[00:02:35.120]You've got to find time to plan that.
[00:02:37.270]You have to manage behavior, and for us, working with kids
[00:02:39.990]with pretty extensive behavioral support needs,
[00:02:43.480]some days when that kid comes in,
[00:02:45.640]everything else is off the table.
[00:02:46.960]We're just focusing, juggling that one ball, that student,
[00:02:50.370]right, while the rest of the balls have fallen to the floor.
[00:02:54.200]We're sometimes planning school functions.
[00:02:56.300]Sometimes we're expected to attend school functions.
[00:02:58.750]Sometimes we're expected
[00:03:00.200]to get our students access to those functions.
[00:03:03.110]So I remember my second year as a middle school teacher,
[00:03:05.349](laughs) big awakening
[00:03:07.340]when our principal had a school lock-in.
[00:03:10.410]So it was a unique experience to have hundreds
[00:03:12.830]of middle school students locked in together overnight
[00:03:15.930]but a part of that process is
[00:03:17.690]I had three of my students come with me
[00:03:19.220]and I supported them and made sure they had interactions
[00:03:22.270]and were able to hang out with their peers
[00:03:23.600]during that time.
[00:03:26.170]Adjusting instruction to data,
[00:03:27.680]so the whole data collection process, collecting it,
[00:03:30.550]looking at it, rethinking our teaching decisions
[00:03:33.550]based on those data, graphing data,
[00:03:36.070]all those things take a lot of time.
[00:03:38.630]Not only do we have to teach the core curriculum
[00:03:40.570]but we've got to teach those essential skills
[00:03:43.010]that sometimes are as important or more important
[00:03:46.630]than what we're teaching with our grade-aligned curricula.
[00:03:49.310]So communication skills, self-determination, advocacy,
[00:03:52.060]all those things are really important.
[00:03:54.690]But to find time to make sure we're engaged in instruction
[00:03:57.543]throughout the day and that our students are not, you know,
[00:03:59.970]they're not wasting their time in our program,
[00:04:01.740]that they're actually engaged in activities
[00:04:03.500]that will build their skills.
[00:04:05.440]Evaluating data, adapting curriculum,
[00:04:07.860]supporting our students in least restrictive environments,
[00:04:10.690]training staff, that's a whole nother job
[00:04:13.770]of supervising our paraprofessionals, working with them,
[00:04:16.050]listening to them, support and make sure
[00:04:17.240]they have supports and plans.
[00:04:20.697]Managing parent interactions.
[00:04:22.500]So listening to parents, communicating with parents,
[00:04:25.870]and we're expected to train parents
[00:04:27.720]and help parents implement things at home.
[00:04:30.560]It's a lot of responsibilities
[00:04:31.750]in our teacher education backpack, right?
[00:04:34.857]And then finally some of our teachers spend hours a day
[00:04:37.450]managing the medical needs of students.
[00:04:39.600]So their demands are immense
[00:04:41.377]and I think it's important for us to acknowledge that.
[00:04:43.160]And I think it's also important for us to acknowledge
[00:04:45.700]that I think that it's probably a contributing factor
[00:04:49.560]to several issues, one being
[00:04:51.110]that teachers leave the field pretty quickly.
[00:04:53.400]So we see high turnover rates and it becomes very difficult
[00:04:56.220]for districts and other entities to find teachers
[00:05:01.320]so we reduce the restrictions
[00:05:03.340]or the requirements for teachers to get in.
[00:05:05.310]We hope that we're gonna support them
[00:05:06.510]when they're in there and grow them.
[00:05:07.777]That doesn't always work.
[00:05:10.090]Sometimes I've seen some great lateral entry folks
[00:05:12.410]that have been spectacular
[00:05:14.050]but other times I've seen them really fall down.
[00:05:16.440]We see consistently poor outcomes
[00:05:18.240]in many areas for our students,
[00:05:19.930]not just our students with extensive support needs
[00:05:21.870]but a lot of students, we look at some of our national data.
[00:05:24.550]I do write into research and a lot of our individuals,
[00:05:27.630]you're looking at not even meeting proficiency
[00:05:29.520]in the area of writing, for example.
[00:05:31.838]We look at our students with extensive support needs
[00:05:33.720]and still post-secondary outcomes are pretty abysmal
[00:05:36.890]for many of them.
[00:05:38.040]They're having a hard time obtaining employment,
[00:05:41.730]post-secondary educational opportunities, independence
[00:05:47.170]and so again, I think that speaks
[00:05:49.780]to what we're doing at schools in preparing these folks.
[00:05:53.810]It's one of the factors for sure.
[00:05:55.590]We see students in classrooms that are not engaged.
[00:05:58.090]We see some of our teachers having difficulties
[00:06:00.810]addressing challenging behavior,
[00:06:02.160]especially those more severe ones.
[00:06:04.940]We see students with poor communication repertoires.
[00:06:07.680]And then we see kind of mass inequity, right?
[00:06:10.170]There are researchers
[00:06:11.160]that are just taking observational data
[00:06:13.110]and describing what's happening in schools
[00:06:14.337]and these data seem to reflect that, for instance,
[00:06:17.180]kids of color receive more negative feedback
[00:06:20.810]than their white counterparts.
[00:06:23.720]We drill down to kind of our population, right?
[00:06:25.930]We're talking students with extensive support needs.
[00:06:29.079]All the data seemed to suggest that kids are spending
[00:06:32.410]a lot of time sitting and listening,
[00:06:35.470]passively engaged in instruction, which, you know,
[00:06:38.679]it doesn't often work for our students.
[00:06:42.300]They need opportunities to practice,
[00:06:43.710]get feedback, repetition.
[00:06:47.060]Consistently data seemed to suggest that our students
[00:06:49.826]don't have the communication supports they need.
[00:06:52.890]So they're either not receiving communication instruction
[00:06:55.543]or if they have a speech-generating device,
[00:06:57.870]picture-based system, it's not around them.
[00:07:00.040]And then in some instances we are seeing
[00:07:02.250]that teachers will implement practices
[00:07:04.450]that are a contraindicator and sometimes harmful.
[00:07:07.290]And I don't think any teacher says I'm gonna go in
[00:07:09.240]and use harmful practices, but these things happen.
[00:07:13.140]Sometimes they're led astray.
[00:07:14.807]They've been given poor guidance.
[00:07:17.000]We didn't prepare them adequately in their prep program
[00:07:19.320]which I'll talk about in a second.
[00:07:21.140]But the fact is that it's happening.
[00:07:25.250]So how do we get there?
[00:07:26.700]So I always joke and say that, it's not, I don't joke,
[00:07:30.480]I say to my undergraduate students and I say, all right,
[00:07:32.870]how many guys are gonna be the awesome teacher?
[00:07:35.170]They all raise their hand and we (clapping) clap
[00:07:37.880]and give them high fives and say, nice job,
[00:07:40.740]and then I say, but you know, I'm a little worried
[00:07:42.520]because when I go out into classrooms,
[00:07:46.634]and I see hundreds of classrooms at this point,
[00:07:49.300]I say to them, I say to students, I say, well,
[00:07:51.660]there's really a small set of teachers
[00:07:53.163]that are just, really just incredible.
[00:07:56.100]And then there's this big middle group of folks
[00:07:58.990]that are struggling.
[00:08:00.980]Sometimes they're mediocre, right,
[00:08:02.700]but they're just trying to get it all done.
[00:08:05.060]And then there's a few teachers
[00:08:06.080]that are really doing a poor job.
[00:08:08.020]And so if you guys are representative of that group,
[00:08:10.170]it just means that maybe not all of you are gonna be awesome
[00:08:13.920]and their little faces kind of drain
[00:08:15.898]and then we talk about, well,
[00:08:17.310]here's what you can do about it.
[00:08:19.430]But the idea is that that speaks, I think,
[00:08:22.710]sometimes to the disconnect between this ideal world
[00:08:25.837]we prepare folks in teacher ed, right,
[00:08:29.140]to what really is out there in the classroom.
[00:08:31.810]So teacher preparation I think is a component
[00:08:34.710]of why folks, some of our educators need more assistance
[00:08:39.300]and not always the case
[00:08:40.440]but if you look at teacher preparation programs,
[00:08:43.660]curricula are vast, so I was duly certified
[00:08:47.200]so I had to learn, you know,
[00:08:48.800]all children's literature classes,
[00:08:51.020]I had to learn basically general education pedagogy
[00:08:55.090]and then special education on top of it.
[00:08:57.000]And my special education early in the '90s,
[00:08:59.460]it wasn't very detailed.
[00:09:01.090]I took a class on how kids get mental retardation.
[00:09:04.080]You know, I took a class, kind of a practicum
[00:09:06.210]where we did a couple of projects around kids
[00:09:08.680]with severe disabilities and then that was it.
[00:09:10.595]Everything else was either focused
[00:09:12.120]on kids without disabilities
[00:09:14.030]or our kids with high incidence disabilities.
[00:09:16.500]Somehow luckily I got support in my program
[00:09:19.200]and got more education but I think that's probably,
[00:09:23.507]from my perspective or my experiences working
[00:09:26.390]with other teacher prep programs, this hasn't changed.
[00:09:29.840]There's still a lot of variability
[00:09:31.550]in the quality of programs, the types of things
[00:09:33.430]that teacher candidates experience.
[00:09:37.250]Recently we did a survey
[00:09:38.527]and one of our teacher educators
[00:09:41.388]and one teacher educator said
[00:09:42.980]that she was still training folks
[00:09:44.540]to implement facilitated communication
[00:09:48.470]which has been completely debunked, right?
[00:09:51.000]And all the professional organizations say don't use it
[00:09:54.127]but this was still within their curriculum.
[00:09:56.620]So there's a lot of problems that way.
[00:09:58.950]I think something else that I recognize
[00:10:01.730]and this, maybe, I don't know,
[00:10:03.940]a decade ago, this kinda came to me.
[00:10:05.520]I went out and saw a teacher that I had trained.
[00:10:09.150]I've been a part of their training
[00:10:10.680]and then they weren't doing what they were trained to do.
[00:10:14.833]And I think many of us as teacher educators
[00:10:16.570]have gotten out there and been like, what's going on?
[00:10:19.030]This is not what you're supposed to be doing.
[00:10:20.673]This is not what you received in the program.
[00:10:22.930]And then I thought about it a little bit more
[00:10:24.757]and realized that it's very likely
[00:10:27.960]that most teacher prep programs don't get teachers
[00:10:31.610]up to acquisition on skills.
[00:10:34.030]So I teach courses, right,
[00:10:35.750]and they'll have a big assignment
[00:10:37.950]and they, you know, you're graded on that assignment,
[00:10:40.210]you do a good job, lots of support and models, right?
[00:10:43.650]And so that one assignment is one data point, right?
[00:10:48.340]So you've been able to do it once.
[00:10:49.277]You got an A on it and you passed on to the next course.
[00:10:52.030]How many data points do we need to show stability?
[00:10:55.430]Well, at least three, right?
[00:10:56.360]So they should have to do that assignment three times,
[00:10:59.540]right, for us to even have a sense
[00:11:01.000]of maybe they've acquired it
[00:11:02.650]before we consider that they have to generalize it,
[00:11:06.450]maintain it, basically go out and use it
[00:11:09.020]in the real life environment.
[00:11:11.930]Also sometimes supervision is limited.
[00:11:13.920]So a lot of my teacher prep programs, you know,
[00:11:15.110]we'd go out and observe them four times in a semester.
[00:11:18.090]You know, they got the plan and we rely a lot of supervision
[00:11:21.409]on their classroom teacher who may not have experience
[00:11:25.070]in supervision or may just, you know,
[00:11:27.000]be in the young teachers' corner.
[00:11:29.980]And so there's often missed opportunities
[00:11:33.280]for us to really see what's happening,
[00:11:36.370]to really provide lots of support and guidance
[00:11:39.220]to help teachers acquire those skills
[00:11:41.010]that were taught to them in their programs.
[00:11:43.961]And then we're seeing across the country
[00:11:45.230]fewer incentives for graduate work.
[00:11:47.500]So honestly most of my best training came
[00:11:49.980]from my master's program and my most focused training
[00:11:53.180]on behavior intervention and working with kids
[00:11:54.890]with developmental disabilities and autism and, you know,
[00:11:58.160]many states now have kind of removed incentives
[00:12:01.210]for people to get a master's degree
[00:12:03.820]and most states have removed the requirement
[00:12:05.279]that you have to.
[00:12:06.800]At one point, lots of states required
[00:12:08.540]that you had to go on and get a master's degree
[00:12:12.041]and that requirement's been removed.
[00:12:18.550]I just want to show you a quick example.
[00:12:20.086]I referred to it a minute ago,
[00:12:22.040]a couple of the quality of programming out there.
[00:12:25.590]So I'm also really interested
[00:12:26.550]in communication supports for students.
[00:12:28.090]So we surveyed teacher education programs
[00:12:31.183]and kind of asked them what they were doing
[00:12:32.980]in terms of preparing their educators
[00:12:34.910]and in the area of communication supports,
[00:12:37.202]and as you would suggest, there was a lot of variability.
[00:12:40.960]There are some programs that don't offer full courses
[00:12:44.330]and communication supports.
[00:12:45.630]Usually it's kind of smattered throughout their program.
[00:12:49.210]Teacher educators themselves thought
[00:12:51.320]that 33% of their undergraduates
[00:12:53.260]and 16% of their graduate students
[00:12:54.990]were not adequately prepared.
[00:12:58.510]There was a focus on behavioral interventions which is good
[00:13:01.462]because that's a lot of evidence-based practice.
[00:13:04.160]But basically most of, there was more of an emphasis
[00:13:07.100]on knowledge than actual practice in it.
[00:13:09.100]So they read about it in their textbooks.
[00:13:10.410]They'd heard about it in a lecture
[00:13:11.810]but they wouldn't actually get a chance
[00:13:13.679]to go out and practice it.
[00:13:16.550]So I guess pulling this all together is this idea
[00:13:20.030]that our teacher preparation programs here
[00:13:24.340]on the left, right, are probably really different
[00:13:27.060]than the real world.
[00:13:28.420]So you've got these contrasting contexts.
[00:13:31.290]So the teacher prep program,
[00:13:32.750]you're getting some direct instruction.
[00:13:34.330]We're telling you what to do.
[00:13:36.340]If we're doing a good job, we're letting you practice.
[00:13:40.440]There's instructor feedback so you turn assignments in.
[00:13:43.200]We'd say, yes, you know, we give you feedback
[00:13:45.570]or correct, incorrect, we have you revise it.
[00:13:48.500]There's some clear contingencies for getting things done.
[00:13:51.690]Like, they have to get done, or, you know,
[00:13:53.350]it's, read the syllabus, right?
[00:13:56.075]And then we have these kind of controlled set up classrooms.
[00:13:59.350]So you're practicing in a simulated environment,
[00:14:04.400]in a classroom and you're at your university,
[00:14:07.410]or you're in a practicum classroom
[00:14:10.756]with a experienced teacher that already has
[00:14:13.320]a lot of behavior management under control
[00:14:16.880]and then that's what they learn.
[00:14:18.393]Those are the conditions under which our educators
[00:14:20.830]or you might've learned.
[00:14:22.540]And then you go to the real life and, well, guess what,
[00:14:26.870]you're supposed to learn a lot of the things
[00:14:28.396]that you don't know kind of on your own.
[00:14:29.760]You have to go out and seek resources often.
[00:14:33.160]There's some peer feedback opportunities
[00:14:35.050]that are there, but that might be it.
[00:14:37.920]There's competing natural contingencies.
[00:14:39.760]So now not only do you have to implement
[00:14:43.523]or we expect you to implement the things trained
[00:14:45.850]in your program, but suddenly you've got parents' pressure
[00:14:49.690]that you didn't have before, administrator pressure,
[00:14:53.320]that one challenging student
[00:14:55.030]that if you don't meet his needs, your day's ruined
[00:14:58.970]even if it means not teaching other kids, right?
[00:15:02.666]And then there's all sorts of, like I said,
[00:15:04.140]there's all sorts of crazy challenging behavior
[00:15:05.680]that pops up so the worlds are very different,
[00:15:08.166]I think, that we paint in our teacher prep programs
[00:15:11.100]and then what's out in the classroom.
[00:15:14.007]And as a result, I think a lot of our new teachers
[00:15:17.550]and sometimes our experienced teachers, they crash, right?
[00:15:21.530]They don't make the leap between this program
[00:15:25.690]we train them to teach in, right?
[00:15:28.230]And then what really they're expected to do
[00:15:31.750]and so, and when they crash, parents, students,
[00:15:36.140]you know, they also suffer.
[00:15:37.720]So the teacher suffers and the students suffer.
[00:15:41.480]Sometimes they get in there and they're okay, right?
[00:15:45.387]But over time they kind of fade to mediocrity
[00:15:49.670]because the environment doesn't ask a lot more from them.
[00:15:53.060]So how many, so I'm sure there are people watching today
[00:15:59.603]that could probably do most of, you know,
[00:16:03.590]could teach all day long
[00:16:07.652]and unless a parent calls the administrator,
[00:16:12.370]there's just, you know, there's no,
[00:16:15.459]nobody cares what you're doing as long as kids are safe,
[00:16:21.690]parents aren't complaining,
[00:16:23.620]you're providing some sort of data.
[00:16:25.600]I mean, people, you care obviously
[00:16:27.980]but there's not strong contingencies
[00:16:29.930]for you to use specific practices
[00:16:31.940]or do something with a certain level of criteria.
[00:16:34.680]Basically a lot of our teachers
[00:16:35.870]I think sometimes contact environments
[00:16:37.640]where there's no interaction with anyone else
[00:16:39.670]and so as a result, they respond
[00:16:41.940]to what their classroom requires them to do.
[00:16:44.950]So for example, they've got a couple kids
[00:16:46.720]with extreme behavior support needs.
[00:16:49.330]And so to keep everyone safe, then they may use
[00:16:53.790]some intensive practice with these students
[00:16:55.690]that lead to other students working a lot
[00:16:57.550]on, like, independent work tasks
[00:16:59.060]where they're not learning skills, right?
[00:17:01.180]So basically your environment sometimes shapes
[00:17:04.697]the teacher that you become.
[00:17:06.760]And when there's not other people interacting
[00:17:09.310]with those environments, really the major driver
[00:17:12.570]is what's happening in your classroom.
[00:17:17.264]So teachers often receive very few reinforcers
[00:17:21.280]for effective teaching behavior.
[00:17:23.730]And we'll talk, there are some, right?
[00:17:25.210]So making student progress,
[00:17:26.370]all those things are really important,
[00:17:28.200]but just, you know, for instance, praise,
[00:17:31.540]how natural is praise?
[00:17:33.690]It's weird, right?
[00:17:34.710]I mean, we're supposed to give it to kids
[00:17:36.060]but in your daily life do you walk around and go,
[00:17:38.720]good job, honey, I love the way you, you know, wash the car.
[00:17:42.756]No, you don't.
[00:17:44.490]And so you're expected to engage in these behaviors
[00:17:47.170]to which there's no immediate reinforcer,
[00:17:49.570]a consequence for it to happen.
[00:17:51.090]So you have to kind of be better,
[00:17:53.530]you have to work beyond the science of human behavior
[00:17:59.700]which sometimes it's not realistic.
[00:18:02.950]So you go out, you know,
[00:18:04.150]maybe you know what you're supposed to do.
[00:18:05.780]You try them a few times your first years teaching.
[00:18:08.560]You get no feedback, it doesn't work immediately
[00:18:10.540]so your behaviors are put on extinction,
[00:18:12.740]means they get no reinforcers
[00:18:14.415]and then over time they start fading
[00:18:17.470]and then maybe something else happens.
[00:18:19.780]So, you know, you're exhausted.
[00:18:22.250]I've seen a lot of these recently.
[00:18:23.650]I've seen teach by YouTube where it's just constantly,
[00:18:26.820]kids are spending, you know, up to an hour,
[00:18:29.180]hour and a half watching YouTube videos
[00:18:32.440]that require very little interaction.
[00:18:34.560]Their teacher's like, okay, morning meeting.
[00:18:36.319](blows raspberry) YouTube is on and they're exhausted
[00:18:40.870]and they can do other things
[00:18:42.030]while the kids are watching YouTube.
[00:18:43.570]And so those behaviors become established in the classroom
[00:18:47.760]even though they're probably not very effective, right?
[00:18:51.070]But because they provide opportunities
[00:18:53.590]for teachers to do other things, kids generally enjoy it.
[00:18:56.710]So maybe they're not engaged in problem behavior.
[00:18:58.620]Other contentions come into play that kind of trap
[00:19:01.800]these ineffective practices in our classrooms.
[00:19:06.570]And sometimes we're led less astray or led astray
[00:19:09.610]by less trained and more experienced colleagues.
[00:19:11.900]I'll give you a great example.
[00:19:12.733]So one time I was working, my first year of teaching,
[00:19:15.450]I had a young man who was really one of my favorites.
[00:19:19.380]I still keep in contact with them via the Facebooks.
[00:19:23.420]But when he was young,
[00:19:24.300]he engaged in a lot of problem behavior.
[00:19:26.920]So he would go down the hallways and preach the Bible.
[00:19:29.310]He could tell you almost every verse of the Bible
[00:19:32.870]but then he would also switch and say,
[00:19:34.327]"I'm Wesley Snipes, you mother,"
[00:19:36.150]and just starts swinging at people, right?
[00:19:39.230]Biting his hand and going down the hall.
[00:19:40.820]And one day a paraprofessional grabbed me
[00:19:42.270]who had some experience with this student before.
[00:19:45.480]And she said, "Mr. Rob, let me show you what I do with him."
[00:19:47.660]I said, "Okay."
[00:19:48.820]So she grabbed his hands and pushed them against the wall
[00:19:51.010]and then looked at him and said, "Don't do that again."
[00:19:52.860]And immediately I said, "No, no, stop,"
[00:19:54.820]you know, I interrupt, I said, "That's fine,
[00:19:55.960]I'm gonna take care of it, please,
[00:19:57.210]you know, let me handle the student's issues."
[00:20:01.117]But the idea is that sometimes we get bad advice
[00:20:03.880]from other folks and certainly I knew better that,
[00:20:06.713]at least I had enough training to say that this use
[00:20:09.770]of these kinds of punishment borderline abusive practices,
[00:20:12.728]we shouldn't engage in these.
[00:20:16.160]But it happens all the time.
[00:20:17.570]Another example recently is we had a,
[00:20:19.340]not recently, about five or six years ago,
[00:20:21.100]I remember a paraprofessional had taught a peer tutor
[00:20:25.595]or had attempted to teach a peer tutor
[00:20:27.100]how to pinch a student so that it wouldn't leave a mark
[00:20:30.050]when he grabbed her, pulled her clothes.
[00:20:32.840]Fortunately that peer tutor had a conscience and was worried
[00:20:36.090]and came back and told the educator
[00:20:37.980]and then, and that situation was corrected,
[00:20:41.300]but these things happen all the time
[00:20:42.910]and so again, we wanna make sure that, you know,
[00:20:46.070]we have enough supports place to kind of help filter it
[00:20:49.170]and capture when those things happen.
[00:20:52.360]So maybe because of our training,
[00:20:55.560]maybe because our environment has kind of shaped us,
[00:20:58.230]we kind of feel stuck sometimes, right?
[00:21:00.180]All of us, so ever if you're here
[00:21:02.640]and you have been presenting or teaching for 20 years,
[00:21:06.200]you might get to that place of like, oh, I just,
[00:21:09.750]I'm still doing the same thing over and over again
[00:21:11.770]and I need to do better.
[00:21:14.570]And I would argue we all need to do better.
[00:21:16.780]And there's different points in our career
[00:21:18.140]where we get momentum, you know,
[00:21:19.890]and honestly those usually happen
[00:21:21.980]when there's a little bit of a change, right?
[00:21:23.300]When our environment changes, it requires more of us.
[00:21:27.910]So, but when we do feel stuck, you know,
[00:21:29.950]kind of what do we do?
[00:21:31.010]Well, sometimes we look to in-service trainings
[00:21:33.030]and despite the data suggested,
[00:21:35.130]there are some effective models out there, right,
[00:21:37.760]of training, of teacher training.
[00:21:39.750]We often rely on these kinds of broad PD events
[00:21:43.400]kind of like this one, so hence the picture
[00:21:45.610]of Alanis Morissette, isn't that ironic?
[00:21:48.950]But the idea is that they're often broad.
[00:21:51.647]They're not individualized necessarily
[00:21:53.660]to a specific teacher's needs or contexts
[00:21:57.120]and there's usually not follow-up.
[00:21:59.840]Sometimes it's out of context.
[00:22:01.110]So again, I'm gonna train you,
[00:22:05.763]outside of your classroom in this, you know,
[00:22:08.970]gym or this professional training area
[00:22:12.050]or in this virtual environment,
[00:22:14.340]and you don't get an opportunity to actually see it
[00:22:16.820]in action within the context of your environment,
[00:22:20.310]the stimuli, the occurrences, the schedule,
[00:22:22.830]you don't get to see it in practice
[00:22:24.430]and so therefore it's hard to kind of make that loop.
[00:22:27.290]Sometimes it's not evidence-based.
[00:22:28.800]And so I won't say this happens a lot but maybe it does
[00:22:31.800]but I'll see districts that will be really excited
[00:22:34.080]about a speaker or a presenter
[00:22:37.500]and they will bring in some information
[00:22:40.960]to the district to train their teachers on maybe a practice
[00:22:44.020]that just doesn't really have the solid research support
[00:22:47.470]for us to be disseminated widely.
[00:22:51.180]Maybe then some of our teachers say, you know,
[00:22:52.847]I'm gonna turn to the research.
[00:22:55.210]And maybe some of our teachers
[00:22:56.220]that are in graduate programs are gonna say, ha,
[00:22:58.730]I'm gonna go to my university library
[00:23:01.720]and access those articles.
[00:23:04.210]The reality is that oftentimes people don't have access
[00:23:08.010]to those articles and literature.
[00:23:09.310]Sometimes they're written in a way full of jargon
[00:23:11.430]that they're not accessible
[00:23:12.520]even if somebody can download the articles.
[00:23:15.080]And sometimes the literature is not helpful.
[00:23:16.810]Here's an example, recently we did a review
[00:23:19.270]that I think will be coming out this year
[00:23:20.890]in education training and autism
[00:23:22.530]and developmental disabilities
[00:23:23.363]and we're looking at requesting all the strategies
[00:23:25.980]that teachers are requesting in school settings.
[00:23:28.390]You know, and first of all, most of them are published
[00:23:30.470]in very non-special-education journals,
[00:23:33.090]so ABA or disability-specific journals.
[00:23:37.254]A lot of them were implemented
[00:23:39.096]in very restrictive controlled settings.
[00:23:40.200]So if you want to implement this
[00:23:41.860]in a more naturalistic setting
[00:23:43.500]or in a general education setting,
[00:23:46.120]the studies may not provide you as useful information.
[00:23:50.130]And probably most importantly,
[00:23:51.270]most of the studies were implemented under supervision
[00:23:54.310]or direct implementation by a researcher,
[00:23:57.120]somebody with a lot of training,
[00:23:58.330]with supports to make sure fidelity is there.
[00:24:00.750]And that's not really what it looks like in a classroom.
[00:24:04.260]Yes, these studies were,
[00:24:07.371]they were affective in terms of demonstrated change
[00:24:10.990]but were are they implementable in the classroom?
[00:24:13.970]And so we don't know.
[00:24:17.670]So I guess the moral of the story so far is this idea
[00:24:21.100]that no matter who you are,
[00:24:23.410]the school environment will shape our behavior.
[00:24:25.650]It can shape us in good directions
[00:24:27.080]and directions that we again would not be proud of.
[00:24:29.960]I recently had a conversation with a colleague,
[00:24:32.010]a very talented colleague, who's very excited
[00:24:33.990]because she might be, she's interested in working
[00:24:36.680]in a self-contained school, maybe leading that school.
[00:24:39.400]And my advice to her was, hey,
[00:24:43.340]you make sure you have good people around you
[00:24:45.340]that are honest and that will communicate with you
[00:24:48.180]because no matter how good you are,
[00:24:50.220]I know that you have research expertise.
[00:24:52.300]I know that your heart is in the right place.
[00:24:54.850]If you go into a school where the staff, you know,
[00:24:58.733]have a strong kind of institutionalized culture,
[00:25:02.360]maybe use restraints, use ineffective procedures
[00:25:06.530]or many of them do potentially,
[00:25:08.910]you have kids with severe behaviors, right?
[00:25:12.460]All those things, that complex environment will shape you
[00:25:16.930]and so you want people to be honest and be able to tell you,
[00:25:20.410]hey, we're steering away from what the evidence says.
[00:25:24.110]We're steering away from where we need to be going.
[00:25:26.120]So again, making sure that,
[00:25:28.730]my advice to her was basically create an environment
[00:25:30.810]around her to help protect, right,
[00:25:34.580]to soften those impending effects of a very complex school.
[00:25:42.780]So what are we gonna do about it?
[00:25:44.540]So we talked about, so in this last slide
[00:25:46.470]I said shaping teacher behavior.
[00:25:49.240]For the rest of today I'm gonna ask you
[00:25:50.880]to think about what does that mean?
[00:25:54.510]So what does it mean for,
[00:25:56.948]what, excuse me,
[00:25:59.700]what does it mean to behave as a teacher?
[00:26:02.700]So we look at our students, right,
[00:26:04.220]we say, well, Johnny engaged in a problem behavior.
[00:26:07.480]There was this antecedent.
[00:26:09.830]It resulted in some outcome for him.
[00:26:12.590]Maybe a student responded incorrectly, maybe, oh,
[00:26:15.770]so therefore our prompt was inaccurate, or,
[00:26:19.620]but I'm asking you now to look at your own behavior
[00:26:22.840]within that environmental context.
[00:26:27.130]So teachers behave all the time.
[00:26:29.430]We plan. We have planning behaviors.
[00:26:31.360]We have specific teaching behaviors,
[00:26:33.040]the delivery of a prompt, delivery of an instructional cue,
[00:26:35.910]application reinforcement, we interact with students
[00:26:38.270]in multiple ways, we respond to students' behavior.
[00:26:40.630]These are all ways that we behave.
[00:26:43.730]So again, taking the characteristic out of teaching
[00:26:50.180]but really looking at what behaviors do we emit,
[00:26:54.115]you know, under what conditions do they emit,
[00:26:56.800]how frequently we emit them.
[00:26:59.740]It's also, I want you to acknowledge the idea
[00:27:02.330]that your behavior is affected by your environment.
[00:27:05.190]So the things that work for you are there
[00:27:09.060]because they've worked in the past.
[00:27:11.020]And again, sometimes that puts us in good places
[00:27:13.340]and sometimes not so helpful places.
[00:27:17.640]The next thing I want you to think about, and again,
[00:27:20.190]will kind of lead us through the rest, next hour and a half,
[00:27:22.610]is this idea that if we're gonna change our own behavior,
[00:27:27.590]if we're gonna improve our practice,
[00:27:29.990]it may not just be enough that you're like,
[00:27:32.240]that you've got that oomph, that I'm gonna do this, right?
[00:27:35.420]You might need to change your environment
[00:27:38.600]to be able to make sure that happens,
[00:27:40.275]that you engage in that behavior
[00:27:43.383]and then that behavior continues over time.
[00:27:46.370]And then finally, and this is really important,
[00:27:48.840]I mean, I learned this probably over 15 years ago.
[00:27:53.540]So my, you know, the first time I was asked
[00:27:55.530]to come out to a classroom to support teachers,
[00:27:57.260]I had all sorts of, you know, descriptors for teachers
[00:28:00.080]that wouldn't do what I asked them to do, right? (laughs)
[00:28:03.430]And what I realized is it's not their fault.
[00:28:05.750]I would never say that to a kid.
[00:28:07.352]You don't want to learn.
[00:28:08.290]You don't want to change your behavior, right?
[00:28:10.220]I would just do something about it.
[00:28:11.850]I would make sure that I provided good instruction,
[00:28:15.220]that there was powerful reinforcers
[00:28:17.280]for engaging in targeted behaviors.
[00:28:19.800]I would basically plan the environment
[00:28:21.690]so these individuals have success.
[00:28:23.750]So the fact is that there is not a,
[00:28:26.192]teachers are expected to have a repertoire
[00:28:29.510]that they emit under certain conditions, right?
[00:28:31.550]Skills, behaviors.
[00:28:33.550]And sometimes they don't have those skills, right?
[00:28:35.890]And so, and therefore it's either a instructional issue
[00:28:39.420]where they don't have, they just don't have the skills,
[00:28:42.230]that's why they're not emitting them,
[00:28:44.100]or they don't produce an observed outcome.
[00:28:46.740]So part of us as maybe an interventionist
[00:28:49.780]might be helping teachers understand the effects
[00:28:53.000]of their behavior on their environment.
[00:28:56.050]So again, this idea for the rest of the day,
[00:28:58.110]there's no bad teachers.
[00:29:00.070]There's no lazy teacher.
[00:29:01.290]There's no teachers that we just need to put out to pasture.
[00:29:05.180]I've heard all those things before
[00:29:07.030]but our idea is to say we've got this person
[00:29:09.010]in the classroom, they're committed to be here.
[00:29:11.590]How can we help them improve their practice?
[00:29:14.130]Or if I'm speaking to you teachers watching this,
[00:29:16.720]how can you engage in a process
[00:29:19.810]through every year you're strengthening your program?
[00:29:23.120]And I promise that'll be much more rewarding
[00:29:25.000]than kind of getting stuck in kind of teaching doldrums.
[00:29:29.770]So again, think about your behavior in the context of,
[00:29:33.230]the environment signals you to do things all the time.
[00:29:36.020]A kid's late and you walk over to them
[00:29:37.780]and ask them why they were late.
[00:29:39.590]A kid doesn't respond or does respond
[00:29:42.230]on an instructional task.
[00:29:43.290]You provide corrective or positive feedback, right.
[00:29:45.920]And then what are those variables
[00:29:47.490]that maintain that responding?
[00:29:48.990]So antecedent behavior consequence, good old ABA 101, right?
[00:29:53.200]So let's think about that.
[00:29:54.033]So are all the things that we ask about
[00:29:56.270]are these antecedent stimuli,
[00:29:58.310]these events that trigger teacher behavior.
[00:29:59.960]It could be other staff behavior
[00:30:02.430]or the way our students behave
[00:30:04.350]or schedule changes or the instructional materials
[00:30:08.100]throughout the day that we've set up.
[00:30:10.810]But more complex,
[00:30:12.570]what do you think maintains those behaviors?
[00:30:15.210]So what do teachers do?
[00:30:16.620]How do they behave and what did they get
[00:30:19.100]from behaving certain ways?
[00:30:21.210]And right now let's just focus on strong teacher behavior.
[00:30:24.360]So when you're doing something good in your classroom,
[00:30:26.920]why are you doing it?
[00:30:28.770]What do you get out of it?
[00:30:30.280]And let's look at some, I want you to think for a minute
[00:30:33.210]just do a little brainstorming by yourself, right? (laughs)
[00:30:40.270]What do you get out of your best teaching practices?
[00:30:49.640]All right, let's see.
[00:30:51.870]So maybe it's student progress.
[00:30:53.210]And usually when I do this as a workshop
[00:30:54.920]and we sometimes run this as a whole day workshop,
[00:30:58.910]I'll ask teachers, I'll say, "Why are you doing this?"
[00:31:01.917]And it's always for the kids, right?
[00:31:03.980]For student progress. I do this and kids make progress.
[00:31:06.887]And I would agree that's a powerful reinforcer
[00:31:09.210]for teacher behavior.
[00:31:10.940]The challenge is that not for all teacher behaviors
[00:31:14.300]or very specific teacher behaviors,
[00:31:19.560]because sometimes teachers are not collecting data, right?
[00:31:23.010]So they don't see that, oh, wow,
[00:31:24.920]today he got an 80% over a 40% the day before.
[00:31:28.250]That really reinforced my use
[00:31:30.090]of these good teaching practices.
[00:31:33.300]Sometimes we're working with students,
[00:31:34.640]they don't respond, right?
[00:31:36.260]They have very low levels of responding
[00:31:38.330]and so we're not getting intensity of feedback.
[00:31:43.760]Again, that can also strengthen it.
[00:31:44.593]So when they do respond, you're like, yes,
[00:31:47.710]but here's another thing to think about.
[00:31:49.350]If teachers, if all of us were only out in the world
[00:31:53.610]to do right by kids and we only used those practices
[00:32:00.653]that were working, we wouldn't see teachers out there
[00:32:06.920]using practices that were not effective, right?
[00:32:09.200]'Cause they wouldn't be reinforcing it
[00:32:10.297]and would only select those practices
[00:32:12.880]to which produce outcomes.
[00:32:15.060]Basically the other behaviors, the poor teaching behaviors
[00:32:18.010]that weren't working would be put on extinction
[00:32:19.800]so we would see less of those.
[00:32:21.320]So there's gotta be some other mediating factors.
[00:32:23.980]So compensation, yeah, it's important.
[00:32:26.460]We all want to work. We want a better raise.
[00:32:29.180]Sometimes we switch districts 'cause one pays more
[00:32:31.340]'cause we've got to take care of our families.
[00:32:33.270]But the fact is that compensation
[00:32:34.770]doesn't reinforce particular behaviors really, right?
[00:32:37.530]So you, most of us could do a pretty mediocre job
[00:32:41.040]and still get paid.
[00:32:42.320]Some of us could just keep showing up every day
[00:32:44.180]and make sure kids aren't hurt and still get paid.
[00:32:47.420]So the idea that compensation is important
[00:32:50.620]but they don't select,
[00:32:53.010]usually select particular teaching behaviors,
[00:32:55.980]one's over the other.
[00:32:57.910]Sometimes we do things that avoid problem behavior, right?
[00:33:00.020]So we might engage a particular practice
[00:33:02.670]because it reduces problem behavior.
[00:33:04.650]So I've seen some teachers stuck in a rut.
[00:33:06.730]A couple of years ago we saw a teacher that,
[00:33:08.293]we were working with a team that,
[00:33:11.031]a student that had some severe problem behavior
[00:33:14.250]spent multiple 30-minute periods a day in sanctuary time
[00:33:17.620]basically sitting on a vibrating back massager.
[00:33:21.570]And yes, the student didn't engage in problem behavior,
[00:33:26.650]but he wasn't learning anything either.
[00:33:28.190]And it was, you know, some kind of half-cocked idea
[00:33:31.680]that, you know, he was engaged in problem behavior
[00:33:35.650]'cause he was sensory deprived
[00:33:37.220]and if we just give them this,
[00:33:40.360]spend basically a third of his day engaged
[00:33:42.790]in these sensory activities, then somehow it will affect it.
[00:33:46.610]Guess what?
[00:33:47.443]When he was asked to work,
[00:33:48.300]he still engaged in those problem behaviors.
[00:33:50.020]The only time he wasn't engaged in problem behaviors
[00:33:52.960]was in the sanctuary period, which was,
[00:33:54.850]he also wasn't asked to work.
[00:33:56.180]So sometimes that drives us to make some poor decisions
[00:34:00.420]or not engage in the right correct teaching behaviors.
[00:34:05.840]Sometimes we do things to avoid due process.
[00:34:08.070]So I've seen lots, I've been involved in several of those.
[00:34:10.827]And so teachers will shape their practice
[00:34:13.350]to do everything to avoid going to court.
[00:34:15.670]It's a terrible place. I had to testify once.
[00:34:17.473]I was on the stand nine hours.
[00:34:19.470]Fortunately it was an amazing educational team,
[00:34:21.780]great teachers doing a wonderful job,
[00:34:24.460]but I've also been on the other side
[00:34:27.380]where people weren't doing what they needed to do.
[00:34:29.870]So that's for administrator feedback, you know,
[00:34:32.040]sometimes people care about what their boss says
[00:34:34.160]but usually I think that we recognize
[00:34:36.620]as teachers of students with extensive support needs
[00:34:38.720]that oftentimes our principals don't really know what we do.
[00:34:41.987]And so they're really happy that when we're teaching
[00:34:45.760]and they don't get calls from the parents.
[00:34:47.163]I remember I did an observation or I had a,
[00:34:50.320]maybe my first year of teaching, second year of teaching,
[00:34:52.950]my principal went out with me
[00:34:54.740]on a community-based instruction activity
[00:34:57.410]and afterwards she cried.
[00:34:58.580]She was like, you're just the best thing,
[00:35:01.420]you know, this is so great for you.
[00:35:02.990]You just love those kids.
[00:35:03.997]And she didn't know, she couldn't give me feedback
[00:35:06.300]on the efficacy of my teaching procedures.
[00:35:08.720]She just thought it was a good thing, you know?
[00:35:10.903]Many of us have been on the bus or been somewhere
[00:35:13.720]and people are like, God bless you for your work.
[00:35:16.280]And you're like, great, (laughs) you know,
[00:35:18.530]but really what you're like, oh,
[00:35:20.080]so you're saying you're glad somebody else is doing it
[00:35:21.707]and not you.
[00:35:24.613]But the point is that, yeah, it really depends
[00:35:26.770]whether or not we know
[00:35:29.330]that our administrator can give us useful feedback.
[00:35:32.050]Usually we're just trying to avoid their scrutiny
[00:35:34.340]or something that will affect our job overall.
[00:35:38.280]Parent feedback, of course.
[00:35:40.220]We love when our parents love what we're doing
[00:35:42.530]but often that's few and far between.
[00:35:44.910]We might engage in behaviors
[00:35:46.590]to avoid certain types of parent feedback.
[00:35:48.983]So that could be a reinforcer.
[00:35:52.020]But here's the one that I think is the most important.
[00:35:54.000]I think that you, I think that I care
[00:35:56.820]what our colleagues think about us.
[00:35:59.560]So if I came out to one of your classrooms
[00:36:02.682]and I said, hey, you know what?
[00:36:05.219]I think you could do better than this.
[00:36:07.040]You might think about it and you might say, sure,
[00:36:08.990]or you can be like, this guy doesn't know me, I don't care.
[00:36:12.440]But, and if you heard that I said
[00:36:15.180]that you weren't a good teacher,
[00:36:16.830]your feelings might be hurt a little bit
[00:36:18.210]but you'd be more annoyed
[00:36:19.080]and not invite me in your classroom.
[00:36:21.180]But what if you heard that your colleagues,
[00:36:24.340]that the people around you just thought
[00:36:26.040]you were the worst teacher in the building?
[00:36:28.540]That would break many teacher's hearts, right?
[00:36:31.120]So the idea is that we really care
[00:36:32.780]about what our professional community thinks about us.
[00:36:35.707]And so today we're gonna talk about some processes
[00:36:39.150]to go through to improve your practice
[00:36:40.670]but I'm gonna recommend that you do it
[00:36:42.210]side by side with some other colleagues,
[00:36:43.670]you're public about it, because they'll hold you accountable
[00:36:46.560]because you care about what they think.
[00:36:48.740]And the final thing I'd just kinda like to point out
[00:36:49.983]because I do a lot of consultation is consultant feedback.
[00:36:54.230]Sometimes a consultant, we think we're more important
[00:36:56.220]than we are, right, but usually we don't have a lot of power
[00:36:58.950]and we come in and we say, you need to do this.
[00:37:02.830]And at first, you know, teachers are excited
[00:37:04.897]and we say good job, but really,
[00:37:06.696]a lot of times the data suggests that over time,
[00:37:10.930]after the first couple sessions of us coaching,
[00:37:14.010]if we haven't planned systematically for fading out
[00:37:16.731]of our coaching, usually those behaviors,
[00:37:19.920]those teacher behaviors will often drift back down
[00:37:22.020]to original levels because at first they were novel,
[00:37:24.680]they care, they realize we don't really,
[00:37:28.750]maybe we lose our reinforcer effectiveness.
[00:37:31.490]And sometimes consultants are just aversive, right?
[00:37:33.894]The way, if we just come in, we intrude in classrooms,
[00:37:36.640]we interrupt or we're taking notes,
[00:37:39.610]we tell them what they need to do,
[00:37:40.500]we're always hurried, you know?
[00:37:42.190]And so again, I don't always put a lot of weight
[00:37:46.730]on the power of a consultant to change behavior
[00:37:48.960]without really enlisting a team,
[00:37:50.610]without really spending some time with the team
[00:37:54.040]or engage in the team.
[00:37:55.710]So let's talk quickly about getting unstuck.
[00:37:58.510]So getting stuck involves several things.
[00:38:01.380]So one involves changing our environment, right?
[00:38:03.890]So we're gonna talk about that,
[00:38:05.530]really looking at some goals and what can we do
[00:38:07.670]to mix things up to make sure we're getting,
[00:38:09.520]that we continue, that we change our behavior
[00:38:12.780]and that we continue with those new teaching practices.
[00:38:16.960]It may involve us intervening.
[00:38:18.680]And so this is really focused on educators today.
[00:38:21.870]So it might involve some self-management strategies, right?
[00:38:25.480]And then sometimes it involves changing the behavior
[00:38:27.890]of those around us.
[00:38:28.990]So sometimes we're gonna have to do some training
[00:38:31.220]of other folks to implement things certain ways
[00:38:36.800]so that we can move our classroom forward.
[00:38:38.810]Sometimes it involves training them
[00:38:40.260]on certain things so they can give us feedback.
[00:38:45.460]So now we're gonna start kind of moving
[00:38:47.020]into the work a little bit.
[00:38:49.360]So, one is I think it's important
[00:38:52.470]for us to understand kind of where do we get started.
[00:38:55.690]So if you're sitting here thinking, gosh,
[00:38:57.100]this guy just told me
[00:39:00.563]that I probably need to improve my practice,
[00:39:02.820]maybe he's right, well, where would I even get started?
[00:39:06.240]I think it's important for us to do some assessment, right?
[00:39:09.140]We've got to figure out a baseline,
[00:39:10.700]kind of where are we now in our practice.
[00:39:13.300]Again, I think we're often so overloaded
[00:39:16.330]with so much information and so many responsibilities
[00:39:18.810]that sometimes it's hard to step back
[00:39:20.910]and take a whole view of our program.
[00:39:24.130]If we don't figure out where we are,
[00:39:26.130]we can't figure out where to go, obviously,
[00:39:28.070]and then we can't recognize when we get there
[00:39:29.740]and kind of praise ourselves
[00:39:31.250]and be really proud of our achievements.
[00:39:33.090]I think that sometimes, you know,
[00:39:34.393]I referred earlier about losing teachers.
[00:39:36.170]I think teachers don't have systems in place
[00:39:40.010]where they get to see their daily successes
[00:39:42.750]or their overall program successes.
[00:39:44.660]And so therefore they're not contacting enough reinforcers
[00:39:46.570]to want to stay in the job.
[00:39:49.240]So oftentimes we do assessment this way.
[00:39:51.130]We have the ostrich approach.
[00:39:52.280]We kind of keep our head down
[00:39:53.600]and unless something bad happens,
[00:39:55.860]a parent or administrator comes to my room,
[00:39:58.940]I just kind of keep doing my thing, right?
[00:40:01.090]And everything's good.
[00:40:03.719]I don't know if I'm improving every year
[00:40:05.930]but nobody's complaining.
[00:40:07.430]Everybody tells me I'm an awesome special ed teacher.
[00:40:10.280]It's fine, right?
[00:40:12.670]Sometimes we have an ER approach.
[00:40:13.990]And so you're like, your classroom's a hot mess.
[00:40:16.130]There's always things popping up
[00:40:18.020]but you just respond to them one at a time, right?
[00:40:20.540]And so therefore we're always caught in this reactive mode
[00:40:25.530]and we never get past the squeaky wheels.
[00:40:27.270]We can't look at some of those foundational elements
[00:40:29.300]of our programs that we might need to fix.
[00:40:32.160]Sometimes we had the CNN approach, right?
[00:40:33.683]So that's, we address everything.
[00:40:36.370]So we sit back and we look at our programs
[00:40:38.685]and kind of where they are but we never look
[00:40:40.640]at the system to which those program elements operate.
[00:40:45.720]So we don't look at, wow, I might have an issue
[00:40:47.670]with my relationships with my paraprofessionals.
[00:40:50.060]And so therefore all these other things
[00:40:50.973]that aren't happening
[00:40:52.060]are because I don't have enough support.
[00:40:54.730]I haven't supported them enough
[00:40:56.910]to be independent in certain tasks.
[00:41:00.010]So the idea is, again,
[00:41:01.040]that we may have a surface understanding of where we are
[00:41:03.630]but we never really spend some time to tackle
[00:41:06.430]some of the difficult issues within our programs.
[00:41:09.736]And as a result, it's a mess.
[00:41:11.810]So if you're a consultant watching this right now
[00:41:13.550]or your job is to be a technical assistant,
[00:41:15.928]I'm sure you've walked into a classroom
[00:41:17.643]and you're like, this is a mess of,
[00:41:20.330]a fog of like, oh my God, this is great,
[00:41:22.960]and uh-oh, why is that happening, right?
[00:41:24.927]And there's so many things, sometimes you figure out,
[00:41:27.255]I don't even know where to begin.
[00:41:28.890]I think as a first, when I first started consulting
[00:41:31.220]probably nearly 20 years ago or I don't know,
[00:41:34.350]15 years ago, (laughs) time passes.
[00:41:37.240]But the point is I'll walk into a classroom
[00:41:39.010]and I would kind of stick with what I was good at
[00:41:41.450]but that may not have been
[00:41:42.990]where support needed to be offered.
[00:41:45.710]And so I think to do that,
[00:41:47.420]you've got to have some sort of tool
[00:41:49.260]and we need some sort of assessment.
[00:41:51.210]And the first thing we do when we talk about assessment,
[00:41:53.637]and this is for my teachers
[00:41:55.070]and my teacher support personnel out there,
[00:41:57.140]you gotta be honest about the difficulty of the job,
[00:42:00.670]realize that nobody can do everything
[00:42:02.890]but that we're always moving forward.
[00:42:04.530]And I think good old B.F. Skinner said it best, right,
[00:42:06.957]"A failure is not always a mistake.
[00:42:09.130]It may be simply the best one can do
[00:42:11.360]under given circumstances."
[00:42:13.700]That environment piece, right?
[00:42:15.077]But the real mistake is to stop trying.
[00:42:18.040]So I ask you to, no matter where you are
[00:42:22.250]in your coaching practice, whether you're a new teacher,
[00:42:25.010]an experienced teacher, to say, you know what, I'm,
[00:42:27.810]what are those things I'm still not doing?
[00:42:30.340]How can I challenge myself, let myself off the hook
[00:42:33.900]but then commit to picking them up,
[00:42:36.600]right, to growth in that area.
[00:42:40.390]So one of the tools that's been effective
[00:42:41.870]for us is the ALCOT.
[00:42:44.274]So, and the ALCOT was born when I was the director
[00:42:48.500]of the Kentucky Autism Training Center.
[00:42:50.280]And so I started, we were a part of a coaching project
[00:42:56.260]with the National Professional Development Center on Autism.
[00:43:01.080]Again, I think one of the,
[00:43:04.350]one of the best movements, I think, in our field,
[00:43:07.490]I think that we saw it in a short period of time
[00:43:09.740]a quick change in, you know,
[00:43:13.070]our knowledge around what should be done
[00:43:14.580]with kids with autism in school settings.
[00:43:17.010]But anyway, a part of their process was coaching
[00:43:18.860]and they had had this tool, I think it was called the APERS,
[00:43:21.810]and at that time it was big.
[00:43:23.540]It was a binder, Likert scale items, lots of items
[00:43:27.170]and it just wasn't manageable.
[00:43:28.580]So when we were finishing the project,
[00:43:29.930]we wanted to keep doing the work out in the state.
[00:43:31.977]And so I sat down and just started redrafting,
[00:43:36.570]like, what would be maybe a more pragmatic tool to use,
[00:43:41.980]one sheet, one side I can go through,
[00:43:44.070]and from that we can develop targets.
[00:43:45.520]And that's from where the ALCOT came.
[00:43:48.890]It's not, there's no psychometric properties
[00:43:51.670]associated with it so the point is is you couldn't use it,
[00:43:55.260]we don't use it to go in and say, you're a bad teacher,
[00:43:57.620]you're a good teacher, right?
[00:43:59.150]This isn't about employment.
[00:44:00.210]This is like, hey, let's sit down and use this together
[00:44:02.560]and figure out where we want to grow next year.
[00:44:04.350]So it really is a coaching tool
[00:44:06.340]or for my friends in rural communities
[00:44:08.240]who may not have access regularly to a coach,
[00:44:10.760]for them to sit down with their team and say, all right,
[00:44:12.850]let's evaluate ourselves, figure out where we are
[00:44:16.560]and where do we want to go
[00:44:17.580]and how do we want to improve in our programming?
[00:44:22.130]We've implemented it across districts.
[00:44:25.465]We've used it on our teacher preparation programs
[00:44:28.590]for our statewide, in Kentucky,
[00:44:30.117]we had a state professional development grant,
[00:44:32.130]a SPD grant, and we used it as a tool
[00:44:35.422]for the people in our project to grow.
[00:44:37.700]So we're coaching people across the state.
[00:44:39.910]So again, so far it seems in its use
[00:44:42.960]that it's been very applicable to a wide audience.
[00:44:47.530]So it kind of, it's got 37 items.
[00:44:50.460]Two sources of data are appropriate so you can observe it.
[00:44:54.070]And usually we do, like, an hour observation
[00:44:56.140]and then we ask them questions, follow-up questions.
[00:44:58.620]Again, the idea is not to, you know, a teacher
[00:45:01.310]or you may report something's happening
[00:45:03.320]and maybe an error but we kind of figure that out
[00:45:06.190]as we develop a stronger relationship over time.
[00:45:08.470]So if somebody says they're doing something
[00:45:10.800]and we get out there, it's not doing something,
[00:45:12.841]it's not about a gotcha.
[00:45:13.940]It's like, oh, we just need to kind of recalibrate
[00:45:15.730]where our focus is.
[00:45:18.410]We have a couple of different scales.
[00:45:19.610]So we have, well, we have
[00:45:21.756]kind of a three-point scale there.
[00:45:23.040]It's not evidenced, partially evidenced or evidenced.
[00:45:26.760]And the reason we did this
[00:45:27.890]is that we used to have it just dichotomous, there are not,
[00:45:32.360]and what happened is that criteria was pretty high
[00:45:34.930]for there so what it meant is that a lot of teachers
[00:45:39.650]that we were working with would have nothing.
[00:45:41.290]They would get no credit
[00:45:42.270]for being almost there or partially there.
[00:45:44.377]And so we changed that a little bit
[00:45:45.787]just to kind of help, one, make the tool less aversive
[00:45:50.360]but also to see where, have teachers realized, oh,
[00:45:53.170]well, here's a place I'm making progress
[00:45:54.770]even if I'm not to where I need to be.
[00:45:59.100]So the tool itself also has a couple of cool features.
[00:46:01.540]So we have this nice operational definitions of behaviors
[00:46:05.270]and there are a scoring guide.
[00:46:08.460]And then we also have a statement
[00:46:09.740]as to why it's important, right?
[00:46:11.650]So if an administrator was using this
[00:46:13.970]or somebody that has a little bit less experience
[00:46:15.910]in our field, they may say, oh, okay,
[00:46:17.220]this is why this item's on there.
[00:46:19.220]I have to tell you, it was kind of a nightmare
[00:46:21.000]for a nerdy behavior analyst faculty person
[00:46:24.235]to trim down this device, this tool to 37 items.
[00:46:30.070]And so it doesn't cover everything
[00:46:31.450]but it does cover a broad swath,
[00:46:34.220]and within important items, program features,
[00:46:38.889]but it also within that, you know,
[00:46:41.250]we write unique goals to the teacher
[00:46:44.260]and we'll get to that in a little bit, in just a minute.
[00:46:47.530]It also has a list of sample recommendations
[00:46:49.230]kind of for each area.
[00:46:50.400]So just, you know, just some guidance
[00:46:53.390]and some things that you might consider if a student,
[00:46:56.852]if an individual has some weaknesses in this area.
[00:47:01.360]So let's talk about the tool for a minute.
[00:47:03.140]So the tool has six programming areas, right?
[00:47:06.400]So it has environmental supports.
[00:47:09.380]So kind of overall classroom supports.
[00:47:12.180]It has instructural support.
[00:47:13.490]So these are tools that will help guide instruction.
[00:47:16.560]We have instruction.
[00:47:19.010]Indicators around communication instruction.
[00:47:21.940]Behavior supports and staff interactions,
[00:47:24.960]which is really important.
[00:47:26.090]Probably one of the most subjective areas
[00:47:27.860]but probably one of the most essential in terms
[00:47:30.460]of making sure your classroom is running most effectively.
[00:47:34.428]So let's talk about the first area.
[00:47:36.450]So the first program area we call environmental supports.
[00:47:41.130]So the big idea about this is that, you know,
[00:47:43.140]is the class safe, right?
[00:47:45.330]So are kids protected from harm in that classroom?
[00:47:50.420]Are the routines predictable
[00:47:52.374]and is there access to broad items?
[00:47:54.612]Are there access to other peers,
[00:47:57.460]to materials that kids need to be successful?
[00:48:01.060]So I wanna just take a second to talk
[00:48:02.760]about the importance of predictability.
[00:48:04.600]One of the challenges that I see often
[00:48:07.960]in terms of programming
[00:48:09.770]is that teachers don't have a predictable routine.
[00:48:12.690]They don't have a well-set routine.
[00:48:14.020]Things change a lot.
[00:48:16.090]Sometimes it's an artifact
[00:48:18.027]of what's happening in the school.
[00:48:19.810]You know, they're on different schedules
[00:48:21.310]and those change every day.
[00:48:23.020]But the point is is that kids and staff don't really know
[00:48:26.300]what they're supposed to be doing each day,
[00:48:27.990]which produces anxiety,
[00:48:29.250]a lack of clarity around expectations,
[00:48:31.770]and it can be really tough.
[00:48:33.130]So some of the first things that we do with teachers,
[00:48:34.900]who, again, we want to make sure
[00:48:35.733]that we help them strengthen their routines,
[00:48:38.350]again, builds competence.
[00:48:39.840]The more you practice the same routine,
[00:48:41.790]the more likely you are to be effective at running it.
[00:48:44.510]It builds confidence
[00:48:45.850]'cause we've contacted success running routine before,
[00:48:48.889]we're more likely to do it again,
[00:48:51.580]and again, it just tells us
[00:48:54.880]about those important contingencies.
[00:48:56.650]So kids should know when they're gonna get a break.
[00:48:59.690]Kids should know when difficult tasks are coming
[00:49:02.310]that are gonna be challenging
[00:49:03.310]and when easier tasks are in general,
[00:49:05.630]at least early on in their program.
[00:49:07.190]Certainly we don't want kids that,
[00:49:08.280]we don't want to create an environment that's not natural
[00:49:10.580]'cause the real world is complex and always changing
[00:49:13.040]but we do want to make sure that we build up to that.
[00:49:17.400]Some of the items you're gonna see are arranging classrooms
[00:49:19.780]so that students can be observed at all times.
[00:49:22.570]Visual support and tactile cues
[00:49:24.010]throughout their day, classroom.
[00:49:25.900]There's visual schedules, assisted technology.
[00:49:28.510]I have this old picture 'cause it always reminds me,
[00:49:30.340]I was observing one time in a classroom with a parent
[00:49:33.490]so I had a wonderful but frustrated parent
[00:49:36.634]that wanted to look at other classrooms in the district
[00:49:38.730]and I was the positive young guy
[00:49:40.940]so the district would always say,
[00:49:42.110]Rob, take the moms on the tour.
[00:49:42.943]I'm like, okay, so we'd go and go on the tour.
[00:49:46.140]And there was a really great classroom.
[00:49:47.733]There was actually a really strong teacher
[00:49:49.610]but we're watching her teach a small group
[00:49:51.390]and one little kid somehow had gotten a paperclip
[00:49:53.980]and he was just inching, inching towards the socket.
[00:49:57.751](laughs) And I remember being like, come on,
[00:49:59.810]you gotta see this, you gotta see this.
[00:50:00.987]And the mom looked at me and I looked at her
[00:50:02.850]and I had to interrupt the lesson and kind of block it,
[00:50:06.720]which, you know, put the mom off.
[00:50:08.270]She was like, yeah, I know that this happens
[00:50:10.410]but if I have a choice, I wanna make sure
[00:50:12.560]that my child is in a safe environment.
[00:50:16.380]So in this section, you're gonna,
[00:50:18.032]you're hoping to observe that, you know,
[00:50:19.870]also the instructional areas correspond
[00:50:21.413]with routines and activities.
[00:50:23.850]So things aren't moved around all the time.
[00:50:26.300]So kids understand where literacy instruction
[00:50:28.370]is gonna happen.
[00:50:29.203]They need to know where they're gonna align up.
[00:50:32.590]You're gonna see visual supports
[00:50:34.160]throughout the entire program.
[00:50:36.320]You're gonna see, I mean,
[00:50:37.250]we have visual supports all over the place.
[00:50:39.500]I mean, I have cookbooks, I use road signs,
[00:50:41.820]I have things that are, I have, you know,
[00:50:44.044]all sorts of digital supports on my phone.
[00:50:46.100]So again, we want to make sure those supports are there
[00:50:48.010]to guide students so we're not always having
[00:50:49.610]to give them vocal directions, right?
[00:50:51.750]Because if we are always giving somebody vocal directions,
[00:50:54.820]we're not gonna be with those individuals in other places.
[00:50:57.060]So, you know, sometimes I'll sit back and be like, wow,
[00:51:00.010]there's so many supports we could put in place
[00:51:02.230]for students to navigate their classroom independently
[00:51:05.130]but the teacher just, instead of preparing for those,
[00:51:08.580]she's just telling them what to do all the time
[00:51:10.630]which, again, I think hinders some independence.
[00:51:14.340]And then teachers warn students prior to transitions.
[00:51:16.697]So again, sometimes you will see
[00:51:19.030]and I think it's also concordant
[00:51:20.590]with that lack of a predictable routine
[00:51:23.040]is that teachers are like, oh no, it's 9:36.
[00:51:25.920]We're late.
[00:51:27.220]You know, they discontinue all activities for the kids.
[00:51:29.480]One kid drops on the floor, meltdowns and cries.
[00:51:34.060]And so, you know, we want to make sure
[00:51:35.800]that within those routines, we've got signals.
[00:51:38.750]We have some teachers use timers on the smart board,
[00:51:41.730]even vocal, guys, we've got five more minutes,
[00:51:44.770]three more minutes, two more minutes,
[00:51:46.160]just letting kids know when it's time to transition.
[00:51:49.160]And I do it all the time.
[00:51:50.180]I've got a phone right now watching, monitoring my time.
[00:51:52.890]Some of our students don't have those skills.
[00:51:55.480]So we're gonna have to augment that by making sure
[00:51:57.320]we provide warnings for them.
[00:51:59.500]And I always use this as a great example
[00:52:01.443]of kind of a unconventional routine.
[00:52:03.777]We had a little guy that we were working with a teacher
[00:52:08.600]and this little guy was getting poop everywhere.
[00:52:11.710]He was coming out of the bathroom,
[00:52:13.320]smearing it, the teacher was already annoyed with him.
[00:52:15.750]She was saying there was poop smearing.
[00:52:17.160]And what we realize is
[00:52:18.050]that he was just not an effective wiper, right?
[00:52:20.360]So he'd wipe once, it was on his clothes,
[00:52:22.120]everywhere he'd go and of course it made the staff gag.
[00:52:24.340]They were turned off and upset with him.
[00:52:26.250]So we just made a little routine for them, right?
[00:52:28.840]So my clerk there was a smoker
[00:52:33.910]at the office, the central office where I worked.
[00:52:35.350]I was like, can I see your cigarette lighter?
[00:52:36.900]And we got some toilet paper and a Hershey's bar
[00:52:39.330]and melted it and made a little schedule
[00:52:40.950]where the student could look and we him them to look, wipe,
[00:52:43.750]look, wipe, look, oh, when you're done,
[00:52:46.220]then you can pull your pants up, right?
[00:52:47.860]And so basically that was a, we were able to fix it.
[00:52:49.940]But again, making sure there's lots of supports
[00:52:51.990]in the classroom.
[00:52:54.041]And then finally we want to make sure that kids have access
[00:52:56.790]to their peers with and without disabilities.
[00:53:01.200]Oftentimes, you know, I remember back in the early days
[00:53:03.670]of Kentucky when we first had our alternate assessment,
[00:53:06.660]you would get credit points on your score
[00:53:10.210]if students had friendships with kids without disabilities.
[00:53:13.050]Now, that always threw me off.
[00:53:14.270]I always wondered why it wasn't just as valid
[00:53:17.780]for them to have friendships with kids with disabilities.
[00:53:22.210]But the point is that we want to make sure in a classroom
[00:53:24.340]we don't see kids spending long periods of time
[00:53:27.520]unless there are safety precautions or it's written
[00:53:29.750]in a behavior plan without access to their peers.
[00:53:32.660]Again, that's not the type of world
[00:53:33.867]and they're not gonna learn to navigate
[00:53:36.260]in those natural environments
[00:53:37.150]unless they have opportunities to do so.
[00:53:40.140]So here's what we do now.
[00:53:41.820]We're gonna take a minute
[00:53:43.570]and I want for you to score yourself.
[00:53:47.110]So remember I asked you to get a little piece of paper out
[00:53:48.940]at the beginning.
[00:53:50.110]This is where I want you to do this.
[00:53:51.570]So if you're using this device, you would score yourself
[00:53:54.210]but I'm gonna read these items to you
[00:53:55.870]and I want you to make a note of this might be an area
[00:53:58.460]that I could improve upon.
[00:54:00.330]Or if you're a consultant or you work in schools
[00:54:04.040]supporting other people, I want you to think about,
[00:54:06.403]all right, this is a common problem that I see.
[00:54:09.950]So one, staff can observe all areas of the classroom, right?
[00:54:13.950]So we've had kids that are engaging in touching themselves
[00:54:17.490]but yet there's cabinets where they can go
[00:54:19.730]and do that, right?
[00:54:21.010]I remember we wrote a chapter a long time ago
[00:54:22.173]and the first recommendation
[00:54:23.890]about arranging your environment
[00:54:24.780]is don't put kids' desks right next to the door
[00:54:27.550]if they have problems with elopement.
[00:54:30.010]But yes, maybe visual supports or tactile cues
[00:54:33.850]are displayed throughout the classroom.
[00:54:36.210]Use of individualized student schedules
[00:54:38.190]or calendars are observed.
[00:54:40.420]Students are in close proximity to their peers
[00:54:43.550]or the use of assistive technology
[00:54:45.360]and other modifications are evident.
[00:54:49.420]So let's take a look, just take a second
[00:54:51.070]and I want you to engage in this process.
[00:54:54.240]Again, we usually do this as a workshop.
[00:54:55.440]In this virtual kind of pandemic setup,
[00:54:58.220]I want to make this as much like that as possible
[00:55:00.610]so I'll give you just another 30 seconds
[00:55:04.285]for you to think about it.
[00:55:25.057]All right, so now what I'd like to do
[00:55:27.410]is I'd like to take a little bit of a break
[00:55:30.600]and what we're gonna do
[00:55:31.820]is then you'll answer some questions here
[00:55:34.900]and then you will sign on into part two of this session.

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ALCOT Part 1

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