The Making Accessible and Effective Systems for Teacher Readiness Outcomes Project – more commonly referred to as the MAESTROs Project – continued its series of workshops with students at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) by introducing them to the three levels of basic behavior management.
This workshop was hosted by Scott Ross, an assistant professor at CSUMB in the Department of Education and Leadership. He described what the Zoom event would entail and how it will benefit future teachers.
Ross started by explaining the three basic behavior management levels. One teaches expectations explicitly, one uses your attention and praise effectively and one adds other reinforcers for specific positive behaviors.
“We’ve done a lot of research in this area and we’ve found that when schools use a strategy of reacting to problematic behavior through a series of consequences, there is an actual link between those strategies, which will increase in aggression and increase in vandalism,” said Ross.
Punishment is still practiced throughout the classroom, but due to this research, teachers have learned to change their overall method when it comes to discipline within a school.
Every teaching environment has room for improvement and this workshop identified the many different ways to do that.
“When you post rules that are stated negatively, it prompts you as the adult to catch kids doing things wrong,” said Ross. “If you say things positively, it prompts you, the adult, to catch kids doing the right behavior.”
According to officials, when it comes to students, it can be a lot easier to call out the negative than it is to call out the positive.
Attendees were also able to ask questions and learn more about becoming a better teacher to students if they wanted more information outside of what was provided in the presentation.
Another piece of information given was the positive behavioral interventions and supports.
This is a triangle that can help identify the preventions and at the same time, state who this would be helping and the percentage of individuals it would help.
Workshops like these aim to help those who are struggling with what to do for students and need that little bit of information to go further in their careers. The information given isn’t going to help with everything, but it’s a starting point.
“There’s a lot to this,” said Ross. “But learning to think functionally is one of the most powerful things keeping teachers in the field.”
