Can We Convert "Defiant" Students into Dynamic School Leaders?

In this episode of the School for School Counselors podcast, host Steph Johnson addresses the expanding role of school counselors in behavior intervention, emphasizing the need for a trauma-informed approach. She discusses common concerns counselors have about behavior intervention, including the misconception of equating it to discipline, time constraints, and the fear of being misutilized. Steph urges counselors to rethink their approach by identifying the origins of problematic behavior and addressing systemic issues rather than relying on one-stop solutions. She also highlights the importance of mindful language use and empowering students as peer mentors to foster a supportive school environment. Finally, she introduces the upcoming topics in the podcast and the resources available in the School for School Counselors mastermind group.

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Welcome

00:14 The Role of School Counselors in Behavior Intervention

01:29 Challenges and Concerns in Behavior Intervention

02:25 Rethinking Behavior Intervention Strategies

[03:00 Celebrating a Podcast Milestone]

04:02 Addressing the Root Causes of Behavior

08:55 The Power of Language in Behavior Intervention

13:03 Empowering Students as Change Agents

17:27 Final Thoughts and Upcoming Topics


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References/Resources:

McCormick, M. P., Cappella, E., O'Connor, E. E., & McClowry, S. G. (2015). Do Intervention Impacts on Academic Achievement Vary by School Climate? Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Urban Elementary Schools. Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED562123.pdf

Paquette, D. and Ryan, J. (2015). Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. National Dropout Prevention Center. https://dropoutprevention.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/paquetteryanwebquest_20091110.pdf

Wade, L., Leahy, A. A., Babic, M. J., Beauchamp, M. R., Smith, J. J., Kennedy, S. G., ... & Lubans, D. R. (2022). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the benefits of school-based, peer-led interventions for leaders. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 21222. 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25662-9.pdf

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Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Behavior Intervention in Schools
• 9:02 Empowering Change Through Behavioral Intervention

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Well, hey there, school counselor, Welcome back to the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, a full-time school counselor, just like you, honored to be back here with you for another episode of the podcast. Hey, you know, every day behavior intervention is becoming more and more of school counselors' domains, and ASCA notes that we are charged to not only provide Tier 1 behavior education and supports but also to address the unmet needs or the lagging skills that compel students to engage in what they call disadvantageous behaviors. Now, this is kind of a minefield for school counselors because so many of us believe that this should not be our domain. But if you've been a listener to the podcast and you heard the previous episode called Behavior Intervention Chaos the mistakes you can't afford to make, you know that we are very in tune here on this podcast about the need and the requirement for your involvement in behavior intervention on your campus. Not only are we charged to take action in some of these situations, but we are also expected to assume a leadership role and to identify and intervene, as well as teach and collaborate.

Speaker 1: 1:36

There are a lot of school counselors out there, as I said, that believe that behavior intervention isn't their responsibility and they believe that for a lot of good reasons. Number one they may still be equating the idea of behavior intervention with discipline, and we know we don't want to be part of discipline on our campuses. They may also be reluctant to give up time when it already feels like they can't get to everything as it is. How in the world are they going to be expected to create a comprehensive school counseling program while they're putting out behavior fires all day long and going along with that? They may also be fearful of being misutilized as just behavior intervention on their campuses and they may fear losing their school counseling role altogether. I think all these concerns can be valid points. However, if we're going to continue talking about trauma-informed schools, we're going to have to roll our sleeves up as school counselors and think not only about getting our hands dirty with behavior intervention for our students' sake, but we're going to have to rethink some of our most common assumptions and beliefs with regard to campus behavior intervention.

Speaker 1: 2:56

And that's what I want to do this week. I want to give you some ways to rethink your role and your commitment to behavior intervention on your campus. But hey, before we get to that, I want to share a little bit of good news with you. If you're part of our Facebook group, you may have heard us talking about it here and there in the last couple of weeks, but the School for School Counselors podcast can now claim a very unique distinction, and it is 1000% thanks to our amazing audience. Do you know what it is? Thanks to our amazing audience, do you know what it is? We can now officially claim our status as a top three podcast in the world here very recently, we just hit number three on one of our charts and we could not be more elated. And, as I said, it's all thanks to you, everyone who listens to the podcast, who takes a moment to rate or review the podcast, and their podcast player of choice. You guys are who are getting us to where we want to go, and we still have our eye on that number one spot and we appreciate your help in getting us there. All right. So back to ways.

Speaker 1: 4:11

We can think differently about behavior intervention. And the first one is something that I think we sort of recognize in the back of our mind, but it's really difficult to take to heart and really internalize as we go through our work each day, and that is knowing that we can't fix behavior. If you could see me, you would see the air quotes around the word fix. We can't fix behavior, but we can help address where the behavior is coming from. So often when we think about behavior intervention, we think about interventions in the moment. What do I do when students are dysregulated? How do I bring calm to chaos when students are shouting? They're non-compliant? Maybe they're tossing furniture around the classroom, who knows? We worry about what do we do in that moment, but we rarely take time to think about addressing where the behavior is coming from. I've noticed on social media in particular, everyone seems to be asking for these one-stop solutions or resources online, and in my opinion, that is one of the worst things that you can do with regard to behavior intervention, because these typically focus on the symptoms of concerns rather than the mechanisms behind them or the systemic issues that are driving them.

Speaker 1: 5:38

If we're truly going to extinguish or reduce problematic behaviors on campus, we have to have our thumb on where the origins of that behavior are coming from, and even if we think we can only attribute them to home factors or past traumas, we still have to have a roadmap and a game plan for addressing them. Now I have some information coming up in the next episode about teacher bullying, scapegoating students, and this information is absolutely going to break your heart. But these kinds of systemic issues are what we should be looking at when it comes to behavior intervention, not these one and done resources. Well, you know, I taught a small group curriculum Again, I use that term loosely or I taught a lesson on behavior control or coping skills, or taking a deep breath. That'll do it, and we know. In reality, that is most typically not the case. We're going to need to back that up with some more intensive efforts. We may need to be looking at things like school policies, styles of classroom management, even school culture.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Mccormick, capella, o'connor and McClowry 2013, say that interventions targeting systemic factors offer more effect than those focused solely on individuals. We need to be looking at what is driving these behaviors and perhaps how we, either intentionally or unintentionally, encourage those behaviors in the school environment. It makes sense If you think about what you learned in grad school about Bronfenbrenner. Do you remember him and the ecological systems theory? It had those diagrams with all those concentric circles. Right, they represented the layers of the environment and the theory was that layers of environment affect child development that changes in any one level of the environment can affect all of the others. But we also learned from Bronfenbrenner that interactions in the microsystem have the greatest effects. So what do you think is a primary component of a student's microsystem? If you guessed their school, you'd be right. And when we add this to the fact that we know from research that many Teachers Pay Teachers materials are not helpful and sometimes harmful to students If you didn't catch that episode, go back and listen to episode 106, tpt's Dirty Truths to get the lowdown and the research base on that opinion. But when we know that, we know that probably these individual, scattered initiatives for behavior intervention may not be completely the right approach. Perhaps we ought to be looking a little bit more broadly into systemic issues, into some of the mechanisms that are driving those behaviors, in addition to a student's own background and trauma experiences a student's own background and trauma experiences.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Second, when we talk about student behavior, it is my opinion that we really need to begin rethinking the words we use in those situations. As humans, we tend to want to assign labels to bring meaning to things right. It helps us have a sense of predictability or what's going to happen next. The problem is when we're looking at problematic behavior. It can be anything but predictable, right, and so we tend to default to labels like difficult student, odd, ed, those kinds of things. But instead of helping, those labels just serve to push students into a box. I mean, think of it this way have you ever witnessed someone suddenly understand a magical needed solution for a student once they heard the phrase explosive? Me neither. It doesn't happen. If nothing else, I think those labels serve to deter teachers from trying to find the underlying causes and mechanisms, and so it only serves to hurt everybody in the classroom.

Speaker 1: 10:12

You know we talk all the time about being trauma-informed in schools, about understanding kids' realities and the effects of trauma on their social, emotional, mental health and behaviors. But that's often where the conversation stalls. We seem to get a little self-righteous about our ability to understand, and then we sort of lack intentional follow-through in supporting teachers through those trauma-informed approaches. And so sorry if that ruffles your feathers, but I do believe that's true. I think we spend a lot of time barking about being trauma-informed, but when the rubber hits the road it's really hard to find school counselors who are down in the trenches helping teachers with behavior intervention and identifying the best trauma-informed practices. That's not to say you're notformed practices, that's not to say you're not doing them, it's not to say that you're not doing a good job with them. But on the whole, as an industry, I think this is an area where we have a lot of room to grow.

Speaker 1: 11:14

I think that, instead of using words like lazy, unmotivated, troublemaker, just wants attention defiant, disrespectful, manipulative all of those words that I'm sure you hear consistently at your school, because we hear them consistently everywhere we need to be changing the conversation, and in our role on campuses as school counselors, we are in a unique position to do that, where we can change the narrative into something a little bit more constructive. What are the underlying issues that are affecting the student's motivation? Is the student overwhelmed? How can we support them through that? Is the student expressing unmet needs through their behavior? What are they and how can we meet them? Is the student seeking connection? How can we provide that attention and still teach them healthier ways to express themselves? Y'all this is our wheelhouse, this is where we shine, but we have to be able to gather the inner courage, the self-confidence and the assurance that we can have those conversations once they come up, that we can truly guide our teachers and school staffs through to that next level of understanding, and so I would challenge you, as you're going through your daily work, really think about that. How can we reframe and rethink our words to be more constructive as far as behavior intervention is concerned? All right, so we've talked about not fixing behavior, but perhaps taking a deeper look into where the behavior is coming from, and also about rethinking our word choice and the way that we frame these problems, not only in conversation but within our own mindset.

Speaker 1: 13:10

The third paradigm shift that might really serve to benefit us is empowering students as change agents on our campuses. Now, this is one you don't often hear people talk about, but I think we're going to start hearing it more and more, and here's what I mean by this. I was recently just kind of dabbling in some research about school counseling program frameworks because that's what I do for fun, folks and I was reminded of Myrick's model of school counseling, and I really, really like that framework, because part of the model includes investing one to five hours weekly in what they called peer facilitation efforts, which basically meant training students to help other students. As a modern day example of this, if you have Hope Squad on your campus. That would be a non-behavior example where students are helping students.

Speaker 1: 14:19

Peer mentoring is something else that we've talked about recently school counselor's real experiences with setting up a peer mentorship program on her campus and the extraordinary results that she was able to cultivate through that. I've been thinking a lot about peer mentorship since then, and when I was looking through Myrick's model, it served to sort of solidify what had been going on in my mind all along, and then, wouldn't you know it, I found some research to back up my hunch. Here's the thing when we think about peer mentorship, we often think about peer mentors being the kids that have it all figured out right and they are mentoring the students that perhaps need a little bit of extra help. But a meta-analysis by Wade and team in 2022, and we will give you the link to this found significant benefits the other way around. They found more documented effects for leaders than there are for peer recipients for psychosocial outcomes, meaning the ones that are leading the mentor efforts are usually the ones that are benefiting most. If that's true and it seems to be, according to this paper then that would mean that we could take some of our struggling students, some of the ones who are really showing difficulty in generalizing skills that perhaps they're learning in individual counseling sessions or small group counseling sessions and be able to mentor other students through that, not because the mentees necessarily need a lot of instruction although it couldn't hurt but to solidify their position in leadership and as an authority on their campus, and often that's the kind of boost these students need to feel effective, to feel like these things are a possibility for them and that they can be successful in the execution of them.

Speaker 1: 16:19

Personally, this year I'm super excited, as my school year has started, to experiment with some modified peer mentoring for the students on my campus who often receive some of the labels that I just talked about earlier, the ones that teachers and staff like to accuse of being unmotivated, being testy. They just don't care, they just like to argue. They always want to be in charge all of those things and put them in a position of leadership through peer mentoring, and just those titles and expectations serve as an incentive to model certain behaviors, even when adults aren't watching. Now, this is going to have to be done carefully. It's going to have to be done with some oversight, to be sure, but I'm excited about the potential of some of these initiatives as we're talking through coping skills, de-escalating oneself, behavior management all of those skills that we often struggle to get students to generalize in the classroom. This could be a ticket into getting them where they need to go. Super exciting. I can't wait to report back to you once I have some more information to share.

Speaker 1: 17:34

But, my friend, I think at the end of the day, what I really want you to take away from this podcast episode is that there are certain areas of behavior intervention that we really need to give a hard rethink to. It doesn't mean that what you've been doing is wrong or the way that you've been thinking about behavior intervention is necessarily incorrect, but it does mean that we all have room to grow and improve and try to better our practice each and every school year, and really that's what I want to challenge you to do each and every school year, and really that's what I want to challenge you to do. I want you to take a hard look at how you're intervening in behaviors on your campus right now, perhaps how you could stand to improve, maybe how you need to step out of it a little bit. The challenge is that every school campus is different and has unique expectations, but you know what? That's OK Because at the end of the day, as long as you are attending to students' needs in the most compassionate, empathetic and student-centered way possible, we know we're winning right. And that's what school counseling is all about. That's why we show up day after day to be an advocate for students, to guide them through some of their worst moments with care, with concern and with understanding, and help them realize their most actualized role as a successful student, a productive community member and an amazing human being.

Speaker 1: 19:03

You know I talked about behavior intervention in the last podcast episode. I'm talking about it here again and I kind of hinted that we're going to have another behavior-oriented episode coming up next. We're focusing on behavior intervention in the podcast because next month that's what we're going to be looking at in our mastermind. Our mastermind is going to be focusing on all of the things that can help you become more successful and to become that leader on campus with regard to interventions From learning how to capture and utilize behavior data on your campus to reviewing some trauma facts, looking at our trauma-informed practice, non-suicidal self-injury, polyvagal responses all the things behavior intervention oriented to help you be the best school counselor that you can be. As a matter of fact, just last week, in our mastermind support and consultation chat, which we hold each and every week, we were talking through a behavior intervention shift on a campus and what the school counselor's role within that was going to be and how she could help best guide her campus administration into making determinations that were best for students. It was an amazing conversation, so thoughtful and insightful and really made all of us think, and I know that each and every person in that consultation chat walked out a better school counseling practitioner, and that's what I want for you.

Speaker 1: 20:33

We do that each and every week in our School for School Counselors Mastermind. You can find out more about it at schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash mastermind and we'll have your chair all ready for you when you decide it's the right time for you to jump in these conversations. All right, that's all I have for you this time, but I'll be back soon with some statistically frightening yet empowering information about behavior intervention, about dysregulated adults versus regulated students and all the things you need to know to get better and more competent in behavior intervention. In the meantime, I hope you have the best week and I'll be back to talk with you again soon. Take care, my friend.