This post was sent to the BehaviorAdvisor.com “B-List” in August of 2018.
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Hello again, fellow B-Listers! As promised, here is the humor. Let me preface the ditties with a bit of professional caution:
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When professionals of any line of work perform in high-pressure environments, they develop forms of idiosyncratic humor. Using hyperbole and overstatement, these situational comedic remarks become common-place, turning into reactive mantras chanted when recurrent situations arise. These repartee help to lighten difficult times and promote comradery among those specialized groups of professionals.
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Please consider these statements in the tone intended; to help us laugh so that we don’t cry… to relieve stress and express empathetic collegiality. Humor is dependent on exaggeration and surprise; reality hyperbolized. The “observations” found below make full use of embellishment and magnification of rare or occasional events.
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Hopefully, the outcome is that we have a bit of fun here with no disparagement intended at all. These verbal responses to head shaking events are phrased in the style of “Murphy’s Law”. Murphy’s Law states that: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wronç.”
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P.S. “Discipline”, as used in this document, refers to interventions designed to teach new and more appropriate behavioral responses, not simply to punish the offender. (The latter approach is a good example of how Murphy’s Law has affected good practice.)
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Murphy’s Law As It Applies to Behavior Management
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Books Regarding Classroom Behavior Management
1. The first myth of “quick and easy” discipline is that it actually exists. (Quick and easy discipline isn’t.)
2. Any behavior management book offering “sure-fire” or “quick-fix” strategies should be filed under “fiction”.
3. While reading about “Research-based Practices” and “Applied Behavior Analysis”, the reader will be unable to shake mental images of white rats using palate & brush (made from push bars at the end of mazes) to create a paint-by-numbers portrait of B.F. Skinner.
4. Any publication purporting a “new” management strategy or discipline approach has simply renamed an old one. The 1970s originator of the initial strategy will be given no credit by the authors of the “new” idea.
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Professional Development
5. When the professional development presenter mentions the “Fight, flight or freeze response”, you will think of a fourth one displayed by your students; “Freak out!”
6. Given the honor of presenting the keynote address at the district conference, the powerpoint slide show that you spent weeks preparing will crash immediately after the title slide.
7. If it doesn’t crash, you will smoothly and confidently present your memorized session, nonchalantly clicking the remote to change slides while you personally engage with the audience. Pleased with yourself, you’ll make the assumption that the wide eyes and open mouths are due to their full-focus attention. Later, at the disciplinary hearing, you will explain to the district superintendent and school board at the disciplinary hearing that you were unaware of the pornographic images and various Dr. Seuss characters that were inserted the day before by your students while you searched in the hallways for your eloper.
8. After the presentation you will notice that your blouse had two buttons undone or your zipper was down.
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Assessment and Diagnosis
9. A “Functional Behavior Assessment” is a complex systematic procedure for arriving at the wrong conclusion with great confidence. The process should, instead, be known as “Dysfunctional Behavior Assessment”
10. Determining the function of some behaviors is like trying to smell the fifth color of the alphabet.
11. On the day when the School-Based Support Team finally arrives to your classroom to observe an offending student, she’ll be angelic, on-task, and answering every question correctly.
12. Despite every item on a checklist of inappropriate behaviors being marked with the highest scores, and the student’s total score falling into the 99th percentile of aberrant behavior, the results will not meet the district’s cut-off score for obtaining special services.
13. When presenting the results of the psychological assessment, the evaluator who just came from a three martini lunch will utter a diagnosis of “Bonkers”.
14. Despite impressive increases in the test scores of the kids in your self-contained classroom, the merit pay raise will go to the teacher of the gifted class.
15. Upon reading the psychologist’s report on his administration of various projective tests (e.g., Rorschach Inkblot, incomplete sentences, Children’s Apperception Test, Educational Apperception Test), you will realize that you now know much more about his mental state than that of your student.
16. Upon reading the psychologist’s report, you will ponder whether to complete a referral form on him or call the police.
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Our Students
17. Your worst behaved student will have a perfect attendance record.
18. Any positive prosocial behavior you have instilled in a “difficult” student will disappear over the holiday break.
19. When a student states that s/he comes from “the street”, it ain’t Sesame Street.
20. Your soon-to-arrive new student will be likened to “behavioral popcorn”: You know he’s going to explode; you just don’t know when.
21. Upon a recurrence of that irritating behavior, you will find yourself thinking of a variation on the words of the great American patriot, Patrick Henry; “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country, but let’s make it A.J. in the 3rd row.”
22. Despite making use of extensive roleplaying during your social skills lessons, the student will forget to wipe the booger off his finger before shaking hands with the district superintendent.
23. If it’s true that “You are what you eat”, you have 3 kids in the front row who are boogers.
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Sending A Student To The Office
24a. Any student sent to the office for discipline will immediately display worse behavior upon return to the classroom.
24b. Any student sent to the office for discipline will be treated like a visiting dignitary by the office staff. He will then be filled with cookies and other baked goods before being asked to run off photocopies.
24c. While unsupervised at the copy machine, that student will photocopy his buttocks.
24d. Later in the day, a photocopy of a d’arrière, turned sideways, will be found on the teacher’s desk. Across the image, now sporting inked eyes and nose on the upper cheek, will be scrawled the caption: “Mr. McMeanie’s big smile.”
24e. When Mr. McMeanie asks the class who placed the buttocksian image on the his desk, all fingers will point to the gifted kid with Aspergers.
24f. When the head of the disciplinary meeting mentions the gifted student’s Aspergers Syndrome, the parents will overhear Mr. McMeanie whisper “Yeah…pain in the Assperger’s Syndrome”.
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Administrators
25. Convincing an authoritarian administrator to consider positive practices will be akin to trying to ski through a revolving door. You can see your goal, but it ain’t gonna be easy getting there.
26a. Any behavior management procedure that was here-to-fore unknown to the administrator will be poo-pooed when you suggest it. Any interventions he suggests will worsen the situation.
26b. If the administrator’s suggested intervention works, something went wrong.
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The Administrator’s Lesson Observation
27. While your fidelity to the DRL program has reduced the utterance of the “F word” from 103 to 6 times per week, all 6 times will occur during the administrator’s visit.
28. When hearing the snickers and seeing your students point at the board, you will turn around to see that in your haste to write “Pencils only. Use of a pen is not allowed”, you forgot to place a space between “pen” and “is”.
29. If the lesson goes well, your class size will be increased. (No good act goes unpunished.)
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Fellow Teachers
30a. Any progress you have made in motivating an errant youngster to make better behavior choices will be destroyed by the teacher she sees next. (Sisyphus will someday be adopted as the patron saint of teachers who work with kids who possess mental health and behavioral challenges.)
30b. The teacher she sees next will vehemently defend his practices as being necessary to “teach her a lesson”. (“Teaching ‘em a lesson” doesn’t.)
30c. If the administrator treats that mean teacher like he treated the student, the teacher will file a union grievance.
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31a. Given the level of flatulence emanating from Henry, the gen. ed. science teacher will suggest to the IEP team that he be labeled a level 3 biohazard.
31b. The team will change Henry’s label from “disorder” to “disodor”.
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32a. When substitute teaching in a general education class during your planning period, you’ll discover that you actually possess incredible teaching and management skills. That master teacher that you replaced will gladly return the favor by “covering” your self-contained classroom while you attend an IEP meeting. He will fail miserably.
32b. Upon returning to your classroom after the IEP meeting, you will find the gen. ed. master teacher locked in the teacher’s closet.
32c. Your students will be released from in-school suspension after the investigation reveals that the master teacher locked the closet door from the inside.
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33. When informed that your student with O.D.D. is being mainstreamed into his gen.ed classroom, the teacher’s face will resemble that of someone who just ate a bad clam.
34. Given extensive, expensive and intensive professional development in research-proven effective practices, and implementation of expansive supports to maintain fidelity to the new interventions, tenured teachers will do as they damn well please.
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Part 2 arrives tomorrow! Stay tuned. If your friends and colleagues want to join us, they can sign up for our B-List at http://www.behavioradvisor.com/intervention-strategies/
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Dr. Mac
DoctorMac@BehaviorAdvisor.com
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Differential Reinforcement: It’s a $20 term for a $1 idea, but they are a POWERFUL set of behavior change procedures. When “Nothing works with this kid”, DR does. Check it out at http://www.behavioradvisor.com/Teacher-SchoolServices/DifferentialReinforcement.html
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