UBRS Workshops (Modules 1 - 4)

A blog summary of my notes...

First Session:

Aim:

• Preventing behaviours that challenge and if necessary de-escalating the situation
• How to stop behaviours from happening 
• How to support child without putting more demand on them

Intro: 

• Understand what is happening in the brain when it’s under stress…
• When seeing difficult behaviours, think what might be happening in the brain

Summary:

• When the brain is under stress Adrenaline and Cortisol are produced
• These shut down the layers of brain activity starting with logic and self-control
• Calm the situation - don’t inflame by punitive approaches
• BUILD behaviours by ignoring, figuring out what the driver is, replacing with positive behaviours, praise and encouragement, frequent positive restatement, reminders and redirection

Module 1: Understanding behaviour - Why? How? What?

Remember the can of coke ‘analogy’ - shake it and it explode...

• Being mindful of the factors that occur in a child's life that is baggage when they come to school
• If you want to be supportive, shift your perspective by not judging and instead offer support to build that relationship

What can YOU influence?:

• The only thing we can control is what we do, think and believe…
• … and what we do, think and believe can influence the outcome to increase the likelihood of de-escalation

Understand, then manage your actions:

Stress Response: Psychological effects…

Module 2: Encouraging ready-to-learn behaviour

Establishing a learning focused culture by exploring strategies that prevent and de-escalate challenging situation through:

• Creating supportive learning environments
• Teaching for positive behaviour - revisiting the brain and stress
• Strengthening positive relationships
• Exploring strategies that support emotional regulation
• Exploring communication - what we say and how we say it
• Exploring strategies that prevent and de-escalate challenging situations

Exploring communications - what we say and how we say it:

• Create win-win scenarios with two winners
• Talk to students with compassion and respect
• Address private or sensitive issues in private
• Take the student seriously and address issues
• Give focused attention
• Avoid humour like sarcasm, inappropriate remarks or mocking - be polite

Summary:

• De-escalation refers to a set of verbal and non-verbal responses which, if used selectively and appropriately, reduces the level of a student’s anxiety or anger to prevent loss of control
• Research tells us that knowing the student, building trusting relationships and using effective de-escalation techniques can all minimise the likelihood of restraint

Module 3: Responding Safely

Intro:

• Often behaviour is done for an audience
• How do your actions escalate or de-escalate the situation?
• Whatever goes bad, it will pass and things will get better

Responding Safely - Differential Responding:

(Note: when students are below ‘red line’, you will have trouble with bringing them back. A student that often go below this line would normally have a ‘safety plan’ - through SENCo / RTLB) 

Strategies to maintain the 'Ready to Learn' state:

When the student is 'Out of Sorts' - Strategies to help the student return to Ready to Learn:

When behaviour is "Escalating' - Strategies to de-esclate and provide direction and maintain safety:

Strategies to maintain safety when a situation is 'Out of Control':

Strategies to help the student to 'Calm down', be safe and re-establish a trusting relationship:

Module 4: Reflection and Embedding

Conclusion...

• Maintain mana, walk away and determine next move
• Ensure students know what will be happening, as some struggle with change

~ "Relying on one-on-one chat alone is rarely effective. It may take many of these conversations - this is a process to teach young people how to think about their behaviour. At a neurological level, we now understand that we are creating new neural pathways in young brains and there is not quick fix that does this!" 

(Thorsborne & Blood - 2013 pg. 42) ~