Monday, May 20, 2019

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) ~

Friday, May 10, 2019

Learning NZSL - the best experience in a long time...

This week I started to learn New Zealand Sign Language, along with my students. We are lucky enough to have our office administrator who've done a course on NZSL, so I used her to teach us a few signs.

I was also very happy when I came across tweets with videos by Sulzy (@sasulz)! In one of her videos she showed how to sign "How are you?” & “I’m feeling _____.”

So, I practised and taught my students this the next day. 



This was the best experience for me in a long time! Students also had a lot of fun learning this new language during this year's New Zealand Sign Language week. The best part for me was when seeing students this week, some of them greeted me in sign language and signed how they were feeling!


I will definitely continue with learning and also show my students!