Student motivation & intervention

This week, we’ve been spending a lot of time discussing & thinking about student “misbehaviors” and their causes, and how to intervene in this situations. We learned about the differences in student motivation when these behaviors occur, whether they are to get attention, power, revenge, or to avoid failure. When I sat down to reflect on the last teaching week and how these ideas have influenced my behavior management, two specific moments came to mind right away.

The first actually involved a student from another group.  My group was at the pond amphitheater reflecting on our solo walk while another group was at the dam conducting an investigation. Both groups came from the same school. While we were discussing, a student from the other group came to the top edge of the amphitheater and started dancing trying to distract our group.  Because it was clear that he was seeking attention, I only looked at him out of the corner of my eye and didn’t verbally address what he was doing.  One of my students said, “what is he doing?” and another responded, “who knows? Just ignore him.” I still hadn’t addressed the act verbally. I think that by modeling that response and not reacting to the child’s actions explicitly, I showed my group that we did not need to give him attention and eventually he gave up after several more attempts, with my students continuing to lose interest until they completely ignored his presence.  I think if I had reacted verbally by asking him to stop or telling my students not too look or to ignore him, they would have been more drawn to his actions. By making it a nonissue, they didn’t even spare the other student much thought and were able to continue with our discussion.

The other scenario was actually consistent behavior through the week from a particular student.  This student frequently spoke to me, the chaperone, and other students disrespectfully.  She would argue with instructions, and attempts to redirect her behavior by myself or my chaperone (and even other students, sometimes) were met with more disrespect.  It escalated to the point one day that one of my other students said to me, “Don’t worry. She disobeys at school a lot, too.” I kept feeling like each day I made a little bit of progress towards connecting with this student, and then right when I thought things were improving, I would get hit with another argument.  I believe that she just lacked social awareness and thought that she was being cheeky and that it was funny to everyone involved, including the adults.  As such, I assumed her motivation was attention and didn’t take the disrespect personally, and tried to keep it from getting to me. While it was frustrating, I avoided letting that show, and tried to remind her of our community agreement and redirect her behavior in ways that removed the ability to receive attention (e.g., having her step away from the group for a minute).  This situation I don’t necessarily feel like ended successfully, but I’m not sure if it was my fault. I am sure that there is more I could have done, but I wanted to avoid sinking all of my energy into redirecting this one child, which would have caused the rest of the group to focus on her and what she was doing rather than the content of a lesson or discussion.

Ultimately, these two situations were good learning moments for me.  Coming from a classroom teaching environment, when a student is acting out, being disrespectful, or seeking attention, there are so many ways to solve the problem that aren’t always as simple when we’re out in the field.  It’s also harder when you are with this small group of students all day long — if a student has just really had enough of me as an instructor, it’s really possible that being with me all day long with no real breaks is going to exacerbate their behavioral struggles. That being said, this is a clear reason why connecting with the students on a personal level is so important — if they are comfortable being with me all day, this won’t happen.  I also hadn’t thought about dealing with the potential of misbehaviors from another field group, and now I will keep that in mind when planning flow as far as other groups’ locations are concerned.

Outcomes:

Knowledgeable Practitioner: By using new behavior management mindsets and skills in my practicum, I enhanced my instructional skills and made the instructional experience more effective.

Student-centered Instructor: I focused my interventions on student needs rather than my needs – thinking about their motivations and addressing the root of a problem.