Public Education Matters

Various student voices 0:08
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.

Jeff Wensing 0:15
This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:26
Thanks for joining us for this edition of Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and the public school educators OEA represents in communities across the state. Now one thing I hear a lot from these educators is frustration about student behavior issues, and one of the most common requests for podcast content from us is for practical strategies to help manage these issues. Our guest for this episode is giving us just that. She's a member of the Marietta Education Association, an elementary intervention specialist and a board certified behavior analyst, as she tells us, among the many bits of wisdom she offers in this conversation, one key to success is setting clear expectations, not just with students, but also with the educators she works with to create behavior management plans.

Brittany Myers 1:29
Hi, my name is Brittany, Myers. I am currently an intervention specialist for the Marietta City School District. I'm also a licensed BCBA, or Board Certified Behavior Analysis and I'm also a licensed COBA, which is a Certified Ohio Behavior Analysis.

Katie Olmsted 1:44
So a lot of acronyms in there, but a lot of really exciting things that you are an expert in. Can you talk to me a little bit more about what the board certified behavior analyst position is, what that does, and what the COBA position is?

Brittany Myers 2:00
Absolutely so they're basically one and the same. Everyone has to be a board certified behavior analyst in order to provide behavior analytic services. However, certain states require you to also be licensed specialized in their state, and that's why I'm also a COBA, because Ohio, luckily for me, not really, but they require you to have that specialized license. So in order to become a COBA, I had to one, have the BCBA licensure, and then I also had to know and be able to give examples of like the ethical laws related to Ohio and BCBA regulations.

Katie Olmsted 2:39
But from a practical standpoint, what do you do when you go into the classrooms with that?

Brittany Myers 2:43
Okay, so if as a BCBA, when you go into the classrooms, you do observations on typically, one kiddo at a time, and you're looking at these problem behaviors that a kid is having, and a common misconception that I see with a lot of teachers is they think the BCBA is going to come in and work with the kid, and that's not what we're there to do eventually, yes, but in the moment when we start, no. So it starts out, you come in and you have a conversation with everyone who's providing services to that kiddo. So that could be therapists, teachers, family members, like anyone who's having contact with that kid. And we want to know, what are these problem behaviors you're seeing? When are you seeing it? What have you already tried with them? You know? How did they react to you? How do they react to others? Like we want to know as much of the picture before we walk in as possible. So we get all that information, and then we come in, and if you tell me that your biggest issue is every time you ask a kid to sit, they flip their desk. That's what I'm going to watch for. If the kid also happens to cuss you out during that, I'm not going to even acknowledge that, because that's not the behavior that I was told to look for. So we're only looking for the behavior special specified that are the issue, if that makes sense. So I would come in and I'd be watching to see what happens every time the kid is told to work, and what happens before they're told to work, and what happens after the behavior. So after they flip the desk, how are they responding? How are you responding? And I'm documenting all this to see how often it's happening, how long it's happening, and why it's happening, and the why is the big part, because behavior has four functions, so either an student or an adult, I mean, it could be anyone. They're trying to gain attention, they're trying to gain some type of sensory feedback, they're trying to gain access to something, or they're trying to escape something. It's one of those four, and my job is to decide which of those four is the issue, and sometimes it could be more than one of those. And then once I know, okay, every time this kid flips his desk, he's trying to get out of doing the work, then I would write a plan on how to teach him to appropriately get out of doing work, because the kid is not just going to wake up one day and be. Like, you know what? I wanted to do this work every day. You know, no magic ones. Yes, no magic ones at all. So, you know, we would then teach the kid what's called a replacement behavior. So that might be something as simple as saying, No, I don't want to do it. And then the teacher would have to back off in that moment and be like, okay, fair, because saying no, I don't want to do it and not doing it is much more appropriate than flipping a desk and not doing it. So it's a step in the right direction. And then once they do that, then we would upgrade the plan to Okay. You can say no, but you still have to complete it like you may not move on until you complete it, and you slowly bump these plans up until the kid is complying with whatever the directive is. So it's, it's a long process. I don't think people realize how long the process it is sometimes, and I think that can be very frustrating. And as I mentioned before, like we're not coming in and working directly with the kid, and this could be different depending on districts, but typically we would come in and decide, you know, this is what the plan's going to be. And then we would train either the teacher or sometimes, like, paraprofessional support to implement those plans. And then we would leave, like, we don't do anything outside of that. And then we would come back in a couple of weeks and be like, Okay, let's touch base. How is it going? Like, is it being successful? Is it not do we need to change it up? And then, you know, maybe we need to change it entirely. It's not working at all, or maybe they're being super successful. And it's like, okay, let's bump this up and try to improve the next thing and keep moving on. So we're really there to help guide others, but we're not necessarily there to manage the behavior itself. If that makes sense.

Katie Olmsted 6:40
It really sounds like your role is to observe and then come up with a strategy for the people in the classroom to implement. Right? Yes, yes. And those strategies are so important. Talking to a lot of educators, they talk about burnout is really high, and behavior issues feel like they are getting worse and worse, but for sure. What can you tell them about some of the strategies they might want to try to manage some of the common behaviors?

Brittany Myers 7:10
My biggest piece of advice, and this isn't necessarily behavior based, but just experience based, is consistency. Like, I cannot preach consistency more. And what I mean by that is like, if you tell a kid, if this happens one more time, this is the consequence, then when it happens that one more time, you have to follow through with it, because I've seen so many times, like teachers will threaten over and over and over, if you do it one more time, if you do it one more time, if you do one more time, and in the kid's eyes, it's like, well, I can just keep going, because, you know, it may come eventually. It may not, but, you know, I never know. So we're just going to keep going.

Katie Olmsted 7:45
As the parent of a child with behavioral issues, I'm not going to make eye contact with you because I don't want to. That is exactly our problem.

Brittany Myers 7:51
Oh, trust me, I have a toddler. I get it too.

Brittany Myers 7:54
Some days, like as a teacher, there have been so many times where I have made that threat, and it's like, the world's dumbest threat, and then they do the behavior, and I'm like, oh gosh, I have to follow through with this. And like, you hate it. You hate it so much. But once you do that, kid's like, oh man. Like, if she says it's going to happen, it's going to happen, yeah. And so I feel like that is the biggest thing. Like, I've missed lunch breaks. I've missed, like, meetings I've had to go to and stuff, because I'm like, that happens one more time. This is what's going to happen next, and I always have to follow through with that what happens next. So I think that's really important. It's just being like, if you tell them this is the consequence, then you have to follow through with that consequence, even if you don't like it. Because, trust me, I've been there, but then they know that, like, okay, there's no point pushing this adult, because they're not going to budge. Yeah, and that's not going to work with every kid. It's not going to work with your hardest kid out there, but just with your, like, middle of the road kid who's kind of squirrely. It would definitely help with them. Um, front loading is something that I feel does wonders with kids that I don't see done a lot. So a lot of times with our kiddos with behaviors, when they're going from one activity to the next, or one setting to the next, like you would think their brains just shut off and they forget what they're doing. Like, oh, in this room, I was expected to sit. In this room, I'm going to climb the walls. It's like, No, you're still at school, you still have to sit and so I'll tell a kid like, Okay, we're going to go to gym class. Now, when you're in gym class, the expectation is, you walk in, you sit down, you follow the teacher's directives, and then when we're done, this is what's going to happen. If you cannot follow through with those then these are your consequences. And I do that a lot throughout the day with my kids, is constantly being like, Okay, this is where we're going next. This is what I expect of you, and if you don't do it, this is the consequence. For friends who are on the spectrum and even, like our lower functioning kiddos, a 10 second delay is really important when you're giving directives. So like. Like, if you tell them, hey, go put that away, and they just sit there and stare at you. It's not that they're refusing, it's just that they may not have processed that. And when I was doing my supervision field work for my BCBA licensure, my supervisor was phenomenal, and she's like, Have you ever really sat and like, counted 10 seconds in your head. And I said, Well no. And she's like, next time you give a directive with a kiddo who takes a longer processing time, she's like, I just want you to try and it is so much longer than you think it is. And so when I have kiddos like that, I will literally sit in my head and count to 10 before I say something else again. And it's crazy, because if my para professionals are in the room, a lot of times they will interrupt and be like, Hey, she asked you to do this. And I'm like, oh, no, no. They haven't had time to think yet. And so I think that's really important too, is just giving them that time to process what you've asked them to do before you ask them to do it again. Because it's like, if you tell them, hey, go put this away, and they're like, Okay, I'm thinking about the process of how I'm going to do that, and then you tell them again, like you stop their train of thought, and now they have to start all over again, so they're still not going to be doing what you want. So I feel like that's really good to do. I do a lot of counting down for kids, and again, I front load like, you know you have five seconds. And if this doesn't happen, this will be the consequence. And when I do counting down, it does change depending on the kid. So if I have a kid who moves at a normal pace, it might be a 54321, and they know, like, Okay, we gotta get moving. But I have kiddos who, you know, move very slowly on a regular basis, so I'm not going to count quickly, because I'm setting them up for failure. So I might be five, four, you know. So you want to use that pacing depending on the kid, but that's also a good way for them to be like, Oh, okay, I need to be doing whatever it is. And then also, I think visuals are a phenomenal thing to use. So I personally have a box on every kid's desk, and it has three popsicle sticks in it, and it's basically their visual for how many warnings they get in the classroom. And so if I say, hey, I need you to go put that away. If I have to ask again, I'm going to take a stick. And so then if I do ask again, they have to give me the stick. And what happens is, if they lose all the sticks in their box, then they don't get to go to recess. However, if they have sticks left at the end of the day, and all they have to have is one, I don't require them to have all three. They get to have a prize at the end of the day. So, I mean, I'm using that visual. There's also consequences tied to it. And there's also reinforcement, which a lot of teachers, I think, get frustrated with reinforcement, because it's like, why shouldn't have to constantly tell you to be good and give you prizes for being good? And I agree with that you shouldn't, but for some kiddos, you have to start that way, and an easy way to do that is in my class, my kiddos like edibles a lot, so like an M&M or a piece of a gummy bear goes a long way. But you pair that with, Okay, I'm going to give you this gummy bear for doing good, but I'm also going to give you a high five, or I'm going to tell you great job. And a high five and a great job is something you can very easily give out every day. And the point of doing it together is so eventually you can take the tangent or the edible item away, and then you can just give a high five or a good job, and it's just as rewarding to the kid as the M&M or the gummy bear was originally.

Katie Olmsted 13:33
And it kind of sounds like it comes back to what you were saying about just consistency in general. When they the more they practice the skill, the better they're going to get at the skill, the less they need that support to do that skill.

Brittany Myers 13:47
Yes, yes, 100%.

Katie Olmsted 13:49
So what if it asking for a friend and and, you know what? Probably a lot of the educators, what happens if it's not a question of their inability at this point to do that skill. It's just like, willfully, they're not going to do it. We are now in meltdown mode. What do we do?

Brittany Myers 14:07
Okay, so once you're in meltdown mode, and I cannot preach this enough, you're done, like, there is no strategy you can implement to suddenly make it better, like you just have to ride out that storm until it's over. I see so many counselors and teachers come in and they're like, if you just stop screaming, I'll give you this, or I'll give you that. That's bribery. I'm not here to bribe you. I'm here to help you make better change. So when you're in the meltdown, you just are writing it out. So for me, I have kiddos who they scream, they're violent. You know, they are destructive, and all I do is I don't speak when they're in a meltdown, because when you're in a heightened state like that, if I'm just throwing verbal diarrhea at you, all I'm doing is escalating you, and I'm not helping you calm down so you. For my kiddos every like, one to two minutes, I might be like, are you done? And then if they're not, they'll just continue what they're doing. And I don't say anything else. I don't say, oh, okay, or I need you to stop. Don't hit me anymore. That, just as I said, keeps escalating the situation. So speaking, as little as possible, during a behavior I have found does wonders for kiddos, and then just prompting them like one to two minutes at max, and it has to be short, are you done? Are you ready to use your de escalation techniques? Can I give you this or, you know, whatever strategy you're using to help them calm down until it's over? The strategies that people want to use, they need to happen before the behavior escalates. So, you know, I see that this kid, he's starting to groan, and he's running and, you know, hitting his hands on the table, and I can see he's getting really upset, upset. That's when I go over. I'm like, Hey, let's go for a walk. Let's use our de escalation techniques. You know, do you need a sensory break? That's when you use those once he starts throwing things and screaming, it's too late at that point, you just have to ride it out.

Katie Olmsted 16:09
How do you manage that in a classroom setting, when you have a lot of different kids with a lot of different needs, and maybe you don't have the ability to to be with that one child, giving them what they need in that moment, and do the rest of the things for the other kids?

Brittany Myers 16:27
Yeah, no, and that is the hardest part. I'm lucky in the district I work in that we have not a lot, but a decent amount of paraprofessionals who can be that person for that kid and help them work through it, or vice versa. I will go work with the kid, and the paraprofessional will take over with the other kids. I can't give the best advice for Gen Ed sitting, because I don't work in a general education setting. I'm an intervention specialist, but I feel like if they had someone they could rely on to provide those services for the child, like they could be like, hey, just so, you know, so and so is amping up. They need some help de escalating. Or if they're like, Hey guys, I'm going to take a little break. Everybody get out your, whatever it is, and work on it quietly, and then you can go over and help de escalate the kid. And I know that sounds really frustrating, because you're like, Okay, well, I'm losing time teaching these kids to go help this one kid, and you're right, but it's either that, or you're going to lose an hour when they're destroying your classroom. You have to evacuate. So you kind of have to decide, do you want to take those five to 20 possible minutes to try to help this kid de escalate and each time it's going to get better, or are you just going to let them melt down, and then at that point, it kind of ruins the class and the day, and it gets so much worse.

Katie Olmsted 17:48
And I think that's the important part to highlight here, is and eventually it gets better. It's again, those skills, the more everyone practices those skills, the more they're able to use those skills in those situations. Is this something that your your advice that you're you're offering here? Does it work for all ages? Or is this more aimed at elementary ages, you'd say?

Brittany Myers 18:08
I would say this is more based towards elementary ages, because that's what my experience is in. The behavior strategies work for any age range, like the providing consequences, the providing reinforcement. It's just going to look different depending on what age you're working with, because I'm pretty sure a 16 year old is not going to want half a gummy bear. You know.

Katie Olmsted 18:28
I do love the visual of seeing high school desks with three popsicle sticks to see how they react that one. How long have you been an intervention specialist? I'm going into my 11th year. Okay, so you're just now graduating from the ONE program. Is that right? Yes. Okay, so that's Ohio's New Educators for educators in the first 10 years of their career. So how has your strategy, how has your toolbox, changed in your time in this role?

Brittany Myers 19:00
So I hate to admit this, but my first year, I was a screamer, all I did was yell and scream at the kids who were climbing on their desk and beating each other up because I was in survival mode and I had no idea what to do. And now I'm not perfect. I mean, there are days where I get frustrated and I yell or, you know, like any teacher, but I am a much calmer teacher, and I can manage a lot more with these strategies. There are days where we have multiple behaviors going on, and I literally bounce from behavior to behavior to behavior, but I'm also teaching at the same time, and it's stressful, but it's manageable at the same time, like I can leave the school day with a smile on my face, even though I've gotten hit that day. If that makes sense, I feel like it has made me see kids with behavioral issues in a different light, like they don't scare me, I'm not mad at them, I'm not frustrated by them. I see them as a kid that like they're not getting the help they need, and it's not. Necessarily anyone's fault. They just might not know how to provide it. And I see them as an opportunity to help that kid and show everyone be like, Look how amazing they are. Like, I know you think, like this kid is my worst nightmare. I don't ever want to see them again. And I just, I view that kid as an opportunity to change that view. If that makes sense.

Katie Olmsted 20:18
Yeah. Did you find any supports through the Ohio's New Educator program that helped you on that path to evolution, to where you are now?

Brittany Myers 20:27
Um, I kind of did the evolution before I got on ONE, but I just think it's helped with the confidence, yeah, to speak and do things like this, because I have a lot of knowledge that I want to share, but I'm not the most confident in sharing it. I have severe imposter syndrome.

Katie Olmsted 20:45
I know it doesn't help, but you shouldn't. This is great. You're amazing. Do all schools in Ohio have people like you, behavior analysts who come in and help with those strategies? Or is that something that maybe we need to start putting more of those supports in place?

Brittany Myers 21:05
From my understanding, no, it is not something that is common. Our school actually does not have a BCBA themselves. I just happen to be licensed, so they kind of use me. They don't use me as a BCBA role necessarily, but I use my strategies to work with the kids with disabilities. We have this past two years, we've had a contracted BCBA come in, but they've only worked with one of our elementary schools, so then, like our other schools, haven't gotten to benefit from it. And she's not, unfortunately, not, full time with our school district. But I feel like if we had a full time BCBA who at least could come help the elementary schools and help the kids develop those skills early on, then as they move up, there wouldn't be a severe behaviors to manage. So they could just stay predominantly at those elementary schools. I think in the long run, it would be so helpful, because I know in my district, the teachers are at a loss, and they talk about their frustration with behavior, and they don't know where to go, they don't know who to turn to, and honestly, they don't have a lot of options. And I think that's why we lose so many good teachers right now, is just because their backs kind of against the wall and they don't have the right support.

Katie Olmsted 22:21
Support that you are helping to provide one podcast episode at a time, one conversation at a time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Brittany Myers 22:30
Yeah, no problem. I enjoyed it.

Katie Olmsted 22:36
Of course, getting more board certified behavior analysts into Ohio schools means getting more supports and resources from the state, in many cases, and that means having important conversations with Ohio lawmakers about what our students need next week on public education matters, we're talking about how the Ohio's New Educators, or ONE group, is taking steps to make sure they have a seat at the table for those conversations with our policymakers in the state house, and our guest next week just happens to be Brittany Myers' husband, make sure you join us for that conversation and others as this season of the podcast continues, because in Ohio, public education matters.

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