Simple & Effective Tricks to Addressing Problem Behavior with Dr. Christine Reeve [episode 78]

Kelsey Sorenson [00:00:00]:

You are listening to episode number 78 of Wife Teacher Mommy, the podcast. Simple and effective tricks to addressing problem behavior with Christine Reeve. Whether you teach special education like Chris, or you teach gen ed or home school like I have, you have dealt with problem behavior. And so today we are going over some strategies that you can implement as soon as tomorrow that will help you navigate those problem behaviors just a little bit better.

You teacher is all you gotta do someone take care of you whether it’s the time or resources you have. Why? Teacher mommy. They have got your back. They’ll rip the galaxy between you and your father and your family and the place to be.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:01:06]:

Welcome to wife. Teacher. Mommy. The podcast. I’m Kelsey Sorensen, former elementary teacher and current homeschool mom. And even though I’ve been a resource creator since 2014, I’ve realized that printables alone aren’t all you need in order to thrive as a teacher or homeschool parent. That’s why I also created this show and got certified as a life coach to help you finally kick burn out to the curb and feel confident with whatever challenges come your way. With the right mindset, strategies and new teaching inspiration, you’re going to be well on your way to your best teacher life. Now let’s go.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:01:44]:

I’m really excited for today’s episode and I have had listeners before be like. Hey, do you help with special education? And honestly, we do. While my background is not in special education, what we have to share with our resources the wide range of pre K through six that are available in our shop and to our club members. We tend to get a lot of special ed educators in our community because of the wide range and differentiating that you can do, whether you’re in special ed or gen ed or whatever. And also, my amazing team member Carol is a special educator, so we do have that on our team. But I’m really excited that for the event we got Chris Reeve from Autism Classroom Resources. She is very knowledgeable in special education. She’s been a special educator yourself and as you’ll hear in our interview, she has helped teachers not only in her online company now with special education, but she has physically traveled the country helping teachers with their special ed even before the Internet, and connecting like this was a thing really exciting. We’re excited for this episode today, and she just has so much knowledge to share. And I love that with these episodes that I’ve been doing the past little while, having more guests, it’s been a lot of fun because I truly believe that together, when we come together and we all are an expert in something different, we all have kind of a different area of expertise when we come together. Like I’ve been bringing people onto the podcast or for educate and Rejuvenate, where we’re all literally coming together, sharing what we know the presenters, but then also the attendees in the community because there’s a community component to the event where you get to connect with each other, connect with presenters, such a good time. We’re really excited for all of this, but my favorite part is that I’m able to do this on the podcast with you too. We’re able to do these additional episodes to offer everybody more support whether or not you join us at the event, which I hope you do. But for now, I really hope that you are enjoying these episodes while we’re waiting for the event to happen. So today, like I mentioned, we’re talking to Christine Reeve. I’m going to read her bio for you so you have a little bit of background before we jump into the interview so you can get into all those tips and tricks. So from running Autism Classroom Resources to creating teacher resources on teachers pay teachers, chris’s driving goal has always been about bringing special educators together and helping them serve their students in the best ways they can. Chris has a doctorate in psychology and is a Board of Certified Behavior Analyst.

She has spent the last 25 years with a wide variety of special education programs as a behavior specialist, an administrator, university faculty, and primarily as a trainer and consultant. Chris runs Autism Classroom Resources Store on teachers by Teachers, the Autism Classroom Resources podcast and blog, and also has a training and support membership site for special educators called The Special Educator Academy.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:04:30]:

Hey Chris, I’m so excited to have you on the show today. Thank you.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:04:34]:

I’m really excited to be here.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:04:36]:

Yeah, and I’m also really excited that we’ve connected because of educate and rejuvenate and I just got to be on your show, Autism Classroom Resources, which is an amazing show. So anybody here? If you are a special educator, or honestly, even if you’re a general educator or a parent who works with or has children who have any kind of special needs, it is a great show for you. So be sure to check that out. But Chris, I’m really excited to have you today. Can you introduce yourself, like your teaching background, just some things about you and what you do to serve teachers now?

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:05:07]:

Sure. I’m Chris Reeve. I have worked with students with special ed needs for pretty much most of my career. I started out really wanting to be a researcher, but my dissertation kind of beat that out as me, and I realized at that point that I really loved working with students and with teachers. And so in grad school, my dissertation was with children with autism, but also children with other communication needs working on preventing challenging behavior. And I was a behavior specialist for the school that I was doing the research at. And so when I left, I worked in North Carolina and consulting with families and community settings for a while, and then I moved back to Florida, which is where I’m originally from, and to be closer to my family that was getting older, as we all are. And I started at Nova Southeastern University as the director of a program that served about 75 of the kids from like five to seven years old with the most intensive behavioral issues in the county. And that was part of a program that also had probably the largest preschool for children with autism at the time. And so over time, while I was there, I was there for 14 years. I moved from writing that program to overseeing the behavioral staff to doing research, and eventually I ended up being the director of academics. But all through that, I was working for our outreach branch, going into school districts, working with teachers, and working with students who either had autism or behavioral challenges. And I got to spend a lot of time with some really amazing teachers and did a lot of professional development, but also learned a ton about everything they did from working with them. My aunt made me promise when I went to get my doctorate because she was a preschool teacher for 30 years, that I wouldn’t go into anybody else’s classroom and tell them what to do. If I’d never been in that situation myself. I believe her exact words were, don’t go off and sit in your ivory tower and tell us how to educate when you don’t know what we’re dealing with. And that’s been kind of my mantra ever since. And so I traveled constantly for about 14 years all over the country, got to meet some incredible special educators, some incredible regular educators and administrators. And in 2010, I became the Director of Academic well, I became the Director of Academics before that, and around that time, I realized that really wasn’t what I like to do. I really didn’t really like the traveling, but I love being able to work with the teachers and with their students to try to figure out what was going on. And so in 2010, I went out on my own and provided consultation and training, still traveling. And now I do a combination of virtual and live professional development. I run my TPT store, I run the blog and the podcast for autism Classroom resources, and I do all of it from the comfort of my childhood bedroom.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:08:22]:

Your childhood bedroom?

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:08:24]:

We moved into this house when I was 13 years old, and I have now moved back into it.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:08:30]:

I love that. That’s, like, so full circle. And I had not heard all of your story about traveling all over and then becoming the director, and that is amazing. You’ve had just such a wide variety of experiences with that, I’m sure, and meeting teachers all over the country and their diverse needs and everything. So you’ve probably seen it all, or at least a lot.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:08:50]:

One of the greatest things about it is being able to take back I’m old. So we didn’t have the Internet and certainly wasn’t what it is now. We didn’t have Facebook. We’d have instagram. And so I would go into districts where maybe there was one teacher for kids who are in a self contained class in their own whole county and they didn’t have anybody to talk to about their kids. And I would get to take an idea that that teacher had and take it to one that was in a similar situation three states over and share it there. And that was one of the things I really loved about it. So I’ve always wanted to develop a community for special educators so that they can collaborate with each other more effectively. And I actually started the Special Educator Academy, which is our membership that really aims to keep teachers from having to be so isolated, because even with the Internet, it’s still touchy, I think, for some of our students and really sharing some of the things that we deal with. In special ed. I opened that and that’s always been one of my dreams. So that has been really fun.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:10:02]:

Yeah, you’re building this community, and like you mentioned, it’s like there might be a lot of general ed teachers in a building, but there aren’t always as many. Sometimes there’s just like, one special education teacher, and so you’re able to help connect them together so they can share ideas. And it’s wonderful that we do have the Internet now and we get to connect with teachers all over without having to travel. And that’s what you’re doing. And that’s what I’m doing with educate and rejuvenate and all the things that we do, making sure that we connect educators together because we are so much better together. And that’s why I’m excited to be connecting with you and so many others who bring different strengths to the table. I’m not an expert in special education or anything like that. I do have, luckily, one of my team members. She’s awesome. But I think all of us bring something to the table with this event that we’re doing, educate and rejuvenate, and we’ll be able to just help so many teachers in that way. So I’m really excited.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:10:54]:

I’m excited for that reason, too.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:10:56]:

Let’s dive in a little bit more to your special education experience. What is your overall approach to addressing problem behavior in the classroom or at home for those parents who are listening?

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:11:06]:

Yeah, I think the biggest message that I always want people to really get is that challenging behavior is all about the why it happens more than the what they’re doing. So many times people will focus on what a behavior looks like. So I get a lot of what do I do about hitting, what do I do about biting? And short of saying, well, try to stay out of their reach, there’s not really an answer to that question because the truth is that you might do the exact same thing for both because the question that we want to ask is why are they hitting? Why are they biting? What’s happening in the larger context when that’s going on? And I think that’s one of the keys, too, is that it’s not a thing that’s in the kid, the behavior is not something that is wrong with the student or the child. It’s something that is a mismatch between them and the context in which they’re interacting. And so sometimes we’ll have kids who will be fine in one setting and really struggle in another. Sometimes some of our students have more challenges and are challenged by most contexts, so it’s more consistent. But my approach has always been aligned with what’s now called positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. And so I actually worked in the lab that was developed some of that early science that built that. But my focus has always been on how do we improve a child’s quality of life to make the behavior something they don’t need anymore? Like how can we teach them the appropriate behavior, a better way of getting that need met and meet that function? Because think about it. If you’re hungry, just telling somebody you’ll eat later doesn’t make your stomach growl less. And the same is true with a lot of the challenging behavior. Saying I can talk to you in a while doesn’t mean I feel any less like I need to talk to you right now. And if I don’t have coping skills of knowing how to calm myself down or learn to wait, if I haven’t been taught how to wait, then I’m just still stuck in this situation. But now I know I can’t get what I want. Unless sometimes when my behavior escalates, that ends up getting that response. So over time, we sometimes see those behaviors escalate in a way that is because it works. Because there’s just some things you can’t ignore. You can’t ignore a kid who’s hurting himself. You can’t make all the other kids in the classroom ignore a behavior. So we really have to think about that. We always want to know, why is it happening? And then how can they get that need met in a better way, in a way that fits that context better? I always think about we teach a lot of kids to raise their hand and that works well in a school context if they know how to wait because they’re not going to be called on every single time. But it also doesn’t work very well when I go to the grocery store and I need something because I can stand in the grocery store and raise my hand and nobody’s going to come help me. And so we always want to think about how it matches

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:14:18]:

One of the things I tell teachers when they work with families, too, is don’t expect that you’re necessarily going to use the same strategies at school that you would at home because the contexts are different. We have more training and structure and support at school than a family is going to have. So we can have a kid who has a really structured, scheduled day, but it’s really hard to live that way. 24/7. So then we have to get really creative and I see problem behavior dealing with problem behavior. Is it’s a creative process. It’s trying to figure out what’s going on. How is the context not working? How are the skills not working and how can we make them match up better?

Kelsey Sorenson [00:14:58]:

I am interrupting this episode for just a moment because I want to remind you about our summer event Educate and Rejuvenate. Here’s what a few of our attendees from last year had to say about it. So Shelby said, you did amazing for your first year. I have teared up, came to realization and honestly got my fire coming back. You and your team have created an experience that so many teachers have truly needed and wanted. I know I said it so many times, but thank you and thank you and thank you for working so hard for all of us educators. Why Teacher Mommy is truly a community I always want to be a part of. Keep it up. Holly says thank you for an incredible learning and growing experience with the most professional, intelligent, experienced, generous presenters. I enjoyed every presentation, lesson, talk and effort. This was the best PD I have ever attended. Thank you. And Fifi said, thank you for your desire to encourage and rejuvenate teachers. You provided hope, joy and inspiration for so many. I’m so grateful. Go to Educateamrejuvenate.com to learn more and grab your ticket to join us this year.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:15:59]:

Yeah, I agree with you on it being so much trial and error, but what we want to look at is that root cause. It’s not like, oh, they’re hitting, what are their experiences, what are their thoughts and feelings that they’re having that are driving this behavior? And that is where we can really kind of dive in and figure out, okay, if I know that, then what can I do? What is something I can try? And it’s not a guarantee that it’s going to work and then you try again. It’s kind of like a little experiment that we get to do as teachers or parents to figure out what support works and even it might work some days and it might not work other days because the context is not the same every day. Like, they might have had a really good night at home one day and then the next night they didn’t. So that context can be different and we don’t always know that as teachers. So it’s just we do what we can for sure.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:16:46]:

Yeah. And that answers a really good question that I get a lot, which is, well, it must not be working because it doesn’t solve it every single time. And it’s like exactly what you said. It’s not always the same context, but you also referenced maybe he didn’t sleep well last night. Well, there are a lot of other variables out there that contribute to that context other than just the ones in front of us. And some of them we know and some of them we don’t know. And that’s one of the reasons that the behavior seems really unpredictable. So what we have to do is kind of go for what gets us the best response and then we’ll continue refining from there.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:17:21]:

Right? And I think just giving yourself and that student grace, then maybe there is a worst day. Like if something’s worked for a few days and one day it just totally doesn’t work. It doesn’t mean you need to throw in the towel. It’s more like of a pattern is improving overall than is this exact moment on this exact day always going just peachy. Okay, so next question. So how do skill challenges or skill deficits affect behavior and what should we do about it?

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:17:46]:

Most behaviors come from some level of skill deficit. It might be a really severe skill deficit, like a student who’s nonverbal and can’t tell you what he wants. Or it might be somebody who maybe it’s a student who is on general ed standards, very cognitively competent in his academics. But his social skills are really problematic and he doesn’t know how to adjust his behavior to meet the new needs of the situation. So one teacher really wants you to yet to just blurt out in class and the other teacher really doesn’t want you to do that. And he doesn’t know how to read those settings to figure out, oh, this is the right behavior for this situation. I should change my behavior. He may need more explicit instruction in do this in this person’s class, do this in this person’s class. And then he’s going to need training to learn how to figure that out on his own because we’re not always going to be there to tell him how to do it. So sometimes it’s a really significant communication. Difficulties are a big one. Social skills are a big one. Being able to self regulate, I think is a huge issue for a lot of our students. That especially if you have a student who has any kind of anxiety, that anxiety is really driving that behavior. It’s making the situation really problematic for them in some way. And again, if they don’t have good coping skills, they don’t know how to bring that anxiety down. And I always think of the functions of behavior as being kind of broad, of you’re either trying to get something or get away from something. And it might be getting a reaction and attention, or it might be escaping from a work task or for some of our kids, it might be escaping from the social situation or escaping from this really hard conversation that I’m not quite sure how to handle. So I’m going to do something that makes everybody run away from me because that’s the quickest way I know how to get out of it. So we really want to think about if we have a student who’s engaging in behavior to get attention. He raises his hand, the teacher might call on him, probably not every time, but when he falls on the floor, he might get a really big reaction. So all the other kids laugh. The teacher’s telling him to get back in his seat. It’s getting this really big like the whole classroom just kind of stops and addresses this kind of situation so that negative behavior just got a much bigger reaction than his appropriate behavior. So he needs a way not just to get attention, he has a way, but he needs a way to get it faster and easier and as big a reaction as what he can get with the negative behavior. The good thing about taking a skills based approach is that when you’re looking at teaching skills to gain attention or social skills or self regulation, we’re looking at or even teaching kids a way to get away from something appropriately. You’re going to have a situation where you don’t have to completely ignore the behavior, which is something that’s really hard to do in a classroom, but it’s also really hard to do at home. There’s only so much I have an older sister with autism and I will tell you that there are behaviors that I could not ignore when I was a child living with her. And so you really want to make sure that we are making the appropriate behavior, get the same level of reaction. Then all we have to do is tone down the reaction that we have to give to get him back in his seat or remove him from the classroom or deal with the behavior at home so that we’re just not attending to it as much. And that way we’ve got one of the things I hear behavior analysts I am a behavior analyst, but one of the things I hear behavior analysts tell people is just ignore it.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:21:44]:

But of course the behavior analysts can.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:21:46]:

Ignore them because we have years of training, we’re really good at it, and we really don’t care what else is happening around us. We are just focused on this situation a lot of times.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:21:56]:

Yeah, we’re a teacher that’s just one student of like a whole ton and there you have a lot of other things going on.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:22:01]:

Yeah, exactly. So the great thing about doing this is really just trying to find what’s a way that we can get that kid attention really quickly in a way that it’s going to be a big enough reaction for him. Maybe we teach him to tell a joke and we give him a time that we on his schedule that he can tell a joke to the class and get a big reaction. Maybe we get really creative at how we can get that kind of big reaction and then just tone down our response to the negative behavior and just by boosting it, sometimes we can make that work a little bit better. So it does take a lot of creativity. It takes a team of people, really, to sit down and go, what can we do to get him what he needs? And then once he’s able to use that, then we can start saying, okay, now we’re going to wait. Now we’re going to wait just a minute before we do that. So then we begin to teach him to wait to do that. Or if it’s to get out of work, maybe we teach them, we’re going to do one more problem, and then we’re going to take a break. Now we’re going to do two more problems. Then we’re going to do a host worksheet and things like that. So that gives us a way to manipulate our context in a way that can really help the student be successful, but also the rest of the class continue on without disrupting everything as much.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:23:19]:

I love that idea because it’s like you’re giving them that attention that they need and they crave, but you’re kind of just shifting where it goes, right? So that’s a really smart tip. I feel like any teacher, whether you are in special ed or general ed, more and more, there’s like immersion where general ed and special ed are together. So I feel like so many general ed teachers can also incorporate this into their classrooms, or you just have those students who have that behavior in any classroom. So it was very helpful. Okay, so next question. What are some simple strategies teachers and families can use to prevent challenging behavior?

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:23:55]:

I think that one of the things that we can do if we have a student who’s very headstrong. If you’ve ever had one of those kids and it’s like, it’s got to be my way or the highway, and I always laugh because people I’ll have special ed teachers will say, well, I can handle that. I’m just going to wait him out. I’m like, no, that’s not going to work because I know he’ll sit there for an hour and a half, and he’s not going to do what you eventually need him to do. So one thing we can do with those kids often is to give them choices, give them ways to buy into what we want them to do. And the choice is never, do you want to go to Disney World or do your math homework? The choice is always, do you want to do your math homework sitting with mom or sitting with dad? Do you want to do your math homework in this desk or that desk with this pencil or that pencil? Do you want to do the top half of the worksheet or the bottom half of the worksheet first. So you really have to get creative at coming up with what those choices can be. But by giving students choices, we’re giving them the chance to kind of opt into what we want them to do. And oftentimes some of our kids will negotiate with us, and sometimes a little negotiation is not a bad thing because that is how, as adults, we get our needs met. We negotiate with people for what we need. And so sometimes that causes us to lower our expectations, which is better than having a full blown behavior. And I think sometimes we really don’t think about that trade off enough. I think a lot of times we just think, well, just hold a line and he’ll come around. And I’m like, yeah, that’s going to take a really long time.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:25:34]

You kind of need to pick your battles sometimes, right? It’s like okay, exactly. This is improvement. It’s not like the same standard that some students just need different things, different standards to be held to.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:25:46]:

Right. Another one is to really to make sure that if you’ve got a situation that they’re really struggling with, make sure you’ve got really clear expectations for them about what they need to do before it’s over. Sometimes just knowing when will this be done is enough to get us through it. I mean, think about a difficult situation. Like, I’m not really big on going to cocktail parties, so it’s always like, I’m going to stay until this time, and then I’m out of here. And I’m like, okay, I got five more minutes, and then I can well.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:26:15]:

That’S like the workout classes I’ve been doing that they’re like, okay, it’s just 30 seconds, okay, you’ve only got ten more seconds. Okay, I can do ten more seconds. I cannot do 30 more seconds. So they’re just like, letting you know you can make it through this. So that’s really helpful, right?

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:26:28]:

Exactly. For some of our kids, if they’re not readers, it might be making them a picture schedule, but for some of our kids who are readers, just jotting down what it is we’re going to do and letting them cross it off gives them some control over that situation.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:26:42]:

And that really ties into what you were saying about choices before. It’s like when you give them autonomy and choices. I use that strategy of this or this all the time with my kids. I used it in the classroom too. Just so helpful.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:26:54]:

And then the other thing that I suggest to teachers to do is my one magic what I swear is a magic trick. If you have kids who can’t line up without some sort of incident happening, which happens in general ed, it happens in special ed, or everybody has to be the line leader or whatever it is, think about putting visuals down on the floor about where they’re supposed to stand in line. And it’s one of. Those interventions that I always forget to do when I set up a classroom. And then the kids are, like, all over each other during the line, and I’m like, oh, I forgot the visuals. And the next night I put them up and then the kids are like, I’m standing on my spot, my hands are by my side, I’m standing on my spot. And I’m like paper. I put paper on the floor. That’s all.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:27:37]:

It’s amazing what things like that can do and the difference they can make.

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:27:41]:

Yeah, it’s just knowing that that’s where I’m supposed to be. You can put them where you want them to sit at the table. You can put them in lines on the floor just as a way so that they know that again, this is what the expectation is.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:27:53]:

Yeah, I love all of these tips. I feel like every teacher could take some or all of that and apply it to their classroom and just see a big difference with just little tweaks. I find that sometimes people just want to make these big changes, and that’s a lot for kids and it’s a lot for us as adults to try to make these big changes, but just like, little things here and there can make a huge difference. Okay, so this has all been so good. You’ve shared so much value and inspiration with us here on the podcast today. But I’m also very excited that you are one of our speakers at Educate and Rejuvenate, and we’re really excited and honored that you applied and that you’re speaking at the event. So excited to have you. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’ll be sharing at Educate and Rejuvenate?

Dr. Christine Reeve [00:28:39]:

Yeah, I’ll actually be talking a lot about the functions of behavior, why kids do what they do, why it’s actually called that’s, Why He Does that, which always is like an eye opener for people. But now what do I do? Because sometimes we’re really good at teaching people like, this is why he does it, but we forgot to tell you what to do about it. Or we’re really good at here’s a bunch of strategies, but we didn’t tell you when to use them. So it really is a talk that focuses on what are the functions of behavior and where does that lead me in terms of what should I do to address them and what can be effective with that. So I’ll have lots of different kinds of tips, and it’s a very visual presentation. I love being able to present with pictures. So there’s a lot of just examples of things that we’ve used with kids over time.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:29:28]:

I cannot wait to watch your session. That sounds amazing. I’m really excited for it. And I bet a lot of you listening, like, if you liked this podcast episode, just wait until you get to see her session with all the visuals. It’s been a lot of fun talking with you today and I’m excited to have you educate, rejuvenate and to continue connecting and sharing this episode with all of our listeners. So thank you.

Kelsey Sorenson [00:29:57]:

If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re ready to take the next step, come grab your ticket to join me at Educate amber Juvenate the Education Event of the Year on June 27 and 28, 2023. This year we have two incredible live keynotes joe Jamrowski, aka mr. D, and bestselling author and video creator Christina Kismich. We have over 60 incredible speakers speaking on topics such as math, language arts. Reading, social, emotional learning, classroom management, homeschooling and tackling burnout. We start the day with a workout together each morning we have panels with. The presenters and you’ll even get to join live coaching with me and even. Raise your hand if you would like to be coached. Plus, we give away tons of prizes throughout the event too. It is the best PD you could ever attend and all of this is happening from. the comfort of your own home. It’s just $19 for a ticket. And past attendees have said that this is what finally lit a fire under them to enjoy teaching again and that. It was well worth every penny. Go to educatorjuvenate.com to learn more about the 2023 event or if you’re listening to this later, that link will show. You what’s up next. As we will continue to do events like this, I hope to see you at Educate and rejuvenate.