A Child Guidance Model for Managing Disruptive Students

1. A Child Guidance Model for Managing Disruptive Students

2.  The solution-focused model shows teachers how
approaching disruptive classroom behavior differently
can improve both students’ behaviors and the overall
classroom atmosphere. This child guidance model
looks at the habitually disruptive student’s
competencies or strengths for solutions, avoiding
focusing on the child’s behavior deficits, and letting
the child’s competencies guide the teacher in finding
solutions. According to Metcalf (1999), when teachers
focus on children’s strengths, we change the context
from failure (problem- focused) to hopefulness
(solution-focused).

3.  The main solution-focused technique is to observe the times
when the habitually disruptive child exhibited competency of
some sort; that is, identifying when in the past the child
responded effectively in the classroom, and then to relay those
times to the child in a caring and curious way. Simply put, we
look forward for what is working with this particular child, and
we make the child aware of it. In the solution-focused model, we
call this technique exceptions, or the times when the child is not
engaged in negative behavior and the problem is not happening.
For example, for a student who has difficulty staying on task, we
look for those times when the child completed tasks successfully;
for a child who exhibits recurrent tantrum episodes, we identify
those occasions in which she was tantrum free. According to
Metcalf, noticing those exceptions gives the teacher clues to use
as they, exceptions, help teachers develop a different context that
is more successful for the child.

4.  When teachers examine those exceptions, says Metcalf, we can
identify the strategies we used that worked occasionally.
Exceptions allow teachers to answer questions such as, “What
can I do differently with this child just for today?” In addition,
“How can I react differently so that my relationship with this
child runs smoothly?” Metcalf recommends that the teacher
writes down what he or she tried with the child, going into detail
about what worked, and erasing the strategies that we used
before that did not work. To change negative and habitually
disruptive classroom behavior then, the clues are in the child’s
successes. The solution-focused model answers mainly two
questions:
A. What is that the child did at the time that makes a difference?
B. What is that the teacher did that makes a difference?

5.  The solution-oriented teacher focuses on what is obvious: that
the habitually disruptive and acting-out student had succeeded
before. To find solutions, the teacher asks the child questions
like:
A. What did you do then that helped you _____ (e.g., stay on task
or remain calm)?
B. What did we do in class that helped you _____?
 Commenting, “I wonder if that would help now;” all this
delivered to the student in an atmosphere of exploration and
discovery. Through this kind of questioning, the teacher gives
the child key information that makes the student aware of his
earlier successes.

6.  Metcalf (1999) lists a set of guiding principles for implementing a
solution-focused model with students that exhibit habitually
disruptive classroom behaviors.
 Talk about disruptive, non-compliant, and acting-out children
with a no pathological approach. Describe the child’s difficulties
in a more positive way to make the student’s behavior problems
solvable.
 Change the description of the behavior problem so that you can
design new strategies based on this new, no-pathological and
solution-oriented definition.
 Do not worry about trying to figure out why a child is having a
behavior problem. See habitually disruptive, non-compliant and
acting-out children as students who are “stuck” in a problem but
are not the problem. This will make it easier for the child to
“escape” from the problem.

7.  When the student exhibits recurrent disruptive behavior in the
classroom, ask the child what she wants to be different in the
classroom. In addition, ask the child what she thinks she can do
differently, and what the child thinks you can do differently.
 Teachers know that, when a lesson plan works, we do it again,
but when a lesson plan does not work, we do not use it again. We
can apply the same principle in managing disruptive behaviors;
in other words, stop repeating a strategy or technique that is not
working, do something different.
 Always focus on the possible and changeable when dealing with
habitually disruptive and non-compliant students.
 Go slowly to build successes. Think of making a slight change,
not a big one.

8.  Always watch for exceptions to behavior difficulties.
Notice what you are doing that is helping the
exceptions to happen; also notice what the child is
doing to make exceptions happen.

9.  Metcalf, L. (1999). Teaching toward solutions. West
Nyack, NY: Center for Applied Research.

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