Stop Reacting and Start Responding to Student Behavior

 A pencil flies across the room.  

A fist whacks you in the face.

Jennifer, your most quiet, yet compliant student is suddenly crying in the corner after being cursed at.

Before you know it, you are right up next to your most challenging student letting them know you will be calling their parents while they sit in the principal’s office.

Most of us have fallen victim to mistakenly “reacting” to disruptive behavior, rather than “responding” to it.

Now, you may be thinking, how is sending to them to the principal’s office not being responsive? They need to learn this behavior is not okay!

 And to that we say, we hear you. We know we need to teach students to discriminate between what is okay and what is not in different situations. However, in the middle of a crisis, or even immediately after the fact, is NOT the time to be teaching. Is it also not the time to be reacting.

What is the difference between reacting vs. responding?

A reaction is instant. It is driven by our feelings, beliefs, and biases in that moment. A reaction neglects to take into consideration the long-term effects of what you are about to say or do. When we react, we are essentially using a defense mechanism. When we have a student escalating to the point of using unsafe behavior, our adrenaline kicks in, and we develop the intense urge to protect not only ourselves and our other students (of course, safety comes first), but we often feel the immediate need to instate a punitive consequence and make sure that student learns a lesson. Reactions can be reinforcing to educators because they often make us feel better.

Responding, on the other hand, involves more thought. Responses are driven based on previous information or data we have gathered prior to the event. When we respond to a crisis, we are more calm, taking into consideration the short-term and long-term effects of what we are about to do or say. How is this going to affect this student? How will this response affect his or her family? How will this response affect the rest of my staff? Me? My class? When we as educators respond to a student who is being disruptive, non-compliant, or even aggressive, we are focused on the meaning behind the behavior, rather than focusing on punishing the student themselves.

Why choosing to respond, rather than react, is far more likely to get true, long-term behavior change.

Now, we aren’t going to get into the functions of behavior in this post (you can read more about that here), but we do need to take the purpose of behavior into consideration when responding to it. If we are reacting to a behavior, there is an extremely high likelihood we may inadvertently or accidentally reinforce the behavior – this is NOT what we want to be doing. We want to weaken the disruptive behavior, not strengthen it.  When we plan out ahead of time our responses to the behavior so as to withhold a payoff for it, we are far more likely to start to decrease that behavior over time because it’s not “working” for the student anymore.

When we react without thinking things through, there is also a very high chance we are causing more trauma or harm to the student, even if we don’t think we are. Students with chronic behavior problems tend to have a long history of adults attempting to punish, reprimand, take away their preferred items, exclude them from activities or send them out of the room – by continuing to react by doing any one of these things, we are only reinforcing their own negative thoughts about themselves.

Let us be clear – we are not saying that disruptive or unsafe behavior is okay or that there should not be a “consequence" for their actions – what we are saying is that we need to make sure we are responding in a way that avoids reinforcing the behavior and attempts to defuse it, rather than escalate it even further.

When we respond in a calm, thoughtful manner, we are ensuring we are mirroring an adult who is in control of his or her own behaviors. When we respond, we are showing the student that even though they are upset, we will utilize supportive behaviors on our end, rather than threatening words and actions. When you work with the student in supporting them through their upset, rather than work against them, there is a far better chance their behavior will subside and your relationship will remain intact.