Meeting Pattern

Description

Welcome to Behavior is Language, an interactive distance learning course, designed to give you a new perspective on student behavior and effective tools for facilitating positive student change. Behavior is Language provides a developmental framework for understanding what students are trying to tell you through the “language” of their behavior. The course teaches behavioral techniques and intervention strategies that remediate disruptive behaviors, reduce power struggles while increasing classroom control and reduce your workloads and burnout. This program helps you, as well as students, find creative, effective solutions to behavioral problems.

After you have completed your studies in the chapters on behavioral theory and interventions, you will be presented with various classroom scenarios in which you will be able to practice and hone your skills for interpreting behavior, determining appropriate interventions and effectively debriefing your students.

Although all of the course content presented in this course can be applied to any person of any age or ability level, some of the intervention strategies require that a certain level of intellectual and verbal skill be possessed by the students if they are to complete verbal and written debriefs. Debriefs will need to be adjusted for younger or less skilled individuals.

Syllabus, Objectives, and Outcomes

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will demonstrate their ability to:

• Review and discuss how students communicate thoughts, feeling, emotions, issues, and fears through their behavior when they cannot communicate verbally and learn to effectively interpret student behavior.
• Understand and explain how a child’s World View develops and factors that may cause this view to negatively impact the student behavior both in and out of the classroom.
• Articulate a child’s Inner World development and factors that may cause this development to negatively impact the student behavior both in and out of the classroom.
• Discuss how students attempt to script teachers into familiar authority roles that may be counter productive to the student’s education and behavioral adaptation.
• Learn, discuss and do further research on the affect’s safety, consistency and trust have on the classroom environment, student behavior and learning outcomes.
• Describe how to recognize when students are setting up potential power struggles that can negatively impact classroom safety, control, behavior and learning.
• List and discuss general rules about student-to-student and student-to-staff personal space issues and how to set guidelines and policies around personal space that are effective for all students.
• Recognize family issues and dynamics that may strongly influence a student’s behavior; causing social, emotional and behavioral issues in the school setting.
• Review and describe how some parents may become enmeshed with their child and be unable to separate parent needs from the child’s needs and how, in or out of their awareness, parents may actually sabotage the student’s educational experience.
• Learn how students with siblings may be involved in sibling rivalry issues and how those issues could negatively impact the student’s relationships with peers and disrupt the learning process.
• Understand and explain how they as teachers may have negative thoughts and feelings about certain students and/or may counter-transfer negative thoughts and feelings onto their students.
• Use effective and efficient methods to gather information on family dynamics and structure that may be used to plan an effective behavioral intervention plan for the student.
• Discuss how their own issues and Ego Tortures can influence and impact how they work with certain students and groups.
• Employ a behavioral intervention system that is individualized; is sensitive to each student’s social, emotional and behavioral issues; and maximizes each student’s chances of correcting and/or effectively monitoring their own behavior so they may achieve positive academic learning outcomes.
• Practice the most effective methods for giving verbal and non-verbal behavioral reminders to students.
• Learn and practice the most effective methods for assigning students interruptive time-outs and methods for verbally debriefing students off of these time-outs.
• Learn and practice the most effective methods for assigning written debriefs to students needing to discuss their behavior and come up with acceptable behavioral alternatives.
• Learn and practice the use of a quiet area, which students may be assigned to when behavioral intervention is required.
• Learn and practice when and how to assign In-School-Suspensions to students who exhibit out of control behavior that is threatening, unsafe and/or damages property.
• Learn and practice when and how to assign Out-of-School-Suspensions, which align with state and district policies, to students who exhibit out of control behavior that is threatening, unsafe and/or damages property.

Course Materials (Online):

Title: Behavior is Language: Strategies for Managing Disruptive Behavior, Dr. Karen Lea/Mick Jackson

Review Syllabus: Behavior_Is_Language_Karen_Lea_VESi.pdf - COURSE MUST BE COMPLETED AND SUBMITTED BY AUGUST 15th, 2025.

TESTIMONIALS:

"THE OBJECTIVES WERE CLEAR AND LAID OUT WELL. I KNEW WHAT EACH CHAPTER WAS ABOUT."

"VERY WORTHWHILE COURSE. I UNDERSTAND HOW BEHAVIOR IS SO MUCH MORE THAT JUST HOW YOU ACT, BUT THERE ARE MANY COMPONENTS THAT GO INTO IT."

"IT WAS VALUABLE BEING ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW AND WHY STUDENTS BEHAVE IN CERTAIN WAYS, AND HOW TO BEST HELP THEM SUCCEED."

"THERE WERE MANY RESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR ME TO USE IN MY TEACHING, BUT MORE WOULD ALWAYS BE BETTER."

"VALUABLE INFORMATION, A LOT OF IDEAS TO TAKE TO MY CLASSROOM."

"THIS WAS A GREAT COURSE TO HELP ME LEARN HOW TO BE A BETTER TEACHER FOR MY STUDENTS AND UNDERSTAND THEM MORE.  IT WAS GREAT TO BE ABLE TO WORK AT MY OWN PACE TO COMPLETE THE ONLINE COURSE."