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In this five-part series focused on the Whole Child, we are illuminating student struggles and providing practical, easy-to-implement strategies for your school and classroom.

The previous blog highlighted the use of nonverbals as a strategy to keep students in learning mode. Here is another low touch (light effort to plan and implement) super strategy you can use in the classroom tomorrow.

Using the FAST Method can raise each child's performance in your classroom and increase your level of resilience. 

What is the goal of a child’s behavior? Does this question stop you cold in your tracks? Depending on the decade you were completing your administrator or teacher training, you may have learned to identify a misbehavior and apply a consequence. The intent was to apply “progressive discipline.” The spread of this approach, we now know, contributed to the tragic school to prison pipeline. 

Children test limits, forget their good behavior, and simply misbehave. It is vital that we learn about the goal of a child’s behavior. All behavior is purposeful. We can use an intervention to meet student needs if we understand what that behavior is saying. Along with this, it is imperative we maintain a safe and welcoming environment where our students feel like they belong and can flourish as learners. Our emotions matter a lot as well. When we are interacting with students, we can sometimes feel upset, angry, challenged or provoked. Students observe our behavior and react to us.

Here is a powerful example of how quickly a teacher determined the goal of her student’s behavior and what she did to turn it on its end and empower her student.

The FAST Method is a powerful strategy and a quick way to help us understand the function or goal of a student’s behavior and mitigate or eliminate misbehavior. At the heart of differentiation and creating an equitable school environment is when we can meet our students’ needs. Understanding these needs gives us the best shot of meeting them. You already have seen or experienced this when it works.

The figures below describe the steps in the FAST Method. The three questions help us identify not only the goal of a child’s behavior but also ways we react. It outlines strategies to address each pattern of behavior.

Can you see one or two ways you can practice these proven strategies? Eliminating and heading off misbehavior is a skill set you practice and hone. It is part of the joy of teaching and working with students. After all, most of us favor improved behavior over serial punishment as a productive outcome. 

If you like what you are reading, share this series with your peers and colleagues. The Whole Educator Series is a comprehensive online training for more high-impact strategies. https://learn.effectiveness.org

In our final blog of this series, we will share additional resources to help you manage classroom behavior while empowering students to also become better self-managers.

Erich Bolz erich@effectiveness.org, VP for Research and District Engagement with CEE, has worked in all levels of education for the past 30 years.

Dr. Greg Benner, Helen and Pat O’Sullivan Professor of Special Education, Implementation Science, University of Alabama

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