We Can Teach Expectations, But Behavior Itself Is Not a Teachable Skill

As educators, we do need to teach expectations for behavior, but we need to get out of the business of thinking that we can teach behavior itself.

If you go to the emergency room, you're likely to see a sign that says something along the lines of, if you are verbally abusive or make threats or assault our staff, we will make you leave, we will maybe have you arrested.

You'll see signs like that in more and more healthcare settings where healthcare providers are finally standing up for themselves and saying, like, we are not in the business of being abused in the course of providing you medical care.

And I think as educators, we have to draw a similar line.

We have to say something similar to put a boundary in place around safety, and to protect ourselves and our other students from violence because we're seeing more and more that if we tolerate violence, we just get more of it.

It doesn't give us an opportunity to teach what the student is lacking in order to help them be not violent.

It just ends up causing more violence that if we don't have a firm boundary, we tolerate unsafe behavior and we get more violence.

And there's this idea that if a student is lacking a particular skill that we should teach it.

People will say things like, well, if a student comes in not knowing the alphabet or not knowing how to do long division or not knowing how to use the periodic table, we teach it.

So if a student comes in not knowing how to behave, we should teach them.

And I think the nugget of truth there is that we should teach behavior expectations.

I think that's what's good about old school PBIS.

The original idea of PBIS was that as a tier one universal support, we teach our expectations for behavior.

But there's this misconception that gets layered on top of that that says if a student is not behaving, that that is a problem that can be solved with teaching.

And I don't think that's the case.

Just as if you're an emergency room doctor and someone is mistreating your staff, someone is being verbally abusive or throwing furniture in the ER and hurting people, if you were to think to yourself, well, this person probably just needs first aid.

They probably just need some stitches, and that's why they're throwing furniture.

Obviously, that is not...

going to be a solution to the problem because the doctor's expertise is in something else.

And I think as educators, our expertise is in something else too.

We are not experts in helping people not throw furniture and helping people not be verbally abusive and all of that.

We are experts in teaching children to read, do math, learn other specific subjects.

And the scope creep that I talked about in my previous video, I think has become a very big problem and has caused us to take on a mission around changing behavior that we really are not capable of fulfilling.

But once we take it on, we have to kind of double down on the fact that we've taken it on and we keep doing things that don't work, that don't make the environment safe, that continue to make the environment less and less safe and put ourselves in harm's way when it comes to violent student behavior.

So I've said in several other videos that I don't think behavior is a teachable skill.

I think it's something else that has to do with self-control and executive function.

But let me know what you think about all of this.

I'd love to know what you're seeing in your school.