Conflict in the Classroom

Nicholas J. Long and William C. Morse's book, Conflict in the Classroom: The Education of At-Risk and Troubled Students, Fifth Edition, is one of the many publications they have produced. It was published in 1995, but the authors have released other newer publications. This and the books with the same title but different subtitles are designed as college textbooks. This particular version is a collection of reprinted articles by a number of authors, including themselves, with a thread of commentary and information to tie it together. The text is comprehensive at looking at managing challenging behaviors in the classroom, it is not a text that describes behaviorism techniques such as recording data, planning interventions, and types and effects of consequences.

While containing a depth of information, I think this text would be challenging for preservice teachers because of its lack of concrete suggestions. Very few vignettes appear to show what they describe.

About halfway through the text they describe the difference between aggressive behavior, hostile behavior and violence.

• Aggressive- unplanned, often triggered by personal stress or frustration. impulsive breakthroughs
• Hostile- deliberate expression of hate. Revenge, intentional cruelty toward a person or group
• Violence- out of control anger and hate. mindless. Often results in unplanned injury. (p. 338)

They intimate that aggression can be addressed proactively. That is where teaching must occur. Their specific guidelines include:

1. use strategies to reduce inappropriate behaviors
2. clearly state expectations
3. accept angry feelings but not behavior
4. encourage positive problem solving
5. ensure student is responsible for behavior
6. affirm efforts to improve behavior
7. intervene quickly with logical consequences
8. explain reasons and values behind stopping behavior
9. set up a behavioral contract. (p. 341)

It would be nice if they followed up the list with a few examples of the guidelines in action..

A few of the articles included quotes that made me think. Long quoted David Burns, "you feel the way you think" (p. 255). It showcases how our feelings are products of our mind. I was working in a program with Second Step curriculum. They highlighted that students understand that different people can feel differently about the same thing. Understanding those feelings and having ways to think about them can change the intensity of the feeling.

Myrna R. Olson wrote, "Although these parents often hold reasonable values, their intentions are not joined to appropriate parental behaviors" (p. 555). This is true for all of us at times. Despite our best intentions, we all sometimes act in less than ideal ways. Her insight is important because it supports the concept that they are the best parents they can be in the moment, a positive way to view parents. When we hold parental behavior in a positive light, it makes our interaction with parents more positive rather than accusatory. That helps to establish working relationships that will benefit the children.

Get Better Faster

I ran into mention of this book in something I was reading and tracked down a copy to see what gems it had to share. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo wrote Get Better Faster: A 90-day Plan for Coaching New Teachers to highlight steps instructional leaders can help their staff improve at a faster rate than normal. He is a representative of Uncommon Schools- a network of charter schools that focus on improving urban school outcomes. They are based in the northeast with locations in Rochester, the large city near me. Some of Uncommon Schools have had exceptional results, especially considering the mainstay of its staff is young. At least in my location, pay is limited to perhaps 7 years experience in the public sector.

The book includes a DVD that has additional materials and video clips that highlight the text. While it is somewhat disruptive to go back and forth between the text and the video, seeing the steps in action is valuable.

The book details a scope and sequence for teaching staff how to manage a classroom. It breaks down the process into 5 phases: the first a preparatory one that begins school starts and the last a stretch it for people who have developed skill in the first sections. The book provides lesson plans for teaching professionals the skills, relies heavily on role playing to become comfortable with the skills and videos to show skills well implemented or areas where skills could be refined. One premise of Uncommon Schools is frequent observation and feedback cycles- at least every other week. They utilize data heavily to inform next steps. Teachers in the videos are seen with clipboards to record student understandings throughout instruction.

Scripted conversations are often a focus based on the premise that you have one chance to deliver instruction to students or staff so having it firmly thought out is critical. Writing out what instruction the teacher will give, what the expected student response will be and what to do if there is a lack of compliance is a strategy seen in every step of teacher development. While this focus enables teachers to practice prior to implementation, it is unrealistic in the grand scale of teaching. Presumably there will be generalization from the scripted component to the rest of the day. An interesting approach to helping teachers develop and refine skills at a faster rate than traditional models. Elements could certainly be used by coaches in other programs to help identify problem areas and help teach staff to improve their approaches.

Intervention and the Essentials of Assessing, Preventing and Overcoming Reading DIfficulties

This is my fourth entry on this text.

David A. Kilpatrick's book, Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, ends with his discussion of how to prevent and remediate reading problems. An important thing to keep in mind is his use of the simple reading theory which explains reading success as the product of word reading skills and language skills. Students who demonstrate language issues should be addressed with ENL services if they are English language learners or the services of a speech language pathologist (SLP) as approprriate. Many of the school district SLPs I have encountered at the elementary level are excellent at working with articulation issues, but demonstrate varying skill and attention to other language issues. Attention to receptive and expressive vocabulary grammar, background knowledge, and semantics is important when a student's poor reading levels cannot be explained by word level concerns.

As a prevention approach he encourages kindergarteners be exposed to phonemic awareness and letter sound training. Some commercial programs that address these issues are Florida Center for Reading Research Phonological Awareness Program (online and free), Road to the Code, Rosner Phonological Awareness Training Program, Interactive Strategies Approach, Ladders to Literacy, Words their Way, Equipped for Reading Success. At both the Tier 1 and Tier 2 levels, these are best implemented in small groups. In order to address potential language related reading difficulties he suggests shared book reading, literacy orientated language programs, vocabulary development and Developing Language and Literacy (Carroll, et al, 2011). The chapter on prevention provides the research base behind these programs as well as descriptions of them.

He suggests deep assessments to determine the specific cause of any challenges before implementing any intervention. Because the goal of intervention is to catch students up, he advocates the use of highly effective programs as measured by growth in standard scores. Unfortunately many students are given less effective interventions. The chart below categorizes word level intervention approaches that are commonly used.

	Minimal –modest growth 0-6 standard score point improvement	Highly successful 12-25 standard score point improvements
Elements included	Limited to a few areas of word reading- phonics, phonemic awareness to blending or other (ex. Irlen lenses only address visual fatigue components)	·         Eliminate phonological awareness deficits and teach to the advanced level ·         Teach and reinforce phonics skills and decoding ·         Provide opportunities to read connected text
Programs	·         Orton-Gillingham ·         Wilson ·         Read 180 ·         System 44 ·         Repeated Readings ·         Flashcards ·         Reading Recovery ·         Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) ·         Fast ForWord ·         Failure Free Reading ·         Great Leaps ·         Irlen Lenses ·         Visual Tracking Training  ·         Learning Styles	·         Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (LiPS) ·         Phono-Graphics ·         Discover Reading ·         Read, Write, Type ·         Equipped for reading Success

Again, he describes the programs with indications of why they are or are not highly effective. Even with highly effective programs, some students will not make significant progress.  15-20 hours of intervention should reveal  how a student will respond. RTI was introduced to special education based on the LiPS, Phono-Graphics and Discover Reading research.

He provides a list of components for effective language related interventions (those impacting comprehension). Importantly, students with language related issues should receive evaluations and appropriate interventions from SLPs. For comprehension skills, he suggests instruction in vocabulary, background knowledge, inferencing, working memory and attention, and strategy skills (ex. summarization, inferencing, comprehension monitoring and identifying main idea. He recommends Developing Reading Comprehension (Clarke et al, 2014) as a resource for assembling elements of an effective comprehension program,

Overall, he suggests using group sizes of a maximum of 1:5 of students with similar needs profiles. Rather than round robin reading (a method with ample evidence of not working to achieve improved reading skills or comprehension of the task at hand) he recommends a solo-choral-solo-choral approach where the changes occur every line of text. This improves attention to task, one of the challenges with round robin reading. He recommends peer tutoring, reciprocal teaching and spelling instruction to support reading.

Of note is his assertion that RTI should not be used as an excuse to delay special education referral. For students at the extreme end of the continuum or who demonstrate resistance to interventions more rapid referral in order to access more intense interventions is an important consideration.

Teachers tend to be woefully separated from the research base that supports the use of a program. Any parent should be able to ask for the research that supports a programs use and receive it in short order. This book provides a good source of that research. Research conducted by the manufacturer of a program must be closely examined. Assertions of research based preformance should be looked at in terms of their effectiveness at doing the job intended. Understanding the research is important so that programs can be selected and implemented with fidelity.