My love of basketball finds me surrounded by 20 enthusiastic 7-11 year olds on a weekly basis, rain or shine. I am a basketball coach 😊.
After a full day in the classroom it is great to get outside and shoot some hoops with the kids, I have been doing this for years. I have always a mixed ability group and like to promote a shared responsibility for the teaching and learning of basketball skills as often the kids knowledge is far greater than mine😊. I have always found it rewarding to invite the older students to join me in a coaching role but recently I realised something. I realised that many of my 'coaches' were those students who exhibited challenging behaviour.
I had been building positive relationships with these students in particular and placing my trust in them to do the right thing. The result of my guidance and trust was their trust in me and their understanding that I believed in them. I had not set out with this plan in mind, it had just happened organically through our experiences together and our level of mutual understanding, Powerful stuff!
Let's talk about how taking part in activities outside of the classroom and being part of the team is often positive for those who struggle. It is important to recognise the differences between in-class and outside-class environments and the impact these can have on students who exhibit challenging behaviour. Then we can use this information to modify our approach and enable students to acquire new skills for success.
Consider the student who has extreme reactions to physical contact or the feeling of injustice. A random ball in the face or loosing the ball to the opposite team who subsequently score can trigger violent and loud outbursts.
How does their reaction impact our reaction?
How can we curb our reaction in a constructive way?
These questions are intended to make you think...
Scenario 1
Adult reacts to the situation making assumptions about the behaviour and punishes the student by removing them from the game. They have lost their right to play and are now excluded.
Result - Student is excluded and the opportunity for learning how to navigate difficult situations is lost.
Scenario 2
The adult calmly intervenes to defuse the situation, perhaps initiating a water break or pause for all students to enable the space and time to discuss the cause of the challenging behaviour with the affected student.
Result - Opportunity is created for student to reflect together with their trusted adult to find a way to work through the difficulty. Thus enabling the student to experience how they may have reacted differently for an improved outcome.
Behaviour Plans dictate that unacceptable behaviour should result in removal from the activity as highlighted in Scenario 1. But... how will our most vulnerable students ever learn to navigate these situations if they are excluded?
It is our responsibility to create a safe and trusted environment outside of the classroom so that we can support our challenging students there too. But, we must understand that in these situations we might need to support those students in a slightly modified way.
Consider an in-class agreement whereby 2 students who exhibit challenging behaviour are not permitted to ever work together in the same team due to conflict and reaction to conflict. Now, take these 2 students to play a team sport. The sports teacher doesn't know about the agreement and puts them in the same team. One of the boys reacts and informs the sports teacher of the in-class agreement... Do you see the problem?
Surely in this situation... being on opposing teams would result in a higher likelihood of conflict than being in the same team! A wonderful example of why behaviour plans can be inappropriate. It is more important to help our students navigate the situations that they find themselves in... in the moment, to facilitate their longterm success not just to dictate how they must behave. Acquiring the necessary skills to navigate challenging situations promotes student success.
Those are my thoughts ... Please read, share and comment as I would love to hear yours.
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