The Functional Behavior Assessment and the Behavior Intervention Plan

Stella: [00:00:00] So much for joining us today. I’m so excited about our presentation. Without further ado, we’re going to get started. I’m going to go through a few slides with you, before I turn it over to Rebekah. But I want to tell you all a little bit about Kentucky SPIN, and then I’ll do a little bit of housekeeping before Rebekah gets started.

We are Kentucky SPIN, special parent involvement network. We are the parent training and information center for the state of Kentucky. There’s one in every state. Some states have a few, more than just one, but we are funded by the US Department of Education. We have been the parent training and information center since 1988, when Kentucky first received the PTI Grant. So, we work with families who have children or youth with all types of disabilities, birth through age 26. But we also work with parents, families, and professionals to provide that much needed special education information.

Just a little bit about us. We [00:01:00] do not act as attorneys, but we do like to say we empower families to effectively advocate for their children, which I believe that is so very important. I’m a parent of a young adult, who’s 23, with an intellectual disability, so this has been my life, and it’s been wonderful for me. I found SPIN early on in Clayton’s special education career in school, and it was so wonderful, because SPIN empowered me to be a better advocate for him, and now I work for them, so that’s pretty amazing. We provide peer support, and we help families access needed information and resource, just like we’re doing today. We are providing this webinar for families. We will have it available for sharing later. We are recording this, so we’ll be able to share this out later. But the main thing that I like to say I do and all of our consultants do is we lend a listening ear.

I wanted to share this quote with you especially during this pandemic that our state and nation is going through right now. It’s from [00:02:00] our executive director Rhonda Logsdon. She says, “The key to success for all our children during this unprecedented time is to work in partnership, as we all go down this uncharted territory together.” And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are wanting to provide information to families, and get those valuable resources out there to families the best that we can.

During this time with Rebekah, you do have handouts that you can download, but I am also going to be emailing everyone who is on this webinar today. I will email you all of the handouts. And then we will also send you the link of the recording when it is available for replay, and that’ll be in about a week. But I wanted to let you know that there are handouts available.

There’s also a question box. I will break during the presentation if anyone has a specific question for Rebekah. You can type that in the question box, and I’ll be watching those questions as we go along.

But I’m excited about our speaker Rebekah Evans. [00:03:00] She is the school psychologist for Pulaski County Schools. She’s in her fifth year working with Pulaski County. And she’s a school psychologist, so she knows her stuff, and that’s why we felt she was perfect for this presentation today. She obtained her specialists in psychology degree through the Eastern Kentucky University in 2016, and she has spent the last year working as the district’s positive behavior intervention and supports and response to intervention. Those are more acronyms that we have in the special ed world, but she is the coordinator for that. Her special interests include autism, trauma informed practices, behavior assessment, and intellectual assessment. So, we are so very excited to have Rebekah with us today. And Rebekah, as you go along, I will try to change the slides as I see, but if I’m not quick enough, just let me know. But I will be muted, and I’m going to let Rebekah have the floor now. Thank you so much Rebekah for being with us.

Rebekah: [00:03:57] Sure. I really appreciate the opportunity to [00:04:00] join you all today. A lot of the information that we’re going to review comes directly from Midwest PBIS Network, and so, you can access a lot of this information on their website as well. It’s a phenomenal website, and they cover not only tier-3 aspects like we’re going to talk about today, but they also have tier-1 and tier-2 level supports as well. And the great thing about it, there’s a lot of their information, like we’re looking at today, is free to use, and they actually support the idea of being able to use a lot of their pre-made PowerPoints like this. So, it’s been really great to be able to access that information, and to work with them as well.

And I want to say if you ever have the opportunity to train under them, it’s a great opportunity. There’s some great people here listed that took part in putting all this information together. So, we can go ahead and get started looking at this.

[00:05:00] One of the great things to think about here when we look at who all is involved, when we’re thinking about FBAs and BIPs, is trying to think who you want your team to include, and it’s important to have a team approach to this in order to include expertise buy-in and also accountability of all that’s involved. So, some ideas of people you may want to include are your psychologist, or social workers, people in student services, your counselors, especially administration. You want to make sure that you have buy-in from them. And then also your teachers that are working directly with the students. And then also those teacher dissidents as well.

So, looking at some of the objectives that we’re going to look at today. We’re going to look at identifying the essential systems that need to be in place, in order to work through the process of FBAs and BIPs. In PBIS, it’s always important [00:06:00] to look at systems as that framework that you’re following for the supports and the practices that you put into place for students.

We’ll also look at when an FBA is necessary, the steps for conducting one, and also the data that needs to be included with that. Looking at some of the critical components of behavior plans. And we’ll actually look at what’s called a competing behavior pathway that will lead to a behavior plan, and I believe it is one of your additional handouts here too. But we’ll look at it step by step, as well as looking at evaluation plans to make sure the plan is effective.

The next slide here is just a little picture, kind of a comic to look at thinking about where all the students are, and then you have the one student saying they were all expelled. We’ll look at this here in a little bit, thinking about making sure that we’re not reinforcing certain functions inadvertently, [00:07:00] especially thinking about that escape function. A lot of times, students will be reinforced that way, even if it’s not that we’re meaning to. That’s just a good little comic to look at here.

Considering the research behind functional behavior assessments and also BIPs, we start to see that students, by the time we can start considering these, are already at a high-risk of placement change. So, they may be looking at even special education services for a student that may benefit solely from an FBA being completed. More youth need FBA sooner, and we’ll look at this through the tiered level process here in just a second. Also making sure that we don’t just file away these documents as they’re completed. And we want to make sure that we’re continually looking at those, trying to support the student. And then also making sure that [00:08:00] we put into place those appropriate behaviors that we want to see, not just rewarding them based on what we’re looking at, but looking at replacement behaviors as well, to be able to be more proactive instead of reactive.

So, to start here, we’ll kind of introducing NTSS, and where do these really fall into the triangle.

The next slide shows the triangle inverted. Most of the time, we look at a triangle the other way, but kind of turning it upside down on its top here to think about how we work down from tier 1 to tier 3. I want to introduce an idea here just so we’re kind of thinking about it ahead of time, but thinking about how we can even be using some of these practices at tier 1. We’ll look at that at the very end, but most of our focus will be at tier 3, so thinking about what [00:09:00] tier 1 that you had in your school, what practices in place. Then looking at tier 2, you may have a check-in, checkout process, maybe even using modified check-in check-out, special groups for students, based on your data that you’re considering there. And then also moving into tier 3, starting to look at brief functional behavior assessments. And then beyond that, even more complex and multiple domain FBAs. We’ll think about this too as a continuum throughout. Just thinking about how FBAs can be either brief or complex, and kind of the differentiation there between those two. I guess we can move onto the next slide.

It takes the triangle, and kind of puts it back to where we typically see the triangle being looked at. So, just to review here, thinking about that [00:10:00] tier 1 with 80% of students responding. This is the only thing that we’ve done systematically and comprehensively with fidelity. So, those are words that we’ll continue to look at here, making sure things are done with fidelity. That way we can see that that is being sufficient for those students at that level.

Again, with tier 2, that’s another layer of support that those students are receiving. And we want to make sure that we continue to support those students, not only through tier 2, but also with those preventative measures through tier 1.

And then lastly, looking at the top, thinking about tier 3 being those very individualized and intensive supports that we provide for students. We want to try to reduce the intensity and then the complexity of those behaviors as well.

And that’s really the purpose that we start to see through FBAs and BIPs at this level. So not only are we benefiting the student [00:11:00] with this, but also the staff and families, and even the community members that are involved that student.

So, looking kind of at the low here, and we kind of have a visualization of what this will look like. Just to review moving from tier 1 to tier 2, this kind of introduces an idea of a lower level versus a higher level of tier 2 supports, and where we can see FBAs falling in that process. You can see if you have a general kind of standardized approach to tier 2, you can start to use function based thinking beyond that process, and that’s really where we want to start looking at considering our FBA process, is moving to either a modified check-in/check-out, a more specific group for a student, or another intervention that you find most appropriate for that student. And that can all take place before getting [00:12:00] involved in the actual process of completing a brief FBA, or then even a complex one later on.

Looking at the next slide, it just gives us another visual of thinking how the systems and practices all work together with the data that we’re considering, in order to come with the outcomes that we’re looking to obtain, thinking about the data there that supports that decision making that the teams are doing.

I did want to plug here about Pbisapps.org. If this is a website that you’re unfamiliar with, it really provides a lot of different types of data. I know our district really depends on this website quite a bit. It provides us fidelity measures that we’re able to look at. It also includes school-wide information data that things look at monthly, and then also tier 2 through [00:13:00] check-in/check-out. It provides data that we can look at really on a daily basis if needed, but usually our teaming looks at it usually every two weeks. And then also you can have individualized data on there as well. So, again, that’s Pbisapps.org, if that’s a website that you’d be interested in looking at. It’s a great way to consider data at this

Stella: [00:13:25] Rebekah, I want to make sure that I’m able to keep up with you on the slide. So, if I’m not where you need me to be, just let me know. We do have a question, so let me break for just a minute, and ask you this question. She says, “I am a doctoral psychology student, and she’s in that program right now, what can I do as a clinician to be more supportive of students and families during the process?”

Rebekah: [00:13:48] So, I’m thinking with that question, trying to work with the schools in the best way that you can. Trying to figure out what level of supports they may already be providing the students that you’re working [00:14:00] with. It’s been really helpful for us to be able to invite members outside of our regular school teams into our meetings that we have with parents. So, we’ll have, and we’ll talk about this here in a second, what’s called like a small team meetings or we’ll even call them RTI or PBIS meetings that we have for individual students. And so, that’s when we start to bring in our families, we start to bring in people that are also associated with that student, whether it’s their counseling agency, or something like that. So, if you’re directly involved with a student, being able to see if the school is providing those types of meetings, or even asking if that’s something that’s a possibility, I think would be the best way to try to provide support in that manner.

Stella: [00:14:54] That’s great. Thank you.

Rebekah: [00:14:56] You’re welcome.

So, the next part here that we’ll look at [00:15:00] kind of jumps more into that tier 2 systems level of support, and we’ll talk a little bit more about the teaming process. That question came in a perfect time.

So, looking at the slide teaming at tier 2, we have a couple of different types of teams that we’ll talk about. The first one is the secondary systems planning team. And this is really like those school level administration, PBIS coaches, that look at the data from these interventions that they have going. So again, looking at the overall effectiveness, the fidelity of the intervention, and then also creating interventions that may not be on that continuum already. So, thinking through, this is usually a standardized practice that you fit students in as soon as they start meeting criteria at that level. That’s what that teaming is really for.

But here at the bottom, we have a secondary problem-solving team. So again, this is what we just [00:16:00] discussed looking at one student at a time. Every school typically tries to have this type of meeting. It just may look different at different places. And then also considering this is when teachers and families become a little bit more involved at that level. Again, this may be called a problem-solving team, a small team meeting. They’re called different things, but most of the time that goal is the same.

And just some personal experience with these, it’s been really interesting to see what can come at those meetings. I was a part of one not long ago, where we met on one particular student, and it was actually a concern regarding math, and the team started to think that they didn’t have the appropriate supports that were needed for that student. So, kind of jumping back up there, looking at the interventions that are missing from the continuum, just meeting on that one student actually ended up in the result of an entire group being created [00:17:00] based on that students need. So, not only when these problem-solving teams meet do you help support the one student that you’re talking about, but you can also create more opportunities for other students through those measures. So, it was really promising to see when things work together, what you can accomplish.

Again, you’ll see that there’s four columns here for three-tiered level system of support. So, what we have here in the middle are the two different teams that we just talked about for tier 2. Again, thinking about the lower level, being that secondary, and then the problem solving team kind of being that higher level, or you may start to introduce them this talk of brief FBAs and BIPs.

The next slide just has some questions for you to consider. These may be helpful to look at, especially after the PowerPoint, after we get done, when you take this back to your teams to try [00:18:00] to consider your readiness and what’s been going on in your buildings already. We start to find and PBIS quite often that a lot of these things are already taking place in some fashion, but it really might just be rethinking it, or trying to build upon some of the things that you’re already doing.

We did this at our middle school not long ago, thinking about estimating how much time is being spent on certain students, and then kind of trying to take a guess of how many students you’re going to be intervening with this time, and thinking about larger schools. So, thinking of a middle school of 900 to 1,000 students, that’s a lot of students when you start looking at tier 2 and tier 3. So, it kind of made us start looking at our resources that we have available, and also the different people who would volunteer to be a part of this, either being facilitators, or being a part of other roles that can [00:19:00] help get a lot of this work done. So, it’s a good time to start getting creative, and seeing what all you have available in your buildings. Again, making sure that you use fidelity measures to kind of help guide you in that process, and to see what you want to continue working on in your buildings.

The next slide I believe is a handout. It’s just kind of a picture of that guiding questions handout that’s listed here. It’s some questions that you can ask your team regarding where you stand in terms of the process so far. And this kind of handout will help you decide moving forward some things that you’re already doing, and then also things that you would want to continue working on. So, it revolves a lot about the teaming that you have, the different types of meetings that are taking place. And again, making sure that those meetings are efficient. That [00:20:00] really is one of the most important aspects of BBIS is making sure that your meetings are covering what need to be covered, and not that they’re just a waste of time, something that people start to dread attending. So, it is making sure that those are really staying focused on the topic that you’re needing to cover, and making sure things get accomplished, because when that’s happening, they really do become something that people want to be involved in, and students really benefit from that as well.

Stella: [00:20:35] Rebekah, how does a parent request a functional behavior assessment? Is that something that a parent can do if they see that there are behaviors that they feel like their child is having at school? How does a parent get involved on that end of it?

Rebekah: [00:20:56] Right, that’s a great question, thinking about how to [00:21:00] ask that, and to be knowledgeable going forward, of how you can ask that question. I would think reaching out to your admin and also counselors, just to kind of see what already is going on. And it may be a case that they even suggest that they try something else first before jumping directly to an FBA, or even a BIP, especially thinking if a student hasn’t been involved yet in any of the lower level tier-two processes, they may be able to share information regarding that. But thinking too that an FBA can be requested for a student either in RTI, so the response-to-intervention process, or even a student that is already in special education. We see too that sometimes parents will work with that as well at that level.

Stella: [00:21:56] And can a child have a behavior plan, [00:22:00] not necessarily maybe as formal, but can a child just have a behavior plan that’s included in their IEP?

Rebekah: [00:22:10] Yes, exactly. We see that quite a bit, where a lot of information, thinking about just looking at previous records and behavior data that’s already there, teachers can make behavior plans without having the formal FBA completed. When they do start looking at completing a formal FBA, that is something that requires permission from the parent, because that’s going to involve a lot of individualized interview and observations for that student. So, you can have a behavior plan without an FBA, but parents should always know when an FBA is being completed, because that is something that requires permission. And then also usually involves their involvement as well, their input [00:23:00] in regarding their child.

Stella: [00:23:05] Wonderful. Thank you so much for clarifying that.

Rebekah: [00:23:08] You’re welcome. And we’ll look here in a second too, it’s kind of interesting to think that you may have an FBA done, and then also needing that BIP. It’s kind of not a waste, but thinking about doing an FBA without doing a BIP, we’ll kind of look at that. But you’re certainly looking at a BIP without necessarily having to have FBA.

This next part here, we’ll look at why one would be completed, and then also who all is involved when you start looking at getting one done. So, looking at first, why do we conduct FBAs? It kind of increases looking at positive behaviors also, instead of just looking at the behaviors that you want to intervene with. We’ll look here in a second when we look at the competing behavior pathway.

[00:24:00] The first thing you start with are strengths, and that’s one of my favorite things about that document, is whoever you’re interviewing, either it’s the teacher, the parent, or even the student themselves, you first consider what the strengths are, try to be able to build off of those.

We also look at the effectiveness of the settings that the student are in, to make sure that is that setting the most appropriate for the student at the time. We’ll look at the required laws regarding IEPs, and how those fit in. And then also this last part here, looking at behavior plans, and making sure that they are tied to the function of that behavior. And this is where they really fits in. They’re thinking about that you really never need to do an FBA without expecting to do a BIP to follow up.

So, the next slide here looks at who needs to be involved when you’re completing an FBA. [00:25:00] So, first we’ll look at how a student is referred. Again, they typically start in that lower level of tier 2, and then move up to the higher level, based on the progress that you’re looking at for the student. So again, some of the data that may be considered is check-in/check-out data, office discipline referrals, and then also if requests are made for assistance, and this can either come through admin or teachers or parents like we discussed as well.

We do have the exception that at times the student doesn’t necessarily move through the tiered level process. If we see that there is an urgent need, at times a student may move in, and we see that we don’t need to spend that extra time of trying to work their way through to get to that level, because we see that they’re already there, and we see that they need that level of support.

But I do want to say here, this is a good time to think [00:26:00] about with your teams possibly creating decision-making rubrics to make that process a little bit smoother for you all when you’re looking at the criteria of what’s necessary, to be able to move through that process. Having that rubric can help you reference while you’re streamlining that decision-making process, so kind of just outlining that at tier 2 and tier 3 what’s really necessary criteria for that.

An example maybe if you’re looking at office discipline referrals, if you have a student that has three or more major office referrals, or maybe even six or more minor referrals, is that when you go ahead and start thinking, hey, we should probably intervene here in some fashion. So, having those things done ahead of time can really save you some time later in the future, especially if you have a large volume of students that you’re working with.

[00:27:00] So, looking here at the process just kind of helps us to see how do we move from the very beginning, trying to decide bringing an FBA. So, having the very end-result here of adopting the BIP. So again, the first thing we’re going to do is looking at the finding the problem behavior, conducting the assessment as step 2. So again, this is thinking we’ve gotten permission, and after we’ve decided, yes, we need an FBA, we asked the staff and student families who are all involved, why they think the behavior is occurring, because thinking about that function is really that why question. And we look at different things to you’re considering where, when, and also how the behavior is being seen.

The third step here, where we design the individualized behavior plan for that student, and this is really when you start wanting to collaborate as a team. So, you may have one person that’s really [00:28:00] involved there heavily at tier 2, looking at this type of assessment. But once we start getting into step 3 of developing the plan, you want to make sure that you have various people involved, and to make sure that it actually is adequate for that student.

The fourth part is ensuring fidelity of implementation, so having some plans kind of put in place ahead of time of how you’re going to make sure that that plan is being carried out as it says it’s going to be. And then also monitoring that plan impact. A lot of time, I will suggest here at this point that you go ahead and set a time that you’re going to meet back as a team to be able to look at the data based on the plan. So, ideally, you’ll have behavior data that was taken place prior to the plan. Then you’ll have a period of time that you have once the plan is implemented.

So again, you want your team to meet back after you’ve given some time. I usually say [00:29:00] about six weeks to be able to meet back and decide is the plan working or not. Sometimes, and I will say this does happen, you have a plan that just completely does not work, and you can usually tell that pretty early on. And if that’s the case, you may want to meet back earlier than six weeks, maybe even two or three if you can tell that it’s really just not working for that student. And that’s when you can start to adapt the ways you need to.

So, again, looking at this workflow, you have the referral that either comes through from the parent, teacher, admin based on data. You determine who your facilitator is going to be for that FBA. A lot of the times you’ll see this as your social worker, your counselor or psychologist. Typically, it’s somebody that is more familiar looking at behavior and trying to figure out the function of that. The third part here the facilitator generates the FBA, so really puts on the [00:30:00] paper, how they’re seeing the behavior take place, when and where, and then also looking at the antecedents and consequences of that behavior. The team needs to develop the BIP. And again, this includes all stakeholders looking at a follow-up meeting, and then looking at weekly data monitor by that facilitator.

So, we’ve talked a lot about the facilitator and who that might be, but this next slide kind of outlines exactly what the facilitator, as well as other stakeholders are doing along with the process. So, the first one here, I’m thinking that the facilitator will be the one that completes that competing behavior pathway that we’re going to look at. So, this really includes a lot of that hypothesizing based on the information you’ve collected both through interviews, record reviews, and observations of that student. They help lead the team [00:31:00] in creating the BIP. So again, this isn’t just a single person creating the plan, but it really is a team effort of everybody involved. But you do want to have somebody facilitating that discussion of where you want that behavior plan to go. I mean really just making sure everybody’s on the same page with that document.

So, looking at other team members, their job would be to ask questions for clarification. And I really stress this here for teachers, if they’re going to be the ones that are really implementing the plan with the student, you’ll want to make sure that they ask questions when the team is meeting, to make sure that they know exactly how the plan supposed to be going. And then also working with facilitator during that time to contribute as an implementer of the BIP. I think that’s it for that one.

The next slide we have [00:32:00] looks that moving from a brief FBA to a complex FBA. And it’s interesting looking at this, you can see a lot of the information for both of these is very similar. We just start to see more information once the FBA becomes more complex. So, what that may involve is the behavior itself, and you may see more or less intense behaviors with the brief, but then more intense behaviors with the complex, so lower level needs versus higher level, the data that’s gathered. Usually for brief FBAs, I may talk with a teacher that’s involved, and sometimes talking with admin to see what their point of view is with the student. But if I’m starting to work more towards a complex FBA, I’ll start to try to involve parents and also the student themselves at that level.

So, thinking about if you’re starting with a brief, it [00:33:00] just kind of saves from over assessing at that time. But if you do see that your need is complex, based either on the behavior or the data that you have, that’s when you’ll want to start using more assessment measures to be able to gather more information. And then also looking at the teaming here, it becomes a little bit more individualized once you have complex FBAs that you’re trying to complete.

Stella: [00:33:27] Rebekah what about if the parent has noticed that their child is getting in trouble quite a bit at school, and they’ve requested to have either behavior plan in place or even something more to this line, and then now their child’s getting suspended a lot, and still nothing has been done, what can a parent do at that point?

Rebekah: [00:33:57] I would think at that point that you can continue [00:34:00] to request this, and then kind of making sure, I would request the meeting to start, just the kind of get the concerns out there, and then really trying to talk about what’s leading through the suspension. I think a lot of times our admin are really good about that, wanting to discuss what can be done besides suspension. And that’s really been a thing across the state and that we’ve been looking at this year, especially considering not only out-of-school suspension, but also in-school suspension. That’s really been one of the goals of the state to try to decrease both of those. So, that’s been kind of on everybody’s mind already. And I think asking questions like that of what we can do instead can really help try to drive some of that conversation of why is the behavior happening, and how can we best intervene to make that function. So, [00:35:00] asking those types of questions, I think, would be most beneficial at this time.

Stella: [00:35:05] That’s great. And what if I’ve requested it, and the school has denied it, what can I do then?

Rebekah: [00:35:12] Sure, I would think talking to your admin and trying to work with them first. Of course, if a student is in special education, you can always talk to the director of special education at that point if you feel like their needs just aren’t being met at the school level. And then also too, a lot of people have coordinators in place as well. I know I’ve consulted with our admin in the past, trying just to decide what’s most appropriate for the student at the time. So, I would think talking with those stakeholders first would be the best bit. And then also just trying to talk with the teachers. Well, they are always such a [00:36:00] goldmine of information regarding the student, so I would think even starting with the teacher first would be good information to gather. But I think all those stakeholders involved are good people to talk with.

Stella: [00:36:16] That’s wonderful. Thank you.

Rebekah: [00:36:18] Sure. You’re welcome. So, this last part here before we start looking at the pathway is just kind of the wrap up this continuum, thinking about what the bottom line is that we’re trying to achieve with both simple and complex FBAs. So, understanding the need for a formal FBA, knowing when that needs to take place, and then also looking at the ABCs. We’ll look at that here when we look at the pathway, but just making sure that we consider that across all three tiers, not just at tier 3. And the last part here, looking at the function base problem solving as a continuum as well, so [00:37:00] considering both of those types of teams that are involved in making sure that their conversations revolve around the ABCs of behavior.

So, the next part here is looking at that competing behavior pathway, so looking at what it is, how to use it, and when to start using it as well. So, just kind of thinking about the boxes that we’re going to look at, just kind of having this in your mind while we look at it is trying to figure out which ones you think will be most challenging, and trying to think is this something that I could explain to a family member. I have a friend that may not even being involved with behavioral pathways. So, making sure that you understand it well enough that you can explain it.

I’ve caught myself with that plenty of times thinking I understood one of the boxes, but then getting in a team meeting trying to explain it. It may seem simple enough, but just making sure that how [00:38:00] you can explain this in a way that everybody understands what it is.

One of the things here that I’ll go ahead and say have always been kind of a hang up for me is differentiating number six, the desired behavior, versus number nine, the replacement alternative behavior. So, we’ll look at those more in particular once we get to them, but also ahead of time, and kind of confess that those were always little confusing for me. So, if there’s other ones on here too that just seemed kind of confusing, make sure you ask the questions, but we’ll look at them all pretty in depth here, considering the time that we have left.

So, the first one here, the first box, you can see we talked about that you always want to consider student strengths, and then also looking at the problem behaviors, and then antecedents next. I think as you continue with this slide, it just brings all of these up as blank boxes.

[00:39:00] But the next slide looks at the competing behavior pathway to that level of a behavior intervention plan. So, you may have the specific strategies listed there at the bottom, but we’re going to see how each of those fit into each of the boxes that we’re going to look at for the path length.

So, again, looking here at the next thing, we’ve already identified the student’s strengths as the first thing that we’re going to look at. And then the second thing looking at problem behaviors. So, I look at defining problem behaviors. We want to make sure that those behaviors are observable. Some things here to make sure that we know what that means is that an observable behavior can be seen by anybody involved, and then we also want to make sure that it’s measurable. So, it’s a behavior that we can either count or keep tab of.

So, thinking about if a person were to get a hold of [00:40:00] the behavior plan and they didn’t know anything else about the student, they could simply look at that box and know exactly which behavior we’re considering, and the one that we’re trying to intervene with.

We have some examples here of what may be considered observable and measurable behaviors. We have some non-examples and then also some examples here on the other side. So, I find this a lot when I’m interviewing teachers for the first time, so we’ve already decided that we needed an FBA. And my first step then is to interview the person that’s involved with the student. So, it’s very easy to say that the problem behaviors, students being disruptive, or they’re being off task, but some more specific examples here that I’m going to try to drill down when we’re talking is to see exactly how the students being disruptive. So, are they talking when the teacher is talking? If they say [00:41:00] that they’re all off-task, does that mean that they’re drawing a picture during group work? You can see that the examples really just try to drill down on what that non-example would be.

So, you find this a lot when you start trying to interview, and it’s really just how anybody would respond, is trying to say what that behavior looks like. But as the facilitator, you want to make sure that you’re really making sure you know exactly what that behavior is, and this comes most importantly after you’ve done the interview, considering that the observation is the next step. If you get in there and you start trying to observe, and you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you start to find that your observation just doesn’t really match the need. So, it’s very important here thinking about that everybody that’s involved knows the exact observable measurable behavior that you’re looking for.

The next slide kind of gives some tips. The first tip is asking [00:42:00] yourself what does this behavior look like. So, do I and the teacher both know exactly what this behavior is that we’re looking for? The second tip here is providing examples like we talked about. And then the third one here, just making sure that the definition is so clear that somebody who’s unfamiliar would also be able to pick up on that behavior that you’re looking for.

And just wanted to stress all this right here at the beginning, because without having this defined appropriately, you start to find that the rest of it just kind of falls apart. So, this is very important to make sure that everybody knows what the problem behavior is.

The next part of this is looking at the where and when, so we’re looking at a step two here of the antecedents and the triggers. So, we’ll kind of look at both here the routines and then also the things that are triggering for the antecedent of that behavior.

The [00:43:00] next slide there looks at where something is happening. So, here we’re thinking about the routine of that student. So, is the behavior happening during a math class, the gym class? So, really which part of their day do we see this happening?

And I’ll go ahead and say here, the facts interview that you have here as a handout is one of the first steps that you have when you’re interviewing a staff member. You actually go through the entire routine of that student’s day, and it’s really a great handout to use, because it has you write on there what particular routines are the hardest for that student, or which ones that you see the behavior occurring the most. And that kind of helps you narrow down if you know where the behavior is happening, and especially when also that you know when you want to start intervening. So, thinking about the when, that’s those specific events [00:44:00] or again the antecedents there that are triggering the problem behavior.

The next slide looks at being able to identify the antecedents. And sometimes when you’re doing interviews, people say like there’s nothing that sets them off, there’s nothing that you can tell is an antecedent. And sometimes, you can start to find that that can be kind of difficult to pin down for a student. But again, we’re looking at the signals that happen right before behavior or things that just set them off.

We have some examples here of trying to identify. The first one here talks about at the lunch table when told to shut up by a peer, Ben hits the student. So, looking at this, the antecedent would be when told to shut up. And in all these different examples, I kind of consider that the clause that you have there. So, in such and such when, [00:45:00] whenever you consider that when, that’s going to tell us exactly what’s happening right before that behavior occurs.

So, the next one with Tracy, when she’s asked to read aloud in language arts class, that’s when she gets up and starts telling her jokes. So, with these Clauses alone, we’ve already narrowed down exactly when that happens, along with the routine. So, looking at the antecedent, this is almost like the fast trigger right before a behavior.

We’ll also consider setting events, which are considered the slow triggers of behavior. So, just some examples here of, again, like the questing to do something, sitting in a large group, these are what’s considered your fast triggers to behavior, so your antecedents.

The next slide looks at why behavior is happening. So, this is what we consider is the consequence to behavior. This is what I always try [00:46:00] to make sure I identify for teachers and parents alike, what consequence, what that definition is, because usually that has like a negative connotation, so our consequence to a behavior, but we’re simply just looking at what happens directly after the behavior occurs for step four.

Looking at the next slide, thinking about maintaining the consequence. This simply looks at how that behavior is being reinforced. So, if you think about that comic that we looked at at the very beginning, it kind of talked about that students were all expelled for their negative behavior. So, really you can see that a lot of those students were probably reinforced by that expulsion as their consequence, and that’s what we want to try to avoid, is making sure that we find the right reinforcements for the behavior that we want to see, to be able to increase those, and then also decrease the reinforcements for the behaviors that we’re trying to [00:47:00] intervene with.

There’s some examples on the next slide of maintaining consequences. So, it kind of gives some of those same examples from before when we looked at antecedents. So, Ben has now hit his peers, and then they leave him alone. The next one Tracy tells her jokes, the others laugh, and she got sent to the office, so we could see her consequence with that was she got out of reading. The next one here for circle time, when Jessie started crying, the teacher stopped her circle time, and found time to comfort Jessie instead. So, maybe thinking here with an antecedent, if Jessie was provided comfort beforehand, that would eliminate the need for her to start crying during that time, and then also circle time being stopped altogether.

You can start to see that when we look at some of these consequences, it also gives us ideas of how we can start [00:48:00] intervening for the antecedents ahead of time.

The next one here, step 5, looks at setting events. And again, this was kind of a slow trigger to the fast trigger of an antecedent. So, we kind of see how these things work together to cause the behavior that were saying taking place.

So, the next slide kind of differentiates those two things, the antecedent and the setting events. So again, thinking of fast trigger versus a slow trigger, but the good thing is about knowing a setting event, it can help us predict ahead of time if a problem behavior is going to occur.

I will say looking at the next slide, it can be kind of difficult to pin down certain setting events. So, we have, again, some non-examples versus examples of what this could look like. I would say one of the most common setting events that I see are [00:49:00] students who typically take medication possibly missing that medication for that day. So, if a student comes into class and the teacher can know that ahead of time that, hey, they missed their medication this morning, they know that that could possibly be a setting event for some of the behaviors that they typically would see not occur, because that was already taken place.

Another one is when students are tardy for school. We can kind of see that that can almost set the tone for the day of a setting event. So, that kind of helps you predict that if one of those fast triggers of an antecedent takes place, the behaviors a whole lot more likely to occur, because of these setting events that you’ve identified.

The next slide is kind of looks again at some of those common setups that we see as setting events. And again, thinking about the facts interview handout that you have [00:50:00] on the back when you’re interviewing staff, and ask about a lot of these things that we have listed here, because again, it can be kind of difficult to come up with always knowing what setting events may have taken place, especially if those events are taking place at home. So, it may be kind of hard for teachers to know exactly what all is happening, unless they have that communication with either the student or the parent. So, I really want to say here that it is helpful to communicate these things back and forth. The same thing when the students going home, the teacher can communicate those same things to the parent that maybe school didn’t go the best that day or something like that, that they can kind of know what to expect when their child comes home that evening.

The next part that we look at starts with that desire behavior, step 6. So, looking at using the [00:51:00] pathway to identify not only the desired behavior, so really that behavior we want to see in the long term, versus the alternative behavior, which is that short-term goal that we have for the student. Again, the desired behavior is looking for that consequence that we would typically want to see. And the alternative behavior is also reaching towards that same function. So, when we look at these, we want to make sure that we can help try to match that function for both of those behaviors. That’s also the same as the problem behavior, because when we talk about trying to replace, we want to make sure that we’re meeting the need of the student just in a more appropriate way.

I think the next couple slides here repeat themselves, so I’m going to move to function is the key to success. It says here if we have the wrong function to start, our plan will ultimately be [00:52:00] ineffective, so we want to make sure we have identified that function correctly. And we may find that there’s a couple of different functions that are taking place. When we do see this, we want to try to make sure that we prioritize the function that we see meeting the behavior the most. And again, we kind of talked about this already, if the hypothesis is incorrect the first time, we can always try again with another function in mind. And I will say that that does happen. It’s not always done correctly the first time, and just making sure that we can always go back to that hypothesis statement is a promising way to know that you can try to intervene more correctly.

Thinking about different functions, we typically see a couple different ones that stems from problem behaviors. It’s either obtaining something or getting something versus escaping or avoiding the situation. So, we can see here moving on [00:53:00] down the flowchart, it may be either a sensory, a social, or tangible activity that the students trying to seek out. And then more particularly here for social, will ask about if they’re trying to get that from an adult or a peer.

One of the things that I’ve tried to move away from this year, thinking about this, a lot of times we’ll use the word attention-seeking in place of looking at social reinforcement. And one of the things that we’ve tried to work at as a district is thinking about relationship-seeking for that student. That really kind of shifts our mindset, thinking more about building relationships with that student, either through peers or adults. And I can say it’s really been a positive mind-shift for us, and be able to think about students just building relationships with them, if that’s something that we find that they’re missing in their everyday life.

So I’ll skip on ahead to this [00:54:00] replacement or alternative behaviors. Again, you’re looking for that same function, and the replacement behavior is not necessarily the desired behavior. So, that replacement again is a short-term goal you have for that student. It has to be something that is easy for that student to do, and possibly even something the student is already doing.

We can skip over to the slide of desired versus replacement behaviors, because it outlines that a little bit more. You’re going to want to make sure that there’s minimal instruction involved when it comes to that replacement behavior, because this is the first thing that you’re going to try to get the students to do, instead of the problem behavior.

And so, you can see in the next slide how you kind of work your way up to the desired behavior from the replacement, through the different approximations that take place. So, this is something you’ll want to work through with your team, trying to [00:55:00] decide which approximation is most appropriate, given the behavior for that student. You want to be able to look at the student’s ability level at this time, because if we try to approximate too quickly based on their ability, it can become very frustrating, and you can see that they might shut down, and not want to try to work towards that desired behavior goal that they have set.

The next slide here just talks about identifying appropriate alternative behaviors. So again, making sure that the task is an easy one that they can access quickly at that time. And the last thing here is just making it real, making sure that the behavior plan is relatable for that student, and making sure that it’s something that everybody finds as being necessary that they want to work with that student on. Like [00:56:00] that kind of covers that part there.

The last part of our PowerPoint – I’m trying to watch the time here – just kind of challenges us to look at how we can use a lot of these practices not only at tier 3, but also moving up the triangle, the tier 2, and even tier 1, so trying to help staff and teachers to be able to think about how they can use some of these practices as school-wide practices for their classroom.

And the last part of the presentation just looks at the different data sources. I tried to include the majority of those as the handouts that we have along with the PowerPoint here. So, the first thing that you’d start with is the facts interview with your staff member, usually the teacher. And then also, there’s a brief FBA family directed interview if you’re including family members along with [00:57:00] that. And then also the competing behavior pathway, which is the document we just looked at that can help you create the behavior intervention plan. But again, these are just some of the resources that are provided, and there are several more on the Midwest PBIS network website. I would highly encourage that you take a look at that to see which resources you think are most beneficial to you at this time. I think I can wrap up there if that works for you all.

Stella: [00:57:39] And all of these, I just want to let everyone know, like we said, everything will be sent to you via email. And that way, you’ll have the PowerPoint, you’ll have all of the handouts, and so that will be very handy for everyone. And also, when we end the webinar today, we would actually ask you to complete our [00:58:00] evaluation at the end. It really helps us plan for more.

Also, please visit our website, which is www.kyspin.com. We have a wonderful page now on COVID-19 with all kinds of resources for families. We are doing weekly webinar updates. We have one scheduled for this coming Tuesday that you can register for on our website. We are actually going to have Carol Cecil from Kentucky Partnership for Families and Children, and she’s going to be talking about mental health of concerns during this time.

So, Rebekah, thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate the information. It was very informative.

If you know someone who wasn’t on today, that would maybe like to hear this, we are repeating it tonight at 6:30. So, you can still register on our website for that. And then we will also have a recording of this one available within a week or so.

But thank you so much, Rebekah for being with us. I don’t see any more [00:59:00] questions right now. I’m going to check really quick, and make sure we don’t have any more than we didn’t already cover, which I think we’ve covered them all.

So, I think that’s it. So, if everyone could please complete our evaluation at the end. And thanks again, Rebekah, for joining us.

Rebekah: [00:59:15] You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Stella: [00:59:18] See you. Bye. Bye.