From the Ditch to Disney: Tips for Leaders When Removing Misbehaving Students from Class (Part I)

 Image credit: Disney

Even with the best classroom management, behavior issues may continue to escalate under different conditions. In these situations, teachers may need to request assistance from an administrator or designee.  As a result, students are often removed from the classroom and brought to an alternative setting.  Though they often do the best they can, many administrators and staff have not been provided proper training on effectively managing student removals.  The most common issue that I’ve seen is that sometimes the consequences provided actually inadvertently reinforce the undesirable behavior.  From a student perspective, they may feel that they are going from the “ditch” to “Disney” as they are brought to an environment that they perceive as inherently “better” than the one they were removed from.  Remember, the intent is to provide a consequence that decreases the likelihood that the behavior will occur in the future.  However, the student is sometimes inadvertently reinforced for misbehavior thus making the teacher’s and administrator’s job more difficult as the unforeseen impact on the student is the increased desire to be removed from class. This desire increases for a student who is below grade level as he or she leverages a school’s removal system as a method of escaping the academic challenges faced within the classroom (I’ll provide some strategies for addressing this in my next post).

Whether you are in a primary or secondary school, it is important that students are brought to an environment that is inherently less reinforcing than the one they were removed from. Remember, students who are removed for misbehavior are not being placed into a “black hole” (thanks Dr. Winston!) where there is no reinforcement available.  It is important that you recognize and control these potential reinforcers.  In my previous post The Not so Secret Keys to Motivation  I wrote about all behavior functioning essentially to “get something”, or “get away from something”.  For students who are trying to escape (e.g. non-preferred task, teacher direction), it is important that they are escaping to an area that is less reinforcing in order to avoid the inadvertent reinforcement of escape-motivated. For example, if it were too hot inside, but hotter outside, I would not choose to leave the inside area as a strategy for cooling down.

At times the reinforcement may come in the form of counseling and other forms of attention.  This is not to infer that counseling is bad…it’s a good practice.  But some students are provided desired attention from desired adults only under conditions following misbehavior.  This increases the likelihood that the student will misbehave as a method of seeking out this attention from these adults.   Barring a true crisis situation, if you’ve tried counseling a student and it’s not working (i.e. the student is a “frequent flyer”), try providing the counseling at a later time once the student is back on task. Remember, the goal here is to avoid allowing the misbehavior to get “paid” with desired attention.  “Counseling” a student at a later time minimizes the delivery of reinforcing attention provided after students are removed.  This is a powerful strategy, especially when paired with increased attention when the student is in class and back on task.

In my next post I will provide some simple strategies to consider when removing students.

Paul has successfully supported multiple struggling schools in the turnaround process. As a certificated behavior analyst who concentrates on organizational behavior management and behavioral leadership, Paul provides administrative teams, teachers, and staff with coaching and consultation in analyzing and developing behavior and performance management systems directly aligned with student achievement.