RECESS

Afraid I sympathize with the classroom teachers on this one. I’ve been there, done that.

In order to change certain behaviours, you have to have some negative consequences somewhere. By definition, a negative consequence is something unpleasant — that’s why you use it!

If someone outside your class decides that every negative consequence is outlawed, and the kid knows it, there are a lot of kids who will take you as their favourite victim, and others who will float along in their own world not noticing anything is wrong.

Yes, it would be wonderful to live in a perfect world where only positive reinforcement is needed, but most usable positive reinforcements (Food is NOT usable — leads to more trouble than it solves) are pretty weak and many kids just don’t care enough about them to give up a treasured habit.

There is also the problem of having some kids who are immune to the rules that apply to everyone else, and you can be positive that the other kids, and their parents, are screaming all the way up to the principal and superintendent about “fairness”, so basically you have removed recess detentions as a possible consequence for the entire class.

The teachers are already having a hard enough time with all the other demands including teaching these kids the 90% of the time you don’t have them, and you are taking away their only remaining management tool and not replacing it with anything meaningful — and then we have the other poster complaining about classroom teachers being negative about inclusion, well duh …

A lot of teachers at my school use loss of recess as a consequence— for some kids it works, for others it hardly seems to matter. I see the same kids sitting out day after day, week after week. One wonders if they might complete more work or behave if they were allowed to run around and be kids for 10 minutes. Some teachers have the kids run/walk a few laps rather than sit out or have free recess. Some teachers set up a plan where students earn tokens or points towards “preferred activity time” which can happen at the end of the day or week— a 20-30 minute period of free choice in the classroom where students can work on the computer, play board games, read, etc. Another teacher bakes cupcakes each week (!) for kids who have turned in every assignment that week. It really depends on what motivates the individual student and what the teacher is willing to try. My guess is that taking away recess hasn’t proven very effective with these students of yours anyway.

[quote=”victoria”]Afraid I sympathize with the classroom teachers on this one. I’ve been there, done that.

In order to change certain behaviours, you have to have some negative consequences somewhere. By definition, a negative consequence is something unpleasant — that’s why you use it!

If someone outside your class decides that every negative consequence is outlawed, and the kid knows it, there are a lot of kids who will take you as their favourite victim, and others who will float along in their own world not noticing anything is wrong.

Yes, it would be wonderful to live in a perfect world where only positive reinforcement is needed, but most usable positive reinforcements (Food is NOT usable — leads to more trouble than it solves) are pretty weak and many kids just don’t care enough about them to give up a treasured habit.

There is also the problem of having some kids who are immune to the rules that apply to everyone else, and you can be positive that the other kids, and their parents, are screaming all the way up to the principal and superintendent about “fairness”, so basically you have removed recess detentions as a possible consequence for the entire class.

The teachers are already having a hard enough time with all the other demands including teaching these kids the 90% of the time you don’t have them, and you are taking away their only remaining management tool and not replacing it with anything meaningful — and then we have the other poster complaining about classroom teachers being negative about inclusion, well duh …[/quote]

What a MEAN attitude! When punishment is the only tool being used to modify behavior, failure is virtually assured. What these children need is a functional behavioral assessment to determine what motivates or causes the behaviors that are interfering in the classroom. Once you know that, it is possible to eliminate triggers for the behavior and to know what consequence to impose when it occurs. Those regular classroom teachers who are mad because they can’t figure out how to punish the children are probably contributing to the problem. Perhaps the children don’t do their work because they aren’t receiving the LD support that they need to learn. Perhaps they are frustrated and checked-out at school because it is a place where it is certain they will experience failure and punishment. Perhaps they are well aware that their teachers find them annoying and an unwelcome presence in the classroom. A depressed child in particular may be almost powerless to meet school demands. I’m not against consequences for misbehavior, but I am against the assumption that the misbehavior is always 100% within the control of the child and against the assumption that when a child does not complete his work or otherwise follow some school rule, it is always because he is misbehaving.

I never said any of the things you are attributing to me and I wish you would actualy read my post before you insult me.

I have been, several times in several different school systems, in the position where every single thing that went wrong in the classroom, or outside, was all my fault. When a thirteen-year-old who was taller and stronger than I am — and had previously been expelled — threw a wastepaper basket at me, it was my fault.

I would like to know if you work in a large classroom in a public school. If you don’t, please walk a while in other people’s shoes — sign on as a substitute for a while and see what the pressures are in the real world.

No, I don’t think missing every recess is a good idea, in fact I think it’s a terrible idea. But teachers need *some* sort of ways to impress ideas on students, and if you remove one by one every possible consequence the teacher can apply, the result is going to be chaos.
I’ve worked in those schools and believe me, it is not funny. Want to work in a high school where hundreds of students roam the halls instead of going to class? Want to work in a high school where the police are called several times daily for bloody fistfights in the cafeteria? Want to work in a high school where any time the academic demands are more than the students feel like trying, they just walk out? Want to work in a place where a student can shout obscenities and death threats at you and it’s your fault? Or do you want your child in a place like that?
That was my last effort at working in a public school and I’m only telling the tip of the iceberg. It was a place with a lovely child-centered philosophy — the student was never ever in the wrong, it was always the teacher who didn’t do the right thing to reach him. Meanwhile the students for whom this student-centered philosophy was designed were suffering academically and physically and were in daily fear.

Thank you for all the replies. I am not saying the teacher is wrong for punishing these childern. In the one case I am talking about recess does not work as a consequence. He is going into fourth grade and has missed recess 75% of his elementary years. He is becoming a social outcast because he never gets to play with his classmates. He has sensory integration issues and the OT provider has stated that he needs physical activities to activate some chemicals in his body (I’m not sure what they are). He is severly depressed because he thinks he is ugly and dumb. Taking away recess compounds his depression and makes him hate himself and school more. When he stays in for recess he does not do anything, so the missing work is not being finished. When he comes to the resource room he knows that if he finishes a certain amount of assignments that are set up at the beginning of class, he can use the computer. Lately he has used the computer every day. He always completes his homework because his mom uses the same strategy of providing a positive consequence for completing assignments. I have worked with this child for four years and I have seen what works. The fourth grade teacher has never met the child and she is already filling out paper work to change the IEP so she can use recess as a negative consequence. I have offered to help her work out a behavior plan for him, but she is not interested. She has even met with the parent without my knowledge to discuss why this should not be on the IEP. I am frustrated and do not know what to do next for this child.

Thanks again.
Michele

Their work should be modified eg. shortened so they can finish it in the same time as the others. That seems a no-brainer to me. Help the reg. ed teachers to modify the work. And it makes no sense that reg. ed teachers would blame you for how their IEPS are written - that’s hardly something you did alone.

What exactly are these few kids doing in their pull out classes? A child who is severely depressed - that depression should take precedence over whether they finish their work or not. Depression is a serious illness. Again, their work should be modified.

Are these kids disruptive to others in the class who are working? Severely depressed children most often are quiet and withdrawn - not disruptive. What’s the bottom line on this - is it ‘work production’ or disruption? If it’s just work production, modifcation is the answer.

or they are severely depressed and losing recess is detrimental to their emotional well being. Now all the reg. ed. teachers are blaming me and saying they have nothing to make the child behave or work. Does anyone have any behavior plans that would be easily implemented in a reg. ed class for one or two students?
Thank you in advance-
Michele[/quote]

Their work has been modified, but many times they will not do any thing. They are not disruptive. During the pull out time they work on their classwork with 1:1 coaching. I would even agree to them losing part of their recess in order to finish a set amount of work, but the teachers are so angry they will not discuss changes with me.

Ok, this sounds like much more than a “recess” issue. Sounds more like a power and control issue— i.e. the regular teacher does not want to deal with students as individuals, she wants to run her class the way she wants to run it, the way that has probably worked for her for years. I think you need some help here, from another professional in the special education department or your administrator to help this teacher understand how to help this child— or put him in a different class. She can’t “not be interested” in a behavior plan if that is what the IEP team has determined this student needs. She also can’t meet with just the parent to change the IEP!! Successful inclusion is difficult, and not all teachers can make it work and still meet the needs of all their students. You have offered her support, but she needs help with her attitude.

Well, here’s a similar situation: I just met a new student on Wednesday. His report card says he will only work in a one-to-one situation, he has behavioural difficulties, he is disruptive in class, the whole story.
He has been passed out of Grade 7 into 8 with some marks of C and even B and a couple of high D’s/low F’s which technically should have failed him but … we know this story don’t we?
He is said to enjoy reading mystery stories and his mother said she thought he had a Grade 5 reading level or so.
The school has said he is “very mildly dyslexic”, whatever that is supposed to mean. This is a school system that has adopted an extremely weak “whole-language” program in both first and second languages (!) so reading weaknesses are a lot more common than they like to admit.

In fact his reading level came out as low Grade 3 — can just barely cope with Boxcar C

Sorry, previous post posted itself unfinished.

So here’s a kid with very weak Grade 3 functional reading being punished for not doing Grade 7 work. How do you expect him to react?

He’s also said to be very weak in math — we haven’t had time to get much into that yet — but he’s being expected to do fractions and decimals and percents and geometry when he isn’t quite sure what multiply means yet.

And he is being rated as “only working one-to-one” when the more honest rating would be “works well when someone reads to him and spells for him and tells him the numbers to write because he *cannot*”.

The classroom teacher in both this kid’s situation and the original post is caught between a rock and a hard place. The skill levels rated for this student are dishonest — he really cannot be included in a meaningful manner without more backup. If the teacher asks for that backup she gets in trouble for not doing her job and for contradicting the “experts” who have in some way (throwing the I Ching, I think) determined he can function in the class. On the other hand if she tries to give him work that is possible for his actual skill level she gets in trouble for not including him on grade level, besides the time/money limit of having to prepare an entire separate set of lessons every day. Giving him less work on the same level is no help since he can’t read sentence 1 anyway.

Being backed into a corner with a student she cannot teach disrupting her teaching the class every day, the teacher is reacting like anyone else being backed into a corner — she is becoming frustrated and difficult.
No, I don’t think taking recess away evey day is a good idea. How much do you want to bet that the principal or vice principal has given her direct orders to do just that? Again, the teacher is between a rock and a hard place — taking away recess is obvously not working for this child, but taking away recess is what she is told she has to do by her supervisors.

The special ed teachers are trying hard to help their students, but they are sometimes not alert to all the pressures they are putting on the teachers — heck, you can fight with the parents who come storming in because Johnny was kept in for recess and Eric wasn’t and you can deal with the emotional stress of being screamed at for several hours a week, you can do three hours extra work every day finding and preparing off-grade-level work for special students and finding ways to pretend it is grade level, you can deal with the principal who wants things done a certain way and who is taking out his feelings about the screaming parents on you, you can deal with IEP’s that contradict the principal’s rules (and the fact that the principal’s rules are against state policy is irrelevant, he’s here and the state superintendent isn’t) and with the principal calling you on the carpet about it. This is the recipe for a nervous breakdown and having someone say “well, of course you can do this one little thing” can often be the last straw in total burnout.

Victoria-
I think you have been burned many times and are in a bad situation. Our school is not like that. We are a very small school and everyone usually works well together. What you are talking about is way different than what my situation is.

Rover

Thank you! I agree that I need help. I am the only special ed. teacher in the building and I am getting the feeling that these actions are against me for some reason. I did talk to our special ed. director. He is going to hold off having a CSE meeting to change the IEP until fall. The teacher talked to the parent and convinced her that it was a bad thing to have on the IEP. The parent agreed to another CSE meeting. I am going to go into the meeting saying that I agreed with the modification in the beginning and I am willing to say that half of his recess should be provided every day. I am debating whether or not I should call the parent ahead of time. I have had a working relationship with her for four years for this student and his brother. Thanks again.
Michele

You say,
“He is going into fourth grade and has missed recess 75% of his elementary years. ”

Since you are describing that the problem is persisting, then obviously withholding recess has not brought about the desired change. It’s obviously not working! Something else must be considered. If this student has “SI issues” he may also have motor planning issues and/or executive function issues that impact his ability to plan and execute a desired response, including initiating class assignments. It is not necessarily a volitional issue.
Have his executive function skills been assessed?

chelelm, it is nice that *your* situation is happy and comfortable. If the other teachers are reacting against you, maybe *their* experiences in the school are quite different from yours.

Some of the worst abusive language directed against me as a teacher and some of the most self-contradictory instructions happened in a very small rural school, eighty students and four teachers, a place that could have been a little paradise but which internecine conflict made into the opposite.

If the teacher is acting against, you, you could try asking her to explain her views and her problems.

KTJ

You may be correct. He does have a hard time planning and figuring out what to do when he becomes overwhelmed with work. If someone sits down with him and helps him figure out what to do first, he usually is able to accomplish more. He also has a hard time expressing his feelings and waits until he feels like he is trapped. That is when some inappropriate behaviors come out. His counselor is working on giving him words and appropriate actions.
Michele

Dear Teachers,

It seems to me that there is not a “team” enviroment in your situations. In every IEP meeting I have ever had the general education teacher is there, that way, there are no surprises and everyone on the “team” has input.

We do have a team approach, but the third grade teacher was there for this students annual review. He is going into fourth grade and the fourth grade teacher is upset. What really bothers me is the fact that she met with the parent behind my back and complained to everyone about it without coming and talking to the people who were at the meeting and who have worked with this child. I do not even know how she found out about the accommodation because the IEP was not officially approved by the board yet. At the beginning of every school year I sit down with the gen. ed. teacher and talk about the child and explain the modifications and the reason behind them. I have not done that yet with her. The counselor and I were working on a behavior plan that could replace the loss of recess the reg. ed. teacher does not know that we had these plans and now we have to go to CSE again to change the IEP. This is a parent that I have worked with for at least four years and it took me a long time to gain her trust. Now she thinks I do not know what is going on and she doesn’t have as much trust. Sorry I just needed a place to vent. I am sure it will all work out. I just wish we did approach it like a team instead of as two separate teams.

I know I’m jumping into this thread more than a month since it was last posted in, but I have to add…

To Rover: in response to post on Sun June 27— “the regular teacher doesn’t want to deal with students as individuals…” and “put him in a different class”. I totally agree! “Old School” teachers can be a good thing or a bad thing. We unfortunately encountered a bad one. But only once :wink: .

My son had an IEP in the 6th grade that gave him 3 daily sessions with an LD Resource teacher in the areas of Math Reinforcement, Language, and Reading. (I wish I could find her and hug her, but that’s another topic.) As part of his IEP Josh could opt to retake any test (in his resource room) if his score was very low. The higher grade was the one that was supposed to be recorded. Josh’s regular math teacher was an “Old School” teacher (been teaching more than 25 years) and didn’t like having the LD students mainstreamed into her class. She decided that she would average the grades instead. When this was protested she, in front of the entire class, pointed out the 4 LD boys in the room and declared that none of them would ever amount to anything more than “dog catchers or trash men”. There are not enough adjectives to describe the anger of the parents of these boys. That teacher was forced to retire early.

Josh is now a rising senior and is mostly a B student. He kept his IEP, though he modified it and tapered it off over several years, until last year. He still stops by the resource teacher’s room now and then and she is more than willing to listen and help.

Michelle W

I forgot to add this… our elementary school has been told that because of the obesity problem in our country they can not take recess away as a form of punishment. They used to make the children stand against a wall and watch recess. Now they have decided that they will make them perform “community service” by picking up trash, and raking leaves. I hate the idea!

Michelle W