Behavioral Management

Our general approach to managing the room is to first provide a structured and stimulating session that keeps your writers engaged in the task at hand. Then, if behavioral challenges occur, try to identify the needs of your writers and work to find the best way to involve them in the session. If you ever come across a challenge that you don’t know how to approach, please use the teacher, Young Storytellers team, and school staff as a resource. We are all here to support you.

Be proactive by using the structure and tips laid out in this packet. ● Create collaborative agreements on the first day. It’s easier to hold a group accountable to agreements that they had a voice in creating. ● Follow the structure of the sessions laid out in the student workbook. By giving your writers time to play as a class, write in their groups, and share, you are engaging them in multiple ways. ● Make sure you know the plan for the day and introduce that plan to the group. Letting your writers know what to expect can help alleviate anxiety, which can often be the root of disruptive behavior. ● Step up to lead! You can help engage your writers on a more personal level so the teacher can focus on keeping the whole class on track. Also, by helping your teacher lead games and exercises, you are creating a stimulating environment with multiple facilitators as opposed to a less interesting lecture-based class structure.

When a simple agreement is broken, address it in the moment. do not wait until later or let it slide. By not addressing a broken agreement you could be communicating to the rest of the group that the agreements don’t matter. In order to do this, you can: ● Direct your writer towards more productive behavior (i.e. - I appreciate everyone who is listening to the group and waiting for their turn to share, let’s take 10 more seconds for everyone to get there.) ● Circle back to the agreements. State the behavior you see with no value judgement and explain how it is not in line with the agreements the group created. Re-explain that the agreements outline how the group wants to be treated in order to feel comfortable participating in the program.

If the behavior persists, try to identify where this behavior is coming from. Sometimes challenging behavior is a young person’s way of expressing a need. By taking two minutes to adjust your plan, you are quickly addressing their needs and setting them up for success. Here are some examples: ● Maybe a rambunctious writer or group needs to do a quick warm up to get the wiggles out. ● Sometimes a quiet or shy writer is anxious and needs more planning time or time to journal before sharing out loud. ● A scattered or unfocused writer might just need to do a simple breathing activity to help them feel grounded. ● They might also benefit from taking a quick 2-minute break to refocus and have some space. Sometimes writers are acting out because they don’t know what’s going on. Maybe they need instructions repeated or written down. Maybe they are a kinesthetic learner and they need to be engaged in a physical activity that helps them learn.

If the behavior gets worse or is unmanageable for you, let your teacher know and talk to them. Teachers are often your best resource in these types of situations because they know more about your writers’ learning needs and preferences, in addition to any behavioral or individualized education plans that help that writer succeed in class.

In order to take any shame out of discussing disruptive behavior, use language with no value judgements to help you describe BOTH challenging and productive behavior. Use sentence starters like:

I see… I notice… I appreciate… I wonder…