Improving Skills When Working with Challenging Behaviors: Get “Sneaky Smart”

As we work to ensure that all children & youth are in a safe/secure environment where they feel special and can learn, it is humbling when we face challenging behaviors. There isn’t a definitive “guidebook” for educators and parents to turn to, thus making us hungry for more training in behavior management, especially proactive strategies. This presentation will help the participants to see that being “sneaky smart” is all about changing adult behavior, being flexible & willing to truly problem solve, and being more skilled at ways to alter the environment & the positive supports that we can put into place. Evidenced-based strategies will be reviewed that the participants can begin to implement immediately with children that fall into all tiers. Through humor of the mistakes that we often make & by noting his colorful NC background, the presenter has compiled & will summarize interventions & strategies from both his experiences as a school psychologist and leader of the PBIS initiative in a large school district in SC, as well as those from many of the national leaders in PBIS. His “sneaky smart” strategies are appropriate for most any classroom or home setting to increase compliance of both groups of students and individual ones. His review of methods for being proactive and how to intervene with an individual that is agitated and resistant have been used widely. A quick, easy and flexible way to document behavior will also be shared, especially for the classroom setting, along with some great resources for parents and educators that are available for pinpointing those behavioral skills that may be lacking