Chaos to Calm: Teaching Skills Instead of Always Managing Behavior

Are you tired of playing "behavioral fire-fighter"? It’s time to shift from managing outbursts to mastering instruction. Moving from different stages of chaos in the classroom to one of calm requires a fundamental shift from traditional behavior management to a skill-based approach. Traditional methods often rely on using punitive consequences, rewards, and punishments to control students from the outside, which can fail to build deep skills or internal control. 

Join us as we learn to view behavior as communication. By pivoting from compliance-only methods toward neuro-affirming practices, we can prioritize social skills, regulation and skill building. While our goals for our students remain the same, our path to achieving them has evolved. Don’t just manage the day, help students master the skill so behavior goes down and students succeed.

Objectives:

• Decode the Behavior: Gain a simple process for translating common classroom behaviors (like difficulty going to the carpet) into the specific underlying skills that must be explicitly taught and practiced.
• Determine the Skill: Identify the crucial social or emotional skill that demands focus (e.g., following a visual, self-regulating transitions).
• Strategize Structure: Explore evidence-based strategies and resources for the effective structure and delivery of these social skill lessons, making sure your instruction truly meets the needs of your diverse learners.

Additional information and resources

About the presenter: Katie Berg MA Ed., Supporting Neurodiverse Students Statewide Coordinator

Katie has been educating students for over 20 years. She has worked in the private sector, public education and now statewide through an IDEA Discretionary Grant.  From her experiences providing one on one therapy, classroom teaching, district training and now statewide work, Katie has had opportunities to engage learners in a range of subjects related to students with neurodiverse needs. Many years were spent focused on working with students with autism and students experiencing mental health differences. Katie focuses on Social and Emotional Learning skills to support students and educators in problem-solving challenging behaviors. 

The Supporting Neurodiverse Students Professional Learning Grant CFDA# 84.027A acknowledges the support of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in the development of this material and for the continued support of this federally-funded grant project. There are no copyright restrictions on this document; however, please credit the Wisconsin DPI and support of federal funds when copying all or part of this material.