10.4 Behavior and Intentional Teaching
Ardene Niemer, M.Ed.
How can educators teach social and emotional skills intentionally to support positive behaviors? Remember that all behavioral intervention is an opportunity to teach. When we teach intentionally, we have a plan and a purpose, and our outcome (result) will be observable. We are approaching this from a teaching perspective (Hoque, 2016), as that matches with the strengths-based focus and moves away from a negative or punishing approach.
Cultural diversity is very evident in the multitude of effective and appropriate ways we care for and guide children. Social settings also require teachers and families to consider how they want to advise their children to act based on their lived experiences and knowledge of what is required to stay safe in specific situations.
Following are some strategies for teaching intentionally and building social and emotional skills in young children (Epstein, 2014; Ho & Funk, 2018).
- Coaching in real time: When a teacher steps into the role of coach, the goal is to help children to see what they are doing, to begin to understand how their actions affect others, and how to choose positive alternatives for the unwanted behavior. Here is an example of this strategy: Two children are struggling for the same toy in the block area. One child grabs the toy from another, who in turn cries. As teacher/coach, you get down to the child’s level to engage fully and establish eye contact. The next step is to calmly and warmly say to the children that, “Michael is using the truck now. When you tried to take it away from him, he got upset. What do you think that you might do to make him feel better?” Now, model an appropriate response by saying, “I am sorry that Julie took your truck, Michael,” but we don’t force children to say they are sorry. You might also say, “Next time if you want to play with the toy Michael is using, you can ask him if he will share.” The teacher’s role is now to observe and provide positive feedback on the interaction and demonstration of the desired behavior.
- Giving effective praise: Meaningful feedback is directly related to the behavior in the moment and is provided in the form of effective praise. This is a powerful strategy for developing children’s social and emotional development (Kostelnik et al., 2015). Effective praise requires teachers to describe specifically what they see—without generalizing, evaluating, or making comparisons. What we want to teach is internal motivation, and not teach the child to always seek validation from others. This can be accomplished by describing what we observe that the child has done:
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- You worked really hard on this drawing. I see many different colors!
- I see how you stayed in the lines and colored very carefully!
- You found a great spot for all of the blocks when I asked for you to clean up.
- Wow! You did it! You put all of the pieces in that puzzle.
- Thank you for helping Hannah with her building. Yo