Behavior Intervention for School Counselors: Mastering the Chaos

Managing Behavior Intervention in School Counseling

Hey , hey , school counselor , Welcome to the School for School Counselors podcast . Y'all , I'm excited to be back for another week . I know I say that every week , but I just can't help it . I love doing this so stinking much , and it made me a little bit sad this week . Our podcast is a little bit late getting out , but I have a really , really good reason for that . So I have these great ideas that were on my heart that I really really wanted to share with you this week , and it sat down , got some notes together there were it was crazy like 15 pages of notes for this podcast episode and I thought , yes , I'm ready , let's rock and roll . Recorded the episode , hated every single second of it . So I thought , well , let me , let me go back to the drawing board , let me try this again . Tried it again , recorded the podcast , didn't like the second one , and so on and so forth . It's been a process with this one for sure , and so I'm hoping this version will be one that we can land on that's really going to resonate with you , because , oh my goodness , we've been through several iterations this week for sure .

I want to talk this week about behavior intervention . It's something that the majority of you are all too familiar with right , and it might even take up a pretty good chunk of your day if if it doesn't take up the whole day right and so I know this is a topic of concern on everybody's minds . I know where I'm working . Behavior seems to be kicking in a lot sooner than it ever has before , and I keep saying if behavior is like this now , what is it going to look like when we get to what we call Shocktober ? Right , you know what I'm talking about . If you've been a school counselor for any length of time , you know what Shocktober means . But it feels like we're there already . And then I thought , well , maybe I'm just crazy , maybe I am just exaggerating things in my mind , maybe I'm just getting old , I don't know . So I started asking around , talking to people here locally that I work with some counseling colleagues talking to our school for school counselors , mastermind members , trying to put my finger on what it is , and no matter who I talked to or in what context , the answers were unanimous . They all said the same thing Steph , you're crazy . No , I'm , I'm kidding . They all agreed it's the same thing on other campuses . Behaviors seem to be amping up earlier than ever before . They seem to be more intense . We seem to be seeing some different variations from what we normally expect to see this time of year , and so it was good to know that it wasn't just me , but sort of brought to the forefront of my mind the fact that we're probably all struggling with the behavior intervention piece a little bit this time of year .

And so when I sat down to record those original podcast episodes , I was walking through the ins and outs and ups and downs and wise and where force of behavior intervention for school counselors . But I realized every time I was listening back to the episode that it felt really preachy , it felt really best case scenario , and , as you guys know , we do not work in best case scenarios . That's not our reality . So it was almost coming across as a little holier than that , and if you know anything from listening to my podcast , you know that I'm here in the trenches with you . I'm a full time school counselor , just like you , and I don't see myself as an expert or an authority figure . I see myself as a curator of information , I see myself as an encourager and I see myself as a collaborator , and so there's no room for this .

Do as I say , not as I do . Business . That's not going to fly here , and I think that's what was bothering me about all these episodes , because I can tell you all day long that behavior intervention should not be one of your primary duties or roles on campus . But you know what ? You're not in charge of that , are you ? You don't get to pick the staffing on your campus . You don't get to decide if you're going to have help for behavior or whether you're not . You don't get to choose whether or not you're sent to respond to a behavior concern in a classroom . Those are outside of your control , and so it does me no good to preach and bark about how things should be .

And in school counseling man , we know that all too well , too well , don't we ? We've got to be really , really careful about buying in completely to this idea of this ideal program , because those are very hard to attain . And as long as we're in a position where we don't get to choose staffing , we don't get to choose budgets , we don't get to really have a lot to say over our scheduling . You can , as my mom used to say , wish in one hand and spit in the other . Right , both are going to get you about as far as the other .

So let me just speak from the heart in this podcast episode . Let me just give you my impressions , my thoughts and some encouragement if you're one of those school counselors that does a lot of behavior intervention on your campus . We talked about school counseling discipline styles in the last episode of the podcast and we compared them to the four parenting styles and we talked about how you can be an authoritative school counselor on campus where we're setting good limits , we're setting good boundaries , but we're also loving kids hard . Right , there is a nice balance that we can achieve there if we're very mindful in how we're responding to situations . That's a little bit harder when we're called to crisis deescalation time after time after time after time , and we feel like we've been dispatched to intervene with the same sets of students over and over and over again .

Right , it's maddening and even if you have a great multi-tiered system on your campus , even if you've got some great behavior RTI frameworks in place , it's inevitable you're going to get called for some of this stuff and it feels overwhelming because you're trying to take care of all the other things you're doing on campus , all the other responsibilities , all the other asks that have been made to you on campus that are really outside your purview . A lot of them , things like 504 and test coordination and that kind of stuff . Then you add in all the school counseling stuff that you're trying to fit in among the non-counseling stuff , which is totally bizarre to me . That's totally backwards . But trying to fit in your individuals , maybe your small groups , your lessons , those kinds of things , parent consultations , all of that and you have a million balls in the air . You're trying to juggle everything , keep them going and then all of a sudden you have to let all of them drop and go running like a fireman across campus to rescue someone from themselves . Do you guys feel like that ? That's how I feel some days at work . So I hope you're picking up what I'm laying down here .

I think this is pretty common for most of us . I think we feel overwhelmed with behavior intervention for a couple reasons . I've already mentioned time right , trying to fit all of these interventions in the time that we have . Add it to the fact that we're super over scheduled . There's an extra element when you're over scheduled and then you're called to go intervene in a behavior concern in a classroom and gets to that situation where you always feel like you're on edge , like you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop . I can remember working on a campus once where we had a student that had an unmistakable screech that they would let out right before everything went haywire and we were trained Essentially . Anytime we heard even the first second of that screech , our brains keyed in and we were like , okay , it's go time and before we even thought about it we were jumping up and pulling our earrings out .

If you've been there , you're just constantly on edge and that uses a lot of energy . You've got a lot of adrenaline pumping through your system , a lot of cortisol going throughout the day and it makes it really really tough , especially when you know the question is when , not if you're going to be called to deescalate , right , it's just an extra layer of in your day . I also think sometimes we feel super incompetent in the moment when we're called to intervene with dysregulated students and we show up and we're trying to implement all these best practices , we're trying to talk them through this thing rationally , but they're not rational , they're not in that state of mind . And sometimes you even show up and there's a bunch of people trying to do that and it's just escalating the situation more so . Time , over-scheduling , feeling incompetent in the moment are definitely three key factors that really keep us on edge .

I'm going to get back to that incompetent piece in just a minute . Let's talk about time . How do we manage our time when we could be pulled away in any moment ? I know I've had a lot of folks in my mastermind talking about you know , I'm afraid to schedule lessons with students . I'm afraid to schedule small groups because I know I'm going to be called away from those . I know that I'm going to have to contact teachers and say , hey , listen , I can't come do that lesson today . I'm afraid things come up and nothing for nothing . Let's just be real about it .

When you're working with folks on your school staff that sort of have the impression that you don't do much all day anyway , anybody work with folks like that . That just . It's just like this pervading belief that you know we're sitting back in our chairs painting our toenails , waiting for somebody to come in and talk about their feelings . Right , if only , if only that was our job , man , wouldn't that be the sweet life when you're having to call people who have that perception of your work because they don't understand what you do . Again , it just adds that extra element of icky to the whole thing . You don't want to have to confront that . It's uncomfortable .

So I'll tell you how I manage time in light of providing behavior de-escalation . This may work for you , it may not . You may hear me talk about it and think , man , this lady's full of baloney and that's okay . But I told you I was going to speak from the heart and I want to tell you exactly how I try to manage my week , with all of this unpredictable activity going on in the background . So I always try to have a plan for my week . I always try to schedule the things that need to happen kids that I need to go see lessons , that I need to provide those kinds of things . I try not to over schedule . If it doesn't have to go on the calendar , it's probably not it's probably going to be on my ancillary list which is on a sticky note next to my monitor . I want to leave a lot of white space in that schedule so I have room for things to move .

But the beautiful thing about having things scheduled , even if they get modified or changed , is that when you come back in your office and you're reeling from your third behavior call in a day or whatever is going on . You have that schedule to jog your memory . You don't have to sit and try to remember what it was you were supposed to be doing or try to recall what it was that you missed . We're reducing the cognitive load here . There's a lot going on . There are a lot of thoughts , there are a lot of decisions to be made in situations like that , and for me , I find that having things on my schedule , even if I have to move them , is actually pretty beneficial .

Now , I will say it took me a while to get to that point . It used to really annoy me when I had to move things around . I used to feel super defeated about it . Sometimes I even felt guilty about having to move things . But I've come to realize that's just a function of my job . That's something that just has to happen , and so the sooner I get okay with it , the better I'm going to feel about going to work every day . I will also say I do things like really trying to fill in a lot of my Mondays . I find that those are typically my slower days on campus . Notice , I didn't say slow days , they're just a little bit slower than the others . It takes us a little bit on our campus to really get going in the week , and so Mondays are typically a good time for me to really dive in and get a lot of stuff done in a short amount of time . And then again , if I have to move things around , if I have that Monday super stacked and I have to move things around like today , today was one of those days I have plenty of white space throughout the rest of my week to rearrange things , to reconfigure my schedule and figure out how to get all the things done that I can .

I will tell you , too , that my use of time data , which I am huge on , really helps in these situations , because it helps demonstrate why I can't get other stuff done . It goes without saying . Right , I'm able to pull up a time log and say well , you know , I could do X , y and Z , but last week , you know , I spent an average of three hours of the day in behavior de-escalation , and so you know , if I'm going to pick something else up , I'm happy to do it , but I'm going to need some other folks backing me up with their behavior calls or whatever . It is that the inability to get everything done isn't my own personal failure , it's not my personal shortcoming . I can look at my use of time log and see , man , every single block of that day is filled with something substantial . It's not that I've been sitting around twiddling my thumbs . I've been working my tail law and I can see that visually , and so it's just a nice confirmation for me to be like yes , I'm getting where I need to go , I'm doing all that I can possibly do and I'm going to be okay with that .

Managing School Counseling Stress and Expectations

It's almost like working a toll booth . Right , you have tons of cars going through this toll booth . You have one operator taking these tolls from all these cars . I just bear with me . I know we have all the electronic stuff now , but just go with me for analogy sake . You have all of these cars stacked up , but we have to take the toll from each car . We can't just start waving all the cars through . There's a line , there's a process . Everybody has to wait their turn , and so that's the way I often think about my work day to day on campus is that if I have a long line of cars , that's not my fault . I didn't send all the cars to my booth , I didn't say , hey , everybody , come drive on this highway at nine o'clock today because I'll be waiting for you . That's not how that works , and so it just helps me with the visualization . You can tell I'm giggling a little bit as I talk about it because it's just such a great reminder for me . During the day . I can't control how many cars show up at my toll booth . All I can control is how I manage my business when they get there .

When we talk about being on edge , I mean I alluded to that at the beginning of the episode where we talked about being over scheduled always on edge when the question is an if behavior , intervention is going to be necessary . But when we have to really regulate ourselves , we really have to reframe our situation so we don't fall victim to perpetual overwhelm . Right , I've seen way too many fantastic school counselors get stuck in this mindset of I can't do it all . Everything's on edge , everything's exploding , I'm on fire , I don't know what to do , I'm just going to quit , peace out , I'm done . I can't handle this anymore .

And that breaks my heart , because we need people like you on our campuses . We need folks who have a true love and desire for helping students on campus . I don't think I've ever met a school counselor that doesn't have a personal story about how they ended up doing this job , and I've worked with a lot of hundreds and hundreds of school counselors . I've dug into their backstories as part of our Get the Job program . I know , and I don't think I have ever met anyone that doesn't have some sort of personal story about why they pursue this work , because it's a work of heart . Every single day that you show up , you're showing up because you truly want to make a difference , you truly want to move the needle for students , and I think that is absolutely amazing . So I don't want you getting frustrated and giving up . I think one of the things that can help you avoid that is letting go of the idea of this ideal school counseling program , this ASCA national model .

Stuff gets crammed down our throats almost every day that we see or hear or talk about something school counseling related . It's pervasive , but the thing that we forget to remember is this model is based on manageable student-to-school counselor ratios . It's based on 250 to 1 . It's based on a situation where you're only called to perform appropriate school counselor duties on campus . That is a huge distinction . It's like the elephant in the room that we all overlook . When our noses are to the grindstone , when we're trying to crank it out every day , we tend to forget about that big elephant standing there staring us in the face .

Let go of the ideal . That brings me back to use of time and to the toll booth idea . Unless you are sitting around just hanging out waiting for something to happen , you're probably doing an amazing job . You have tons of things going on . You're going here , you're going there . You've got lots of interventions happening , lots of consultation , all the things happening right . Let go of the ideal . If you're giving it everything you have , if you're giving it 100% every day , don't worry if you don't meet that ideal . Y'all . I try every day to do the best I can at everything that I do , but I'm not at my ideal weight . As a matter of fact , I never reached my ideal height in my life . I needed to be 5'7" . I wanted to be a Radio City Rockette . I had to be 5'7 to make it , to be able to even audition . I never made it that far . I'm a shorty . That's just the way it goes sometimes . Let go of the ideal .

Free frame , behavior , intervention as a privilege . It's a privilege to be able to help a dysregulated student in the moment . It's healthy for the student to be able to see you model some regulation strategies , to have someone respond in their time of distress that truly cares about them and is not afraid to communicate it . There's a huge potential for change here , right ? That's why you signed up to do this work . So don't forget , as you're getting into the nitty-gritty of all this stuff , what a huge privilege it is to be present in these moments for students . And to add to that , have you seen how other people on your campus respond to behavior dysregulation ? Have you seen teachers or staff members berating students ? I've told you ten times . I don't even know why we keep doing this every day . You heard that stuff Because they get frustrated right , they're not trying to be ugly , but it's a reaction because they don't know how to regulate themselves in that moment , demanding I need you to blah , blah , blah , blah .

The best way to get a student to not comply with you when they're dysregulated is to tell them that you need it . That's not a good way to go . Don't do that , friends . You have an opportunity to be the calm in the chaos . You have the opportunity to step in , to take control of the situation and bring that student back to center effectively and efficiently . And when I say that I don't mean it should happen in a matter of a few moments . Sometimes it takes a while , sometimes it takes an hour or more to bring a student back to themselves , but that's okay . That's probably still faster than the majority of folks on your campus could accomplish it . So keep that in mind , keep a healthy perspective on that . You're not the berating one , you're not the yapping one , you're not the demanding one , you're not the shouting one . You're the calm in the chaos , and that's an incredible gift to give to that student . So keep that in mind .

As you're in the middle of these responses , the last thing I want to talk about and I think this is so common for all of us and something that we don't hear a lot about we hear people asking for strategies and what do I do and what kind of lessons can I do with students and what kind of social skills can I teach ? But we never really talk about the feeling itself , a feeling incompetent or ineffective in the moment . So let's talk about that for just a minute , because you can't respond to dysregulation and not be thrown off center a little bit because we've got to walk in these situations super mindful , super thoughtful of what's going on . But even then , if we have a kid that moves to kick us , moves to hit us , moves to bite us , it's going to throw us off center a little bit too . That's just the way the game works .

Behavior Intervention and Building Confidence

So remember that you probably weren't trained in behavior intervention . You were trained in counseling theories . You were trained in counseling approaches in calm environments , right where we sit down , we visit , we do activities . Those kinds of things you probably weren't trained in , specifically behavior intervention what to do when a student is throwing furniture ? What to do if someone is running down the hallway screaming profanity that would make a sailor plush , those kinds of things . And sometimes you have that oh my gosh moment where you feel like you're a deer in headlights and you think what do I do next ?

Sometimes , if we're called to help with behavior intervention or de-escalation , we get to wherever the student is and we feel like all eyes are on us , like there is a spotlight right on us and everybody's watching us , everybody's waiting on us and they're checking to see do we really know what we're doing ? Can we really de-escalate the student ? Will they listen to us ? It feels like everybody is just watching and waiting and that can be really disconcerting . That's when imposter syndrome comes in full force , because you do feel like you're performing on a stage almost . We've got to remember that their behavior is not a reflection of our skill and that it's not up to us to anticipate or think about what other people in this situation are thinking , because if they had a handle on it , if they truly understood what was going on , they wouldn't be calling you in the first place , right ? So we really have to maintain kind of a healthy distance from our thoughts . We need to keep a good perspective on this as we walk into the lion's den .

I think quit taking it all personally . I used to work with a wonderful woman and she would say that all the time Q-tip . Quit taking it personally , and I'm speaking to the student's behavior as well as the bystanders . Don't take it personally . It's not going to get you anywhere healthy . It's not going to get you anywhere good . Just let it go .

Sometimes you have to do your own work about what it means to be a competent school counselor . You really have to jump into and dissect what you believe in your soul about your own abilities ? Do you believe that you have what it takes to do this work ? If you don't find what you need to be able to get there , do you have a need for validation on your campus ? I think at a core level , all of us do right Because we feel like we have to prove ourselves to everybody . There are so many misconceptions about our work . There are so many conclusions people draw about what they think we do all day that we do kind of feel like we need to prove ourselves . That's a dangerous place to be in our heads and sometimes we feel like we need validation because it's an attempt to justify our job .

School counseling is under attack in a lot of places . Sometimes it's overt , like in in my home state of Texas here , where we have legislated that chaplains can come onto campuses and provide counseling with no counseling background , like in Florida , where they're deploying student coaches instead of school counselors All this crazy stuff going on . But sometimes the need to justify our jobs is a little more under the surface . It comes through as staffing numbers , budget numbers , the ability to have some autonomy in our schedules , not be micromanaged throughout our work all those other little things . Nevertheless , regardless of the situation , sometimes we do feel like we have to justify our jobs and then that leads to a need for validation on campus . So you've really got to get in touch with that . You've really got to build your confidence and your competence in your work so that you don't have to be a victim to this need for validation , so that if you walk into a behavior situation you don't have to fear that spotlight . You can walk in , you can take control and you know you have what it takes Super empowering . Once you can get to that point and I'll be honest , like it's not easy . It doesn't stay all the time at ebbs and flows , depending on the situation , but it's a good goal to have . And , too , I want to reiterate this that a student's behavior is not a reflection of your skill . I can't say that enough . A student's behavior is not a reflection of your skill in deescalating or guiding them toward regulation . There are so many other things that are going on that created this moment .

I ran across a paper here recently . I'll link to it in the show notes . It was talking about the advantages of having family counseling in conjunction with school counseling on campuses , and I've been talking about this idea for a while in my mastermind . I'm glad to see somebody start backing this stuff up , where a lot of behavior is learned . We're trying to overcome mindsets , beliefs and responses that have often been years in the making , and sometimes what progress we do make at school gets undone as soon as the student walks out the door . Right , and that's frustrating . We have a lot of big hurdles up against us when we're trying to make these changes , but there are lots of circumstances , there are lots of experiences there's probably some trauma in that history that are leading this student to the situation .

It's not about you and your worth as a school counselor . You've got to make sure that you're self-regulating yourself . You've got to modulate your responses that can be breathing , even if the student doesn't want to breathe with you . They don't want to calm down . You can do it . You can activate some of those mirror neurons to really get the student to start to come down with you , and it's going to help you think clearly too . Or and this is the one that I think drives my principal nuts , but I've been doing it for years and I find it really helps me . My masterminders laugh at me when I tell them this , but walking to a behavior intervention call , slowly , really measuring my steps , making sure I'm not in a hurry because I don't want to activate any more adrenaline than is already running in my system . I need to arrive calm , I need to arrive composed , I need to arrive with a clear mind so that I can discern what the next best steps are going to be . A lot of people look at me and they're like why aren't you in a hurry ? Oh , there's a method to the madness , my friends , there's a method to that . And then , do you have a bank of classroom de-escalation strategies ? Do you have your go-tos ?

Giving a student choices First and then , first we do this , then we get to do that , giving them an experience of empathy , not barking at them . Sometimes the best empathy you can give is silence , just sitting with them , and sometimes it feels like it lasts for freaking ever . You look at your watch . You've only been sitting there five minutes and then , on minute six , they look at you and you can tell they're coming around Offering a break . A lot of students have behavior plans , either formal or informal , that we've implemented where we talk about Cool down spots , cooling off spots , taking a break , asking for a break , all that kind of stuff .

And I don't know about you , but when I get amped up , especially at home , if I get really agitated or annoyed by something , the last thing that I want to do is take a break . And so why are we expecting kids to be able to do that ? Sometimes they can't do that right away , so we can show up , we can offer these choices , or perhaps sit with them in silence until they're ready to make a decision , and then we can say do you need a little break ? And then we can offer that . And that's going to open a whole door of conversation , of intervention , of introducing coping strategies , talking about what works and what doesn't , whatever is needed in that situation , by just giving them a little bit of time , a little bit of space and a little bit of dignity in the situation .

Speaking of dignity , I also think and this is just personal opinion , but I think it's important that if you're called to intervene in a behavior situation , you need to assert control in that situation . And I'm not saying showing up and barking and yelling and demanding and threatening like everybody else is doing , but you need the confidence . This is how I phrase it in my mind . You'll get what I'm saying when I say it . You have to have the confidence to deny the chihuahua , because a lot of times you'll show up to situations or issues and you're greeted by this chihuahua staff member and all they want to do is say well , let me tell you what happened . First , I did this and then they did that and I said , oh no . And then and just look at what they and they just go off and they want to give you all the details . The only thing , in my opinion , that that serves to do is escalate the situation further . I don't need all the details to be able to bring a kid back down to center and then remove them from the situation to try to figure out what went wrong . I don't need the play by play .

I have very consciously tried to train my staff on that that once they call me to intervene in behavior , they have abdicated control in that situation . When I show up , it's my show and it's not because I think that I know more than them . It's not that I'm trying to be dominant , but there needs to be one person leading the flow and that's super important . I even wore a tag on my badge for a long time . We wear ID badges on our campuses I'm sure you do . On the back of that , I could flip my badge over and it looked like a little stop sign . It had a white heart in the middle and it said disengage . And I could flip my tag on my shoulder . When I showed it to a classroom , if I got the barking chihuahua , they knew what that meant because I trained and explained in professional development before school started . When I flip this disengage tag , that's your cue you go back to your class like nothing's happened .

I will take care of this and that really prevents a whole lot of this drama just egging the situation on , sometimes escalating the situation . If we can just convince that teacher or that staff member to remove themselves from the situation with the assurance that we're going to circle back around and give them the opportunity to say their piece , we'll give them that chance . We'll probably need that information to make some discerning decisions about how to prevent this next time . They'll get the opportunity , but they're going to get the opportunity at the right moment , all right . Well , that feels so much better to me than what I had talked about previously .

So I hope you enjoyed it . I hope it helped give you some clarification on your role in behavior intervention . I hope it helped empower you and inspire you in your work because , like I said , we need you in our schools . We're seeing unprecedented needs as far as mental health counseling needs , behavior needs . We're all there on our campuses right now and students need you to be able to be the voice of reason , the voice of calm , the voice of reassurance when they're feeling dysregulated . So I want to thank you for the work that you do . I want to remind you how important it is and that you've been called to do this . This is absolutely a calling and I'm so glad that you answered .

School for School Counselors

If you need some extra support , if you feel like you need somebody on your side , if you need to talk through some of these behavior concerns , we're just a log in away . Our school for school counselors mastermind has case consultation every single week . We have school counseling support going on as well . All you have to do is join our mastermind and hop into our Zoom call and we would be happy to be a source of strength for you as you walk through this crazy land of behavior deescalation and school counseling in general . You can find out all about it at schoolforschoolcounselorscom . Slash mastermind . All right , I'll be back soon with another episode . We're going to be talking about behavior for a little bit longer because I know you guys have a lot going on , so keep listening for that . But in the meantime , I hope you have the best week . Take care .