5849: Raise the Bar: Positive Interventions for Students Who Challenge Us

Speaker: Betsy Butler, Course Designer and Writer

Betsy Butler: Hi, I'm Betsy. I'm the course designer for course 5849 Raise the Bar. I think this course is an excellent overview of some of the reasons why behaviors occur in students and maybe some ways of how to address those things. Some of the topics that you'll look at are engagement, which of course can be tied to behavior. You'll also look at some individual reinforcement menus, um, functional behavior assessments and you'll also just take a look at the functions of behavior because all behavior is communication. So you're going to, you'll be able to kind of dig into that and see what per, what the reasons are for student behavior and maybe how to mitigate those things in the short and long term.

Betsy Butler: The thing I love about this course is that it's got actionable strategies and it all focuses on positive interventions. Students always have reasons for their behavior. And so this course kind of helps you shift the mindset from a disciplinarian to a support for some of those students who are experiencing big behaviors and challenging behaviors. There's also a really great resource, a list of resources in the course that focus on crisis behaviors so that you'll know what to do when a student has a crisis or in other words, acting out in such a way that it may put you, the student, or the rest of the class in danger. So I think this really, this course has it all, it's a great overview and it's also a great introduction into some of the more specific behavior courses, positive intervention courses that we have on our catalog.