With two other special-education specialists, I teach students who have emotional and behavioral disabilities in grades K-5. This past year, we worked together to minimize disruption when we needed to help a particular student in crisis.

When a student needs to be removed from his or her setting due to misbehavior, a team is called to bring him to a room attached to our classroom. When a student exhibits behaviors that are dangerous—e.g., throwing furniture, issuing threats, or engaging in other aggressive, antisocial behavior—our school requires a support team to enact a “crisis conference” with the student.

These crisis conferences have been a great help to students in need of adult intervention. De-escalation is usually the first step. Problem-solving comes next. Unfortunately, the conferences also pull teachers on the team away from their classroom duties. When I am called, I must abruptly leave the students I am teaching to assist in these crisis situations for a few minutes. This is not to say that students are left alone; we have support staff come in, who are usually with these same students in their generalized setting. And there is always a cross-category teacher in our room, so students are never unsupervised. Still, when I’m called away, students must work independently until I return. In previous years, I had left the students without a clear system for independent work in place. Last year, I decided that was going to change.

A lofty goal
After discussing the problem with my colleagues, we decided to put something in place so “crisis time” would run smoothly for the students I’d be leaving. We set out to enable students to display cooperation, assertion, respect, empathy, and, most importantly, self-control during crisis situations in order to ensure productive independent work in a positive atmosphere.

Preparing and modeling the procedure
Before we began implementing the “crisis time” procedure, I held a meeting in which I taught a mini-lesson about emotions. We talked about what it looks, sounds, and feels like when our bodies are angry. I then read a picture book about how one child re-acts to being angry, and afterwards we talked about how it would feel to have everyone’s eyes on you while your body felt so angry. I could see from students’ responses that some empathy was already present. After that, we discussed with the students what we would do if a student came into our room to use the de-escalation area. Students agreed that the best thing we could do would be to keep our attention on our own schoolwork.

Then the teachers introduced to the students new independent work folders. These folders were filled with educational, fun activities that they could work on independently. The folders were created to match each student’s grade and/or skill level. Students explored them immediately and seemed to get excited about what they contained. The independent worksheets in the folders pertained to anything they had already learned in literacy that they could review. For example, we included synonyms/antonyms sheets, ch- wh- sh- sounds, word chunks, and spelling activities. The folders also contained brain teasers, puzzles, crosswords, and word searches. Because we were familiar with the disruption crisis situations caused our individual classes, we made sure the folders were loaded with activities that our students already knew how to do and would enjoy rather than things they found to be challenging and burdensome. The folders provided students a chance to review and solidify their learning.

Practice and steady improvement
Next, we modeled what the students needed to do when a crisis team is called to the de-escalation room. I showed them where they needed to go and how that should look (quiet, walking slowly, etc.). To clarify our expectations of students, I asked for two volunteers to replay the techniques I had demonstrated. After we practiced these techniques a couple of times, we split up into our reading groups. I al¬lowed students to work for about ten minutes before I interrupted them; I then pretended to get called out for a crisis team. We told the students to get their folders and go into another area of our classroom. I left the room and came back after five minutes. The students were working quietly and the supervisor—another special education teacher in our classroom— said the transition went fairly smoothly.

After a bit of practice, students showed marked performance improvement during crisis situations. They successfully followed the steps we drafted to ensure productive independent work during crises. Over the course of the semester, I had the supervisor observe our class during crisis interruptions. Her tracking revealed that each time there was a crisis situation, students were able to complete more of the steps independently. By the end, they needed very few cues on how to proceed. The students were more comfortable with crises and realized that people sometimes have bad days and need a safe and secure place to calm down.

Reflection on the process
I came away from the experience feeling more positive about my class and my teaching. I felt comfortable leaving the room when a crisis arose, knowing my students could engage in independent learning activities.

The planning stage proved to be the most difficult part of the process. Writing down every step of how we were going to implement the project was intense! As we were talking through it, we uncovered more and more steps needed to ensure proper implementation. Actually, implementing the project was the easiest part. Recording all of the steps and strategies we needed ahead of time made following the plan go smoothly.

Not just for Special Education
My hope is that this process for tackling weak spots in our program—spotting a problem, settling on a plan to resolve it, implementing that plan with thorough scaffolding, and following through—can be applied to other school situations. For many teachers, disruptive situations occur and must be addressed immediately; the timing of these situations is typically beyond our control. Adopting a plan similar to the one we crafted could help diminish the loss of learning time in any classroom. Creating and maintaining independent work folders was a relatively minor aspect of our larger plan, yet they proved to be integral to its success and could also be used in just about every teaching situation.

Throughout the entire process, we made sure to avoid assumptions as much as possible. There were times when we assumed that students would know to follow certain steps—then we remembered we cannot assume anything. Even if students know how to do something properly, going over procedures they already know can’t hurt and may help them internalize the process into the level of a good new habit!

Julia Garczynski is a K-5 special education teacher at Edgerton Community Elementary School in Edgerton WI.

This article first appeared in Origins: A Newsletter for Educators, Fall 2009