Case Book Five

Babalee Jenkins is concerned because teachers are complaining about the silliness and poor self-regulation of the juniors and seniors. They are discussing the need to design a much more stringent discipline policy for the school. She feels that these students are old enough to self-monitor and self-regulate their own behaviors. She believes that she can teach the students how to do this, and avoid a change in the discipline policy. She decides to present the idea as a class project, that will cover not only some of the areas of concern of her colleagues, but also meet some of the learning standards for her students.

MS. JENKINS: Today we are going to start a new unit, a new segment in our learning. This unit is going to require that you think about your own learning, and make a decision about the grade that you want to earn. As usual, those who want to earn a higher grade will be doing more work at a higher quality. However, unlike some of our other units, the nature of the work for each grade is somewhat different. In this unit, you will work alone, or with one other peer. You will also be signing a contract with me that stipulates the work that you will do for this unit.

This unit is going to involve self-awareness and changing one of your behaviors to be healthier for you, or for our school society. Each of us has some behavior that we do that is unhealthy, or disruptive to our school society. I am going to use myself as an example at the moment. I have a few unhealthy behaviors. One of these is that I chew on pens and pencils. I often find that I don't even know that I have a pencil or pen in my mouth. It is disgusting. Who knows what germs are entering my body! Even worse, I leave the pens sitting around so that others could touch them, and certainly spread my germs. I have to stop this, and I am going to use this unit to do this. I am going to use a system called cognitive behavior modification to change my behavior. I am going to contract with you, my students, to help me change this behavior.

I have already met the first step, as I am aware of the behavior that needs to be changed. I have described that behavior. I know it occurs here at school, and at home.

I have not figured out how often I engage in the behavior. For the next week, I am going to try to count the number of times that I put a writing implement into my mouth. As I told you earlier, I am not always even conscious of doing this, so, I need your help. Each of you take one of these handouts. For the next week, I am going to ask that you help me keep count. Look at the rows for each day of the week. See those? Now look at the columns. There is one for this class time, and one for other times. Right now, go to the cell that is for today, at this time. If, during this class you see me put a writing implement in my mouth, you should put a slash mark in the cell. If, after this class, you see me somewhere else in the building today and I have a writing implement in my mouth, you should put a slash in the second column. Then, you should write a note on the bottom of the sheet as to where and when you saw this behavior. At the end of the week, you will turn this in, and we will see what each of you has recorded, compared to what I have recorded, and try to figure out the averages. It is very important that you do your own work here, as you may or may not see the behavior as others see it.

The second step is to set up a plan. I will use the information to help me plan how to change my behavior. I have to be honest here, I need a little motivation to do this. I am going to set up a reward system for myself as I change my behavior. As this is an example for you, I have already set up what I think I am going to do. I thought about this. I could punish myself. I could pinch myself or take away my lunch every time I chew on a pen. However, I don't think that either of those is really a good thing to do. Pinching will hurt, and bruise. Taking away lunch will make me hungry and grumpy in the afternoon. We don't want that! I think it would be better if I reward myself for not chewing! So, I like little sweet treats and dried fruits. I know that the dried fruits are healthy for me, so I am going to choose those. I will reward myself with a small piece of dried fruit when I do not put a writing implement in my mouth.

The next step I can't quite do yet, because I need the behavior counts. When I have those, I will come back to this discussion with you. I will have you help me decide how often I should reward myself. After that, I will actually use the plan, and try to change my behavior, keeping careful count of my behaviors and rewards. If I get my behavior changed, and I don't chew my pens anymore, I will give myself a bigger reward, a box of chocolates! However, that is down the line, after I really know that I have changed my behavior.

Now, here is your learning challenge. All of you are going to pick a behavior of your own that you need to change, and hopefully want to change. Then, you are going to set up your own counting/tracking system to look at the behavior, and your own punishment or reward system to help you change that behavior. You will sign a contract with me, so we are in agreement on the behavior you will change and the way you will reward yourself for change along the way, and the reward for change at the end. This is the basic outline of the contract that, if met, will earn you a "C" for this unit. To earn a "B," you will have to help another student in this class with his/her change, acting as someone who helps identify a problem behavior, help keep track of the behavior, help with the reward system, etc. You will be contracting with the person you are helping change, and me, relative to that change. Of course, you will also be doing your own behavior changing. To earn an "A," you will have to change your own behavior, help a class peer with his/her behavior change, and help a junior or senior who does not have this class with a behavior change. Yes, you will have to find someone, and mentor that person through the process. Again, everyone has to contract with me!

I know that this might be confusing at first, and we will come back to it. Right now, I want you to think about your own behaviors, and what you might change. To help you think about this, the other teachers of juniors and seniors have written a list, with no names mentioned, of some of the behaviors that they have observed that they are concerned about. These behaviors impact health and our school society. Let's look at this list, and in your journals, you can list behaviors that you see in yourself that are on this list. Be honest about this, it is just between you and I! Of course, you can also add in your journals any other behaviors that are not on the list that you are concerned about.

Teacher Notes:

• While having students do cognitive behavior modification on themselves takes a long time, the results are usually quite good. Teachers should be aware, though, that some parents may have issues with this. Parents should also be made aware of, and agree to any modification project that the student undertakes.