A class of their own

Many children act up at one time or another. Sometimes it’s a five-minute tantrum and sometimes it goes on for months, triggered by a traumatic loss or family circumstances.

But when severe behavior has no explanation and continues to disrupt for a long period of time, behavior support classes aim to help students turn things around.

The Everett School District offers the self-contained classes for students with severe behavior problems who fall under the state’s umbrella term “Emotional Behavioral Disorder,” or EBD.

“You have kids with all sorts of disabilities, like severe ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder),” said Shelley Petillo, principal of Penny Creek Elementary. “Some are just qualified under the EBD umbrella because of their behaviors, and it’s not specific.”

Penny Creek is the feeder school for elementary students in the district’s south end who qualify as having an Emotional Behavioral Disorder. The other sites in the south end are Heatherwood Middle School and Jackson High School. Schools in the north end include Jackson Elementary, North Middle School and the high schools.

Students in the classes have a range of behaviors, and teachers write specific plans for each student. Behaviors include power struggles and being passive/aggressive.

“Some of the primary kids will hold a tantrum on the floor, cry, get frustrated,” Petillo said. “One child (in the program) would strike out at another kid and flail around.”

Teachers told that child to find an adult when he was frustrated. Now he does that, and asks for a hug when he’s upset.

Teachers have other ways of helping students deal with aggressive tendencies.

First, students are taught to identify feelings and list choices.

“(For example): ‘I’m feeling really frustrated — I can count to 10, take a walk,’” Petillo said. “There are lots of strategies to keep it from escalating.”

Refusing to engage in a power struggle is one strategy.

“If a student says, ‘No,’ your first inclination is to say, ‘You will do it,’ to push them into a situation where you push and they push back,” Petillo said.

Instead, she tells the student: “You seem frustrated. I’ll be over here when you make that decision.”

In the classes, students keep a behavior chart for morning and afternoon. They get a “G” for “good,” an “A” for almost, and a “U” if behavior isn’t at the level it should be.

That helps teach students that there’s always a clean slate — if they have a bad morning, they can do better in the afternoon, said Petillo.

Students check in with teachers at the start of the day and talk about how it’s going to go. Then they check in at the end and talk about how the day went.

Teachers and parents communicate constantly, so if a child had a bad night, the teacher will know it the next day, Petillo said.

As for physical threats, teachers are certified in a de-escalation strategy course to try to stop attacks before they happen. For example, if teachers see hands clenched, they will ask students to take a break, Petillo said. The elementary and middle school classrooms have a “time out” room where students can go to cool off.

Essential to the success of the program is its high teacher-to-student ratio, Petillo said. There is one teacher and two paraeducators in a classroom with as many as 10 students. More staff is added if needed.

The process by which a student enters the program is painstaking.

First, repeated disruptive behavior is reported to a team of school administrators and specialists, who do a battery of tests and collect data, said Kris McDowell, executive director of special services for the district.

Interventions are designed and external causes — like a death in the family — are looked for.

Then, if the behavior continues despite interventions and if there is no external cause, the child can be referred to the program.

“The goal always is to have kids in regular education as much as possible,” McDowell said.

The students in the program are mainstreamed with other students at least 45 minutes a day, and sometimes more. They might attend just math with a mainstream class, for example.

The goal is to get students back into a regular class at Penny Creek, and then back to their home school, Petillo said.

She knows of three students in the program who have transitioned from the behavior class into the school’s gifted program.

The district doesn’t keep track of how many students graduate the program into the mainstream.

Students in the kindergarten-through-second-grade class often are mainstreamed before they make it to the third-through-sixth-grade class, McDowell said.

The behavior support classes at Penny Creek aren’t secreted away, Petillo said. Rather, they’re in the center of the courtyard. This week, one of the students in the class is presenting a poem at the school’s Martin Luther King celebration.

“At some point in their lives, these kids feel isolated,” Petillo said. “(Now) these kids know everyone in the building cares about them. We work hard to make those connections.”