To be fair, these signs can be easily overlooked in a busy classroom full of students. In fact, most students who consistently exhibit these types of behaviors typically progress through a seven-phase process known as the acting-out cycle , as described in the table below.
View Transcript Credit. In general, we encourage all faculty and staff to learn about the acting-out cycle. You can think of this as a seven-step cycle that begins with a calm stage. And although [laughs] not every student comes to school calm every day, we think at some point in their life they have experienced some type of calm.
And then something sets that student off and that can be thought of as a trigger. And sometimes those are school-based things like assemblies or schedule change, or could it be a difficult assignment or something like that.
And some of those triggers can also be non-school based. It could be coming to school tired or hungry, or having not slept well the night before, or having had an argument with their parents or a conflict with a peer. And eventually it creates these peak behaviors when behavior is very, very out of control. And then following that, there is a de-escalation and then eventually a recovery phase. The good news is that it is possible to interrupt this acting-out cycle much earlier in the chain, long before the student reaches peak behavior, which can be frightening for teachers and students alike, and not just the student experiencing the challenging behavior, but others in the classroom.
Because used at the wrong time, it could actually have a counterproductive outcome for the student. The acting-out cycle diagram is adapted from Colvin, G. Managing the cycle of acting-out behavior of the classroom. Eugene, OR: Behavior Associates. Recall from the Challenge that Ms. Harris has two students who exhibit challenging behaviorsβAva and Sam. View Transcript. Transcript: Acting Out Cycle β Ava.
