What happens to an attention-seeking child when their audience is
removed?
Julie N. Sheridan
MSU-TE 891-Educational Inquiry
April 16, 2005
As a new teacher I am constantly bombarded with new strategies, new
curriculum guidelines and improved methods for reaching my students. All that being
said, I still struggle with negative attention seeking children who can continually
disrupt my classroom. Classroom management is one of the most difficult strategies to
develop as a new teacher. Each child comes with his or her own bag of needs, wants
and tricks. Classroom management plans that may have worked for two years are no
longer effective with the students the following year and need to be updated. Delving
into the world of teacher help books, journal articles, web sites, and conferences can
be very overwhelming, time consuming and unfortunately at times just another dead
end.
After numerous failed attempts to work with my student who thrived on
negative attention, I sought advice from the teacher of our emotionally impaired
program, Brandi Hranach. Together we discussed several strategies that I had
implemented in my classroom and some different techniques that I could also try in
order to reestablish a classroom environment that was conducive to learning.
The plan that we ended up agreeing upon was one that had nothing to do with
the child who sought attention in unacceptable ways. We decided that it would be
better to approach the situation from the angle of the students who’s behavior was
appropriate and work with them.
I am always hesitant to setup a behavior modification plan with a student who
is having a difficult time in the classroom. That child is already seeking attention
through negative means, and as long as they continue to do so, I as the teacher will
continue to work with them (therefore acknowledging these behaviors) to develop
positive strategies. My reason for approaching and trying to remedy unacceptable
behavior from this point of view was simply that I knew the students I was going to
be working with already demonstrate appropriate behavior choices and were
providing my negative attention seeking child with daily examples of what
appropriate choices look like. By working with the remainder of my students instead,
I am not acknowledging his inappropriate choices and I am continually recognizing
the students who are setting good examples. Hopefully this will reach my student
from two different perspectives. He will see students being acknowledged on a daily
basis for good choices and his inappropriate choices will not receive attention from
either his peers or myself.
I brainstormed with my entire class (including the child who’s behavior I am
trying to alter) the reasons why a student would act inappropriately. Without much
guidance the students were able to give me many reasons for this type of behavior,
one of them being seeking the attention of their peers. I took this example and created
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another list composed of ways to avoid this result. We discussed how to ignore this
type of behavior, why it is important, although not easy, to ignore and what results
this reaction would have.
From here I posed the question of whether or not a student who successfully
ignores inappropriate behavior should received some type of acknowledgment and on
the other hand some consequence if they inappropriately react to the undesired
behavior. With my students help, an important key, I was able to develop a plan in
which we would ignore inappropriate behaviors and reward those students who were
able to do so.
The plan is described below.
 If the class is able to ignore inappropriate behaviors they received
marbles to help them work towards their goal of one hundred marbles.
 If a student or small group of students laughs at, or reacts to the
inappropriate behaviors then they will give themselves a check and this
will result in a loss of five minutes from the one hundred marble
reward.
 If the majority of the class is unable to ignore the inappropriate
behavior then they can loose up to two marbles from the total count.
 If a student has a good day, in terms of ignoring unacceptable
behaviors, then they can erase one check mark and earn their five
minutes back
(of the marble reward).
We also decided that we would practice and test out this system for at least
two weeks in order to clear up and miscommunications and misunderstandings that
the students may have about my expectations of them in the classroom. The
following week as we implemented the plan I was amazed at the difference in my
classroom. As with all new procedures there was some kinks that had to be worked
out, and some slight modifications that we had to make, but overall the students were
showing improvements in their ability to ignore inappropriate behaviors. I hoped it
was just a matter of time before the inappropriate behaviors were not so prominent in
the classroom.
After four weeks of implementing the above mentioned plan I have a group of
students who, for the most part, can ignore an oncoming train wreck and continue on
with the lesson. I also have a negative attention-seeking child who has made progress
in leaps and bounds towards obtaining attention through positive means. There are
still occasions where the student acts out inappropriately and there are still times
when the behavior is difficult to ignore for both the students and myself; but there is
without a doubt positive change in the attention seeking child and his classmates.
This is a plan that I will continue to develop as the school year wraps up and look
forward to implementing at the start of the following school year.
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