As the new program has grown and changed this semester, I’ve found myself with little time for blogging and writing lessons. The day-to-day demands are substantial, and my fatigue (and burnout) have been the worst they’ve been since I was a first-year teacher.

A major challenge Jenny and I have faced is follow-through in our behavior support room. We’ve got four paras and a third teacher. The staffing is constantly changing as we get to know the students and try to adjust the dynamics. My original plan was to make sure that no single person wound up doing the same job all day long. No one person would man the support room all day. No one person would work in the academic support room all day. No one person would go to English classes all day. Etc. My thinking was that people would suffer less burnout if they had variety in their days.

So…I was wrong about that.

I set us up with a “Jack of all trades, master of none” scenario. The behavior support room has been the most costly casualty of my incorrect assessment. When staff take turns in the support room, consistency is lost. The data log has been frequently neglected. The rules, although taught in our staff development sessions, have not been followed. Jenny, last week, lamented that “This place is chaos!” She was totally right.

As we prepare to go into a new semester, Jenny and I are streamlining the job responsibilities of our staff, minimizing transitions and responsibilities for each individual, in hopes that staff will take ownership over their new, single-minded jobs. Because people new to behavior programs have a tendency to panic (or explode) in the heat of a major dysregulated episode, I’ve created a flowchart of responses. This (rather large) poster is going to hang in the support room, where kids and adults can see it…and (I hope) reference it in order to provide greater consistency of response. I hope it ALSO helps empower staff when the rubber is really hitting the road. Here’s what I’ve got so far. The image isn’t the clearest, but it’ll give you some idea of what I’m trying to accomplish.

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