WEBVTT

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My name is Fequiere Lazare.

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I'm a bilingual school psychologist at P.S. 269, Brooklyn, New York.

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Inappropriate student behavior has a profound impact upon learning.

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When a student is not behaving in the way that they're supposed to,

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they create a very unsafe environment in the school building, not just in their classroom

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but in the entire school building.

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And what that does to the other students, and them as well,

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is it really diminishes the effect of the teaching that's going on.

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Whatever type of atmosphere has been created really suffers as a result

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of inappropriate student behavior.

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We have a program at 269 called Jaguar Academy, and what Jaguar Academy is,

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Jaguar Academy is a group of at-risk students, students who have displayed disruptive behaviors

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in the classroom, particularly students who've had difficulties controlling their anger,

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different mood-regulation type of issues.

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It's not a mandated program; it's run totally in-house.

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And I'm the staff mentor for Jaguar Academy.

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And what I do with the students is I take them to the gym.

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I do this first in order to present the incentive to them, and we engage in fun activities.

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We play different sports.

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And what I do there, also, with them is character building.

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I teach them different principles of character building to see if I can have them leave

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with some type of character education.

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In order for them to continue to go to the gym with me or do the activities with me,

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they have to meet certain goals, and these goals are indicated

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on a worksheet that their teacher fills out.

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The teacher is able to rate them according to a rubric, and I give it to the teacher every week.

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I put it in the teacher's mailbox, and they're able to give it back to me the following week

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to let me to know how the child is doing.

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What I do during the week, I don't allow the whole week to go by before I see child again.

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I try to stop by their classrooms or wherever I know where they will be,

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whether it be in the lunchroom or the gym or in the art room.

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I might even see them in the hallway.

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And I try to see if I can go over some of the goals with them, ask them how they are doing.

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I may call their teacher at a random just to see how they're performing,

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just to kind of prompt them and let them know that I'm still watching

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and I'm still paying attention to them.

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When a student is not able to come to the incentive for the week, whether it be the gym

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or any other fun activity, what I do is I try to see if I can have a good conversation with them

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and explain to them that we're still working to these goals and that it's perfectly fine

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that they didn't-well, it's not perfectly fine,

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but it's acceptable that they're having difficulty working toward these goals.

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We identified these goals because they were having difficulty in these areas.

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And they're usually very understanding that they may not get to their goal all the time,

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but we're still working toward, and they have a clean slate for the next week.

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It's been my experience that children who may fall off for a week or sometimes two weeks,

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they're usually able to bounce back because those are the children

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that I give a lot more attention to during the week before I see them again,

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and I try to see if I come to a better understanding

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of what their difficulties are specifically.

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And sometimes we even change goals to be more attainable for the students

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because sometimes goals are little unrealistic at first when we draw them up.

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Some of the attributes that we're working on with the children are persisting,

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not giving up when they feel like giving up, or managing their impulsivity,

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not acting before they really take a time to reflect and think about what they're going to do.

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Being very clear when they speak, when they refer to something, say "the door by the exit;"

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don't just say, "that door over there," or being very clear

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and precise when they communicate and think as well.

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And these are some of the traits.

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That's just a couple of examples of the traits that we try to instill in the children to see

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if we can bring a lot more success with them.