In this engaging and often funny conversation, Dr. Adam Holland—educator, trainer, and author of the upcoming Gryphon House book Thinking Outside the Prize Box: Navigating Challenging Behaviors in Today’s Classroom—shares real-world strategies for managing challenging behavior without relying on prize boxes, clip charts, or other reward-and-punishment systems that lose effectiveness over time.
Drawing on his own journey from a “bad kid” in school to an award-winning teacher and now a coach to educators nationwide, Dr. Holland explains why all behavior is communication, how to identify the “why” behind a child’s actions, and why moving from compliance to connection changes everything. He breaks down the difference between consequences and punishments, offers insight on co-regulation (including his own missteps), and gives practical, ready-to-use tips for reshaping classroom environments so the “right” behaviors happen naturally.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why traditional rewards and punishments often backfire in the long run
- How to uncover the real reasons behind challenging behavior
- The importance of connection over compliance—and how to build it
- Why clip charts may be doing more harm than good
- The difference between natural consequences and punishments
- How small environmental and procedural tweaks can prevent problems before they start
- Real, tried-and-tested strategies you can implement tomorrow
About Our Guest:
Dr. Adam Holland has spent more than 25 years in education as a teacher, coach, and trainer. His work focuses on helping educators understand and respond to challenging behavior in ways that build strong relationships, reduce stress, and create calmer, more connected classrooms. His first book, Thinking Outside the Prize Box, will be released September 1 by Gryphon House.
Episode Transcript
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our interview.
Emily Garman: Welcome to Early Childhood Chapters. I'm joined today by Dr. Adam Holland, author of the forthcoming Gryphon House book, Thinking Outside the Prize Box Navigating Challenging Behaviors in Today's Classroom. Always a hot topic for educators everywhere. Welcome, Dr. Holland, tell me a little bit about yourself and, how you came to write this book for Gryphon House.
Adam Holland, PhD:Thanks for having me. So this this book is many, many years in the making for me. I will just say that when I was very young, I was the bad kid in class and, spent much of my youth, standing in corners or waiting corporal punishment or, just in situations where I was walking laps around the track while their kids were playing.
And, one of the reasons that I originally went into teaching was simply that I wanted to do things better than they had been done for me. I wanted to have a classroom where kids felt valued, regardless of how they come in, regardless of their ability to self-regulate and things like that. The interesting thing was my my original degree is in K-6 and, like a lot of us, I ended up in the classroom not doing necessarily the things that I sort of envisioned myself doing, but instead doing the things that teachers had done to me, the things that I had seen during my student teaching experience, and my other early experiences in the classroom. And so I still remember back to my first year very much being in a situation where I was doing all of the things that I hated when I was a child. I was putting kids in timeout. I was calling their parents snitching, as we call it, on the streets.
I was using a card chart. And I had being good tickets and things like that. And, and there were certain kids, of course, that, like me when I was younger, never got them. We had fun Friday, but you would only go if you were really good. And it was not until I went in and observed in the county's demonstration classroom and saw a teacher who was using none of those things and really connecting with her students, and had everything running much more smoothly than I was seeing in my classroom.
In spite of all the little tricks and things that I was using that I that I realized, like I had sort of like wandered astray. And so, I over a number of years, I, I want to be really clear that like, I did not, like start doing things differently, and it instantly worked. Over a number of years, though, I sort of moved away from that and moved to a slightly different way of doing things, and it worked.
It ended up being much more successful for me. I went from what I would consider not to be a very good teacher at all my first year teaching to being the PTA teacher of the year. The year before I left the classroom and, and just ended up in a situation where I enjoyed my practice a lot more.
I enjoyed teaching a lot more. I enjoyed my time with the kids. The kids seemed to enjoy it a lot more, and I did a lot of these things because they felt right at the time. And, and after teaching first grade and then kindergarten and eventually preschool, including in an inclusive setting, I went back to school and got my master's and PhD in early childhood.
And that really helped me understand the why of a lot of the things that I been doing. So I, I knew these things that worked in the classroom. Then I paired that with the knowledge that I gained while I was working on my doctorate to understand, okay, this worked, and here's why this worked. And and, I've used that since then to coach hundreds, if not thousands of teachers across the country on challenging behavior.
And so, during that time, I've, I've been doing trainings and professional development and coaching and all of that sort of thing. And so this book is really sort of a distillation of everything that I've learned in my 25 years in the field around challenging behavior what works, what doesn't, why it works, why it doesn't work. And, and one of the things that I've tried to do in the book is, we, we pull a lot of, what we know in the field and what we do in the field from sort of basic education research or basic psychology research or educational psychology research.
I really wanted to go beyond that and think about other fields that have things to say about why children act the way they do, why adults act the way they do. And so this book is, is an attempt for me to translate that knowledge into real, actionable things that teachers can do today in the classroom to improve what's often a difficult situation when it comes to challenging behavior.
Emily Garman: Well, in where you said that you taught the way you had been taught, this is the same way we parent. We often parent the way that we were parented, even if maybe we don't want to parent that way. It's just kind of human nature. But a lot of what you're talking about is this, this prize box. So in the title of the book, the prize box, and that can be symbolic of a lot of things sticker charts, clip charts, treasure boxes.
So what is it about this idea of of a prize box or a treasure box that that just makes you twitchy and and what what is the the danger? What's the dark side of of dangling a dinosaur for good behavior?
Adam Holland, PhD: Yeah. So I want to preface this by saying that I am not completely against rewards and punishments in the classroom. I think sometimes people come down and that's sort of their feeling. It's like we should never, ever reward kids. We should never say, thanks for doing that. Or we I like that you're sitting that way.
And I want to be clear that I'm not saying that teachers should never do those things, but rather, those actions when we reward or punish children, come with costs. And it's important for teachers to understand those costs so they can weigh them against the benefits of getting kids to sit still immediately. And, and for me, a lot of times when it comes to not, I'm not thinking about like IEPs or, children on like tier two or tier three.
If we think about pyramid model type of, interventions, but kids just at the base. Right. The basic practice that we do should really not be based on rewards and punishments, because it's the costs for a lot of children are just not worth the consequences that we end up having to deal with. And and there's a few different reasons for that.
So the first I'll say is this. When we use rewards and punishments, particularly, I'll just stick with rewards because I think punishments are largely phased out in classrooms at this point. But when we use rewards, when we dangle that dinosaur, kids brains and our brains to do this little move where they think to themselves, if this was something I really wanted to do, you wouldn't have to dangle that dinosaur, right?
Or they think something like, I'm doing this so that I can get that dinosaur. Okay. And in doing so, what happens is our brains actually devalue the behavior that we want to see, whether it's sitting quietly or following directions or, being kind to other people or, for those of us in my generation who were rewarded with personal pan pizzas, reading books, all of those things, right, get devalued by the fact that there's a reward that's sort of on the end of doing it, because we think either I wouldn't need to do this, or you need to reward me if I was, this is something I would really want to do, or I'm only doing this so that I can get the reward. And the problem, of course, is once you take the reward away, then you end up in a situation where, there's no reason to do it. And even if you're very consistent, we have to understand that the rewards that we offer children are not necessarily as exciting the 10th time we offer them as they are the first.
Right. You have ten pencil grips and it's just not as sexy as the first time you were offered a pencil grip. You have, eight erasers with unicorns on them. And great, like, who needs a ninth eraser with unicorns on them? So we end up having to sort of steadily ramp up what we are offering children in order to see the same juice.
And I think teachers sort of realize this, right? You you're in the classroom, it's September, you're offering the dinosaur. Kids are just leaping over themselves to get that dinosaur. By the time February rolls around, they could not care less about that dinosaur. Right. And so, when we use this in classrooms, we end up starting the year strong.
And then as the year goes on, they become less and less effective. So, so there's the issue of, long term where, if this is something we really want long term, we absolutely want to avoid rewards and punishments because our brains are going to sort of diminish their value. And then there's also this issue of efficacy where as the year goes on, rewards and punishments just get less and less effective.
And so it's generally just not best practice for my point of view to use them.
Emily Garman: That makes sense. I, I love what you said about the personal pan pizza. My generation was we read for dairy Queen, ice cream treats. So it was highly motivating.
Adam Holland, PhD: Yes. Until there's no ice cream treats.
Emily Garman: That's right. One of the things you talk about in your book and you return to this kind of several times is that all behavior is communication. And I hear it. I hear that a lot. Many of our authors, I mean, that's a that's a common theme in talking about children and behavior. So what are some examples of that? What is going through a child's head? Maybe when they throw a block at another child, what are they really saying? What are they trying to communicate there? And how can we listen better as educators?
Adam Holland, PhD: All behavior is communication is sort of a classic phrase. And if I'm thinking about a child who's working a block at some other kids head, there are a number of reasons that they could be doing that. And what I want to emphasize here is that the throwing a block at another kid's head is obviously not acceptable, right?
One of the things I say in the book is that our first job, our first and most important job, is making sure that every child in the classroom, everybody in the classroom, has safe bodies and happy hearts. And so we can't have kids throwing blocks at other kids heads because then we're not doing our first job, which is which is making sure that everybody has safe bodies and happy hearts.
And so. In order to address that behavior, though, it's not enough to understand that that child through the block, we have to understand the why. And three year olds, four year olds, five year olds, ten year olds, 15 year olds often don't tell us the why, right? They may not even really know the why. And so it's, it's incumbent on us to figure it out.
Right. And in the science of this, we call those things the form and the function. Right. The form is throwing the block. The function is what the child is trying to get or what the child is trying to avoid. And so in this case, they're it could be that they want that block and they don't have the words to request it.
Right. It could be that that child took that block from them and they're angry and they can't express I'm angry because he took my block. It could be that this child's been holding a vendetta against that child for some other reason, and now it's just all come to a head. He can't stand looking at his stupid face anymore.
And now I gotta throw a block so he knows where he is. In this classroom hierarchy, there are many, many reasons, right? If we want to address that behavior, what we have to understand is the reason though, right? If the reason is that they're harboring some deep vendetta against this child, and you try to teach them to ask nicely for the block, that's not going to address the underlying communication that's going on here.
It's not going to change the behavior. If we want children to really change, we have to get at the why and then address that. Right. Maybe it is making sure that we always have enough blocks so that everyone can have the long block, because everybody always wants the long block when they're in the block center. it could be as simple as like changing the environment.
It could be working with those children to develop a system so that if one person is playing with the block and they want it, maybe they put like a sticker next to the long block picture in the center, and then they turn over a timer. And when the timer is done, they know they're going to get the long block right.
So that feeling of like, I want the long block, but I can't have the long block goes away because they know they're going to get the long block in a few minutes. And so it's really about like thinking through what the reason is and then addressing that reason. So the communication piece is really important because I see a lot of teachers sort of address the form of the behavior and say, oh, you can't throw blocks, right?
And they never address the function. They never try to get at the root cause of what's going on. And so what happens is the behavior repeats over and over and over again, because even though the teacher said, I can't throw the block, I still need the block. And this adult doesn't understand my burning desire for the long block.
And if they did ,right, they would. They would throw blocks with me, right? Because Jeremy has it coming. And so I think that as teachers, it's critical for us. Right? Not just to understand the behaviors communication, but to really understand the underlying piece of that communication, because that's what's really going to help us change behaviors over time and, and make it less likely that when I come in 2 or 3 weeks from now, that block is still getting thrown at that kid's head.
And that, I think, is what teachers want, is they just want the stress level to go down over the course of the year rather than up. And so being able to understand the why of the behavior and really thinking critically and maybe trying a few things, maybe you think it's one thing and you try giving that child the tools and that's not it.
So then you try something else, and eventually teachers do get it right, and eventually the behaviors do decrease. It's just the kind of thing that's going to take time, unfortunately.
Emily Garman: So from a logistical standpoint, thinking about being an educator in a classroom, maybe you've got 18 preschoolers and 24 kindergartners. The the idea of being able to really dial in and understand all this kind of communication of block throwing on a very granular level is really nice. But how practical is that? One of the things you talk about is moving away from compliance toward connection.
But again, in this environment where you have many, many students perhaps throwing multiple blocks at multiple times, how do you do that? How do educators do that? When they are just one person, maybe they have an aide in a room full of kids who are communicating all the time.
Adam Holland, PhD: Yeah, no, I will just say I've been that teacher in that classroom, both with and without a helper. I had, I think, 25 first graders my first year teaching, with an aide who was there part of the time. And I've had 18 preschoolers again with an aide that was there, like part of the time, depending on how our ratios were for compliance and things.
So I've been there. Right. And, and what I say to teachers when they talk about this is a couple of things. The first is this. Right. There is no magic bullet. One answer that you can snap your fingers and all of a sudden it's easy, right? It's easy mode and there's no work involved. Right? That's just not how our profession is.
Our profession is a challenging one. It's one where, if you're not, a little bit tired. At the end of the day, you're probably doing it wrong. So I will just say that, that there is no, like, magic bullet here. And what I tell teachers is, like, your current state of stress and frustration is probably pretty high because there are three kids throwing blocks at the same time.
And you can use these little tricks like the dinosaur or sticker charts, or fill in the name of your school mascot box, and you can stop all those kids from throwing blocks right now. But what's going to happen is tomorrow, those same three kids are going to be throwing blocks, right? Maybe you're going to add a fourth kid throwing blocks.
And so over the course of the year, your year is just going to get harder and harder and harder if you really take the time to build that connection, though. I sort of liken that to frontloading the effort. Right. In that case, we are going to put in the time and the effort now in order to build the relationships with kids, in order to actually sit down and teach them what they're supposed to do in order to think about our environment and how we lay it out, and how we sort of give children procedures and, and things that they can do, throughout so that they are getting better and better as the year goes on and the opportunities for them to throw blocks, go down as the course of the year goes on. And what's going to happen is you're going to frontload your effort. So that during the year, as the year progresses, everything gets a little bit easier, right? So that's the first thing I would say is yeah, it is hard, right.
But it's also hard the way we're doing it now. Right. It's stressful the way we're doing it now. And we we could be in a situation where by the end of the year it's a lot easier than it is at the beginning of the year. And I think that's what when I taught to teachers, they really want us.
They just want to see over the year it's getting easier and the kids are getting better instead of things getting more and more out of control as the year goes on. So that's the first thing I'll say. The second thing I'll say is, I mean, it's it's like classic, advice that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
And for teachers, I always tell them, like, you don't need to fix everything right now, right? You don't need to. You're not gonna have the time if you got three kids from blocks at once to address. All right? So stop two of the kids and then go work with the most challenging kid or the child. You think you can get an easy win with, figure out their why, dig in and build that relationship. All of that stuff.
Then start with that one child. Right? And then once you have that one child taking care of great, move on to the next child, right? And then move on to the next shot. You have a lot of days, right? Even in public school, we have 180 plus days to get this done. You have plenty of time to make connections with kids.
There are so many minutes in the day, so many days in the year. To not build connection with children, to not show children that you love them. It takes the same amount of effort. It's just a different kind of effort. And at least this way, you're going to see steady growth over the course of the year rather than sort of thing sliding backwards the whole year and feeling like you're desperately trying to hang on but can't quite do it.
Emily Garman: There's a section in the book where you say teachers are co regulation Jedi masters, and I want to hear what you have to say a little bit about that. So what's a time that you completely failed at this and what you learned from that.
Adam Holland, PhD: Co regulation, right. It's this idea that we're going to help children regulate and, sort of give them supports at first and then gradually reduce those supports as they are able to more and more self-regulate. I contrast it with this regulation where children have no supports and just can't do it, as well as with other regulation where I'm doing the regulating for kids, I'm telling them exactly how to stand, exactly where to put their hands.
You put your hands like this. You put a bubble in your mouth, you eyes on me, ears open, hands in your lap, crisscross applesauce. Right. In that situation, children have no control over anything. And they're not learning how to regulate themselves. They're just doing what you're telling them to do. And so when I when I talk about teacher being co regulation Jedi masters, I'm talking about, teachers really having that that sort of perspective and ability to work with children rather than on children.
And I, I hope I've communicated this in the book, but I will definitely communicate it now that I messed up constantly as a teacher. Right. It's easy for me to think back on my practice and think, oh, it was like overwhelmingly very positive. But I know that there were absolutely negative days because I, I say writing, some of my favorite writing samples, and I go back through them from time to time.
And, one of my kindergartners was a fantastic writer, and I still have one of her samples. And, on the day that that I collected this writing sample, I remember I was getting my master's degree at the time. And so I was learning a lot about Reggio Amelia and how they use natural materials and they create these beautiful spaces.
And I was like, my room is like full of plastic and like these like gross primary colors, like we could do better. And so I got mason jars to like, put all of my, like, art supplies in. And it it really did make for a much more beautiful space. But in one afternoon, my kindergartners broke three mason jars right within the span of like 30 minutes.
And I know I did not react well because my student captured it in her writing sample. And, in the like in the text section, it said something like, “Mr. Holland got angry this afternoon,” and then there's a picture of me with a speech bubble, right, coming out, and it says, “I am this close,” right? And I'm like holding my hands up so I not only know that I failed, I know exactly what I said. And I, I remember seeing that and immediately realizing like, oh, like, I may have gotten a little bit too upset here. And so we had a discussion in the afternoon after that about, I apologized and I told them, that I regretted saying that, and I regretted losing my temper.
I also work with them to try to figure out how we could break fewer mason jars. Right, so that we don't end up in this situation. Again, where I'm feeling frustrated and they're in a dangerous situation because there's broken glass. And so, I think that the key part is not to expect that you're not going to fail, right?
We all fail. Whether we've been in the classroom for ten minutes or ten years, whether we've been doing this our whole lives, we we are always going to fail. And I also want my children to be comfortable failing. And so I view failure in the classroom as an opportunity to model to children. This is how we react when we fail, right?
If we mess up and we hurt someone's feelings, or we say something we wish we hadn't said, we apologize for it, right? And we mean it. And then we learn from our failures and we try to create a situation so that next time we're less likely to fail. And that's really, I think, what what I would say to teachers is view your failures as opportunities.
They're going to happen. You can either let them get you down or you can let them lift you up and might as well have them lift us up so that we can model to children what to do when you fail, so that when they fail, they pick up those same behaviors, and that becomes in the future, if they become teachers, the way that they end up teaching is with grace and some humility.
Emily Garman: I think that's very striking to what you said about you. You apologized to the class for losing your temper. And that's something I think a lot of people would say. Oh, no, you've never want to do that. You wouldn't want to show weakness in that way, or you wouldn't want to apologize to children because you're the adult.
But that's a that's a powerful example to show them how adults behave. This is it is okay to be wrong and say you're sorry and to say that you hurt someone. I mean, that's an example for them to see an adult doing that. And it it shows them that, that they're worthy of being treated with respect because you apologized to to them too.
I think that's that's really powerful.
One of the things that you talk about are the behavior clip charts, and I wonder if you can explain just a little bit about what those are. Most people listening probably. No, I hadn't seen these in my own child's school. But, you really like to make fun of these clip charts.
So, tell me about the clip charts. If they had feelings, what would you say to them? Would you apologize for, what? You're thinking about the clip charts? Or would you double down?
Adam Holland, PhD: So, clip charts are....I want to say newer, but, like, not new at this point by any stretch of the imagination when I was teaching and this is going to date me a little bit, we had car charts which are functionally the same thing. If you're of my age, then you may remember that library books. You said, well, pockets in the back and they would have a card in them.
If you take them into those pockets and put them on a poster board and put different color cards in that pocket, like a red, a yellow and a green one. Right. And you have the green one on the front. If a child is bad or makes a mistake or does something you don't want them to do, right, you say go flip your card and they move that green card to the back, and now the yellow card is showing, right.
And they can repeat that again, of course. The newer way to do that is clip charts. Again, these are sometimes very simple and basic. Sometimes they're just like a stoplight. Right. And every child has a will close pin. This starts out next to the green light. And if you're bad, you have to move your clip up to the yellow light.
And if you're bad again, you move your cup up to the red light. Sometimes you can move them up and down, depending. I've been in classrooms where these are extraordinarily complex and it's like a floor to ceiling, that goes from like chakras to off of. And God help you if you end up on off love, so there's often like, consequences tied to being in a certain place.
Maybe you have to be unsure truths at least once during the week to go to on Friday. Maybe you end up on off more. If you have to go to the principal's office or the the center director's office. And so I see these and a lot in classrooms in various flavors and variations. And, and I don't love them because I feel like they violate the golden rule.
Right? For starters, can you imagine if, like, a center director had a clip chart up at the front in the office and it had every teacher's name on it on a clip? And, if she saw you doing something that you liked in the classroom, she'd get on the intercom and go call. I really like the way miss So-and-so was teaching.
I'm moving her clip up to the truth. Or, if she didn't like something, you were doing the classroom. If she got on the intercom and told everyone, oh, I, I saw Miss Julia yelling at the children. And so we're moving her down to Brown, or whatever, whatever the color is, that's like, not desirable.
And then anybody that walks in to the office can see exactly where everybody's clip is. I think teachers would feel like that was humiliating. I think they would feel like it was patronizing. I think they would feel like it was, not something that helped them feel like they were, being their best selves or doing their best selves.
I think it would make a lot of teachers anxious, right? Every time the principal came in, they would be like, oh my gosh, am I going to get my clip moved? Right? And the thing is, like, kids are people too. And so it's exactly the same, right? Everything I just said about adults is true for kids. And so I know four year olds, five year olds who go home and even the, the, the like sweetest little girls who like, sit there and self-regulate all day.
Right. We'll go home and just be a basket of nerves, because they were just so afraid that they were going to get their clit moved at some point, or, God forbid they actually get their clit move for something. And, and then like, they fall apart and their whole weekend is ruined. There's also the, child in the class who, I guarantee you, goes home in his daily report is so-and-so is on this color, so-and-so is on this color, so-and-so is on this color.
And they can tell you exactly where every single child was. Right. So, now children are sort of developing thoughts and opinions about other kids, that are maybe not beneficial for having real relationships. They're thinking of everyone by, like, their color, and they're starting to define who's the bad kid in class by, Bobby is always on off more of, you know.
So, I don't think I would apologize to clip charts. I just, I think even if you're using rewards and punishments in your classroom, there are a thousand better ways to do it than, like, public shaming, or, public praise and which is which is even itself embarrassing for some children. So, so I don't think I would apologize. I'm going to double down on that and say, clip charts are trash and they should almost never be used.
Emily Garman: I didn't even think about that. But of course, when other children see how other kids in their class are ranked, they're going to start making opinions about that child. And while so-and-so was always on read. And that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, then that child takes on that identity of I'm while I'm the bad kid in class, I'm always on read and and and it comes true somehow so that yeah, that's that's very interesting.
Adam Holland, PhD: And it's not that I'll just say it's not even a somehow. Right. Like there's a real mechanism for this, which is nobody wants to feel like they're the bad kid in class. And so what kids do when they end up on read over and over again is that they start telling themselves this story. Well, I'm on read. Not because I can't control myself, it's because I don't care.
And because that means I'm I'm a good person at heart, but I just don't care about being on green every day. Okay? And so then you, like you said, it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy because they stop caring. And that's a broader problem because now they're not going to care next year or the year after that or the year after that. And it comes to define how they view themselves and how they view their relationship with schooling.
Emily Garman: We're almost looking at that, as a punishment. And I know something that you talked about in the book too, is this idea of consequences versus punishments. And they're not the same thing, but we use those words interchangeably. So can you help untangle those terms a little bit when we're talking about, rewards and punishments. Punishments, consequences. What are we talking about here.
Adam Holland, PhD: Yeah. So they are different I think, as far as I'm concerned, a consequence is something that arises in, in a natural way out of the behavior of a child or an adult interacting with the environment in which they are. Right. So if I let go of a pencil, it's going to fall to the ground. Me letting go is the action falling down to the ground is the consequence, right?
And one thing naturally fall like follows from the other punishments or something that we bring in in order to shape children's behavior that are not a natural part of the environment. And I, I, again, like you can think of a clip chart, right? There's nothing about a child being bad that causes a clip to like, move down on a clip chart.
There is nothing about a child being good that causes a sticker to appear on their shirt. And so there's a disconnect between, a punishment and the behavior that causes it. And, and we know from, from a couple of different theories in psychology that the more removed a punishment or a reward is from the actual like consequence of the behavior, and the less likely it is to have a long term impact, and the less likely it is to be internalized by the child.
Right. Children will not see pizzas appearing in front of them as a natural thing that happens when they read a book. They will understand the contrivance and it will be less impactful. Whereas, if they if you sit down and read really fun books with like crazy voices, the kids, the enjoyment they feel is a natural consequence that arises.
And I talk about this in the book because, I use this framework that I mentioned earlier about having jobs in the classroom. So every teacher in the classroom has two jobs. Your first job is to make sure everybody has safe bodies and happy hearts. Your second job is to make sure everybody learns what they need to learn.
And that can mean like, math, reading things like that, but can also mean like, how do I ask for a block instead of throwing a block at somebody's head? And so, those are those are important things that the teacher does. And I would tell my kids every day, you have one job. Your one job is to help me with my two jobs.
And so, every consequence that happens in my classroom sort of naturally falls out of that framework of jobs. Okay. So like if you are throwing a block at other other children, the block center, right? I can't do my first job. Okay. So the first thing I'm going to do is go in and I'm going to I'm going to sort of infringe on your autonomy.
I'm going to try to control you as little as possible. And I'm going to say, hey, we don't throw blocks, right? Because if you throw a block and hit him in the head, that's not safe. I can't keep his body safe. Right. So could you. Could you do me a favor and not do that? Let's figure out why you really did that, and then let's talk about it.
And let's come up with some other ways for you to sort of fulfill that function. Right. And I wouldn't say it to a child like that, but I will say, let's find another way for you to get what you want, okay. And so we might come up with a plan, like about how we're going to take turns or how we're going to set up a system with a timer or something so that that child understands, right, that there's like a better way to do this right now.
Every teacher knows that when you walk away, there's at least a 50% chance that the kid throws another block, right? If not this day than the next. Right. And so I'm going to come over, and the next time I'm going to add a little bit more control to this situation. Right. And I might say, okay, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of block center for a few minutes until you can calm down.
Right? And then you can come back in here. And the point of me ask them to do that is not to punish them. It's not so that they feel bad about what they did. It's not to try to shape their behavior in any way. It's because my job is to keep this other child safe and a natural consequence of that job, if you're throwing blocks, is that I have to move you away from the blocks.
Right. And so using this sort of way of thinking about it is actually a really helpful way to think about how we sort of restrict children and move children. And, and just to carry on the previous example, if I asked you to take a break for a few minutes so that you can calm down and maybe do some breathing, and then you come back into that center and you continue throwing what I'm going to continue to sort of further restrict you from the blocks, because I have to keep that child safe.
Right. The next thing I might ask you, play another set altogether. I might if you go right back in and do it again, we might have to take a week off and and we might have to spend that time, just me and you going into that center and practicing, like when I want to block. What do I do?
Right. So I'm not it's not just about the consequence. It's also about like, me teaching and helping you so that you can do this thing that I'm asking you to do. But the consequence is not a punishment, right? I'm not telling you you can't be in the block center because I'm trying to shape your behavior or or or make you feel bad or anything like that.
It's simply that I have to keep this other child safe. Right? And if you're in that block center and and that other child can't be safe, then like, I just can't let that happen, right? That is just the that's the bottom line. I'm not doing my job if I'm not keeping them safe. So that's really the difference. Tween consequence and punishment is consequences naturally fall out of a system or a framework, whereas punishments are things that we use to try to manipulate children into doing what we want.
Emily Garman: Thank you for providing that concrete example. I think that really helps to understand that we're going to show the child what we want them to do, that they don't necessarily know how to ask for a block or to express a way to get what they want.
So we've got to show them how and teach them how to do that. And I really like so many, so many times in your book you are giving very concrete, real world examples of things that happen in a real classroom happen to you in your classroom or people, because I know that a lot of great things for teachers are on social media and on the internet, but we tend to compare our insides with other people's outsides.
When we look at social media and you talk about, building a behavior support system that works for real classrooms instead of Pinterest or Instagram classrooms. So what what is one thing, if you could have a takeaway for educators who are listening, what is one real world strategy that teachers can try tomorrow to do better at this?
Adam Holland, PhD: Yeah. So I mean, when I talk about, things that we can do, like right now, I don't think there's anything easier and more powerful than sort of shaping environments and procedures to make it easy for children to do the right thing and make it hard for them to do the wrong thing. And so what I would tell teachers to do is start thinking about the things that really drive you crazy, right?
The things that are causing you to slowly lose your hair, and, and to, to say, okay, where is this happening? When is this happening? Who is this happening with? Why is this happening? And then instead of trying to address it during or after the behavior, try to change things so that the behavior is harder to do.
Right? Because with children and adults. Right. We often think of behavior as being something that happens or doesn't happen. But, behavioral economists, for example, think of like the likelihood that a behavior happens and the sort of classic example of, of using something like a psychological nudge is nobody used to enroll in 401 K programs, right? We all have a 401 K program if we're working for a company or a, 403 B or a 457 or whatever, and, and almost nobody is signing up for them.
Like only like 20% of people are signing up for them. But everybody should have some kind of retirement savings. So we're almost all going to retire at some point. And so, what these behavioral economist did was they just changed the environment, the system, a little bit, and instead of people having to actively enroll in a 401 K, they made it so people were automatically enrolled when they showed up at work on day one.
And you could opt out at any time if that was not something you wanted. But it caused more than 80, up into the 90% of people within three years of starting a job to have a 401 K now. Right. And it's just that one simple shift in the environment to make it easier to do the right thing.
And so I tell teachers, you can do the same thing in your classroom, right? If you have your kids on the carpet and you say, sit wherever you want, right. During story time, what are kids going to do? Well, they're all going to cluster together really close, and they're going to sit next to their very best frenemy.
And and guess what happens, right? Challenges. when you are a child and you are sitting a foot away from your best frenemy, something's going to happen, right? And whereas if teachers put kids in a circle. Right. And there's like, a foot or two of space in between all the children, right? A couple of things are happening.
The first is you can choose where children sit, right? You can choose where they sit around the circle. So you can be intentional about not putting two best friends right next to each other, because if they're all the way across the circle or they can't see each other easily, it's going to decrease the likelihood that challenging behavior is going to occur.
Right? And if they're in a circle, they're only sitting next to two people instead of having eight different children around the right. So again, fewer opportunities for challenging behavior. Because there's like a foot or two of space now, like if they move a little bit, they're not going to accidentally bump into each other and it's not going to start a thing.
And so there are ways, as a teacher that you can change the environment, change your procedures to reduce the likelihood that challenging behaviors going to occur. And I want to be really clear because I get into this in the book, but I don't think we have as much time for subtlety right here. You don't need to control everything that children do, right.
And you shouldn't control everything children do. Because, I mean, if you are as an adult, we're controlled by your administrator every second of the day. You would start pushing back quickly and kids do the same thing right? When kids are told to sit, crisscross applesauce, hands in their lap, eyes forward, noses in this position, mouth closed.
Right. They they're going to feel like I don't have any control or anything. And I'm going to at some point they're going to take some control. Right. Just like we would like if our administrator tells us to read off the script at some point, we're going to break off the script because we as humans are naturally driven to have autonomy in the world and to have control over ourselves.
So I'm not telling teachers to control every little thing children do, but if there's something that's really a pain point for you, or it's like something where you consistently see challenging behavior. I had an issue in my classroom where when we were coming in from recess every day and waiting to get water, my kids would like to move around.
They're still amped up from recess. They were hot. They were like kind of tired and they would like there was just a lot of challenging behavior in that line while they waited. And so I ended up just having them have water bottles. And then when they came in, they would just come get a drink out of their water bottle.
There was no line, so there was no challenging behavior. Right? There are so many opportunities that we have to stop challenging behavior before it ever starts. That that if a teacher is saying like, what's a real world thing I can do tomorrow, just change how you're doing things a little bit. Right? And I used to be my classroom is like a laboratory, right?
I'm here to try new things. And if they don't work, the worst thing that happens is we go back to the way we were doing them before, or we try something new and eventually you get it, right? Right. I like I definitely had years when I started trying new things, when things went quite badly. Right. And I still think about some of those days.
And I'm like, that was crazy. Like, I can't believe that, we did that. But the long arc of that story is that over time, I was able to tinker with and fix everything so that by the time I left my classroom to go back and get my PhD every day, I wanted to come in every day, I wanted to be with my children.
And it was hard and it was challenging, but I felt like I was always moving my kids forward. I felt like I had the space to breathe and to teach children. And I really enjoyed it far more than I ever did my first few years when I was really relying on clip charts and things like that, and never addressing the underlying rules, never changing the environment or any of that stuff.
So I think that that real world strategy can absolutely be put in a place tomorrow where you just sit down and think like, what is going on in my classroom? What's driving me crazy? How can I stop that before it starts? And I think if teachers try that, that'll be something that, if you have kids right now, by next week, things will be better.
Emily Garman: Another thing people can do is read this book because your book is such an easy, fun read. You're a very good writer. It's very funny. You share so many funny stories and, and and explain things in really approachable, understandable ways. And I think there just many things that teachers will remember that they can bring back into the classroom right away.
And I think about a teacher starting out, too, before, before they we all have to kind of make our own mistakes in some ways, but people can learn from from your trial and error too. So it's it's just a really great read. It's Thinking Outside the Prize Box: Navigating Challenging Behaviors in Today’s Classroom by Dr. Adam Holland, available from Gryphon House.
Learn more about Dr. Adam Holland at his website, outsidetheprizebox.com.
