1: Introduction

Introducing the Project

As mentioned in this video, in Modules 3, 4, and 5 you will have the opportunity to complete the Brief Behavior Questionnaire and Intervention Plan (BBQuIP; Crimmins, 2009), which is a functional behavioral assessment and behavior intervention plan for your child or student. You will be able to print these documents and use them as a starting point during a meeting with your community- or school-based team.

The functional behavioral assessment that you complete through this series will help you understand what your child or student is communicating through his or her behavior. You will use the information from the functional behavioral assessment to develop a behavior intervention plan. Because we are committed to developing a useful tool for parents and educators, at the end of the video series, there will be a link to a satisfaction survey that we will be using for research purposes. Please click on that link to learn more about the brief survey.

Video Script

Hi, I’m Dan Crimmins, Director of the Center for Leadership in Disability at Georgia State University. I’ve spent a large part of my career helping parents and teachers use individualized positive behavior supports. That term is a bit of a mouthful; it refers to an approach to working with children with persistent challenging behaviors. It starts with the idea that many behavior problems are forms of communication that we respond to – even though we may not want to. We then take steps to understand what is being communicated and why a behavior persists. That allows us to develop interventions that focus on teaching the child better ways to communicate. If your child or student has persistent behavior problems, this video series is for you. Through this series, the faculty and staff at the Center for Leadership in Disability will discuss strategies for understanding why your child or student is engaging in problem behavior and, more importantly, what you can do to replace problem behaviors with positive behaviors. Hi, I’m Stacey Ramirez. I work in the Center for Leadership in Disability as the Director of Individual and Family Supports. I’m the mom of three boys, one of whom has autism. Over the past four years, my colleagues and I at the Center for Leadership in Disability have worked with hundreds of family members and teachers on the information that’s included in this video series. We have helped parents and teachers take a fresh look at the behavior of their sons and daughters, or the students in their classrooms. Speaking as a mom who’s used these strategies, I know this information can be useful to you in supporting change in your child’s behavior. And, what we feel is most important, is that this information may be used at home, in school, in a daycare center or a Head Start program, or in the community to guide behavior planning. Hi, I’m Jason Cavin, Director of Behavior Support and Consultation. I am a certified special education teacher, licensed counselor, and behavior analyst. I work with individuals of all ages who present with challenging behaviors – by working with their families and teachers to use positive behavior supports. Through these videos, we will walk you through the three steps of the positive behavior support model -- Understand, Prevent, and Replace. We will help you to Understand the behavior by teaching you the steps for conducting a functional behavioral assessment or an F-B-A. We will provide you with examples for how to Prevent and Replace the behaviors of concern through the behavior intervention plan or B-I-P. We will discuss this approach in many different ways in the following seven videos. We will also provide additional material for each module. This provides more detail, examples, and explanations for what we discuss in the videos. You can find this by clicking on the tab labeled TEXT on the left side of your screen. Finally, you will have the chance to practice completing an F-B-A and developing a B-I-P for your child or student. Hi, I am Emily Graybill. When I was a practicing school psychologist, I provided consultation and training to parents and teachers on positive behavior supports. I continue to do this a faculty member at the Center for Leadership in Disability. In developing these videos, we tried to present information in a way that is easy for you to understand. However, we know there is a lot of information here. And we do use the technical language of positive behavior supports because we think it is important for you to have this language when working with your child’s teachers and school. We will use words like antecedent, which refers to what is going on before a behavior occurs, and function, which is the purpose of a behavior. All of the technical terms used in the videos and in the text that goes with it are defined in the glossary, which can be accessed by clicking the Resource tab at the top of the page. Hi, I’m Bethany Stevens, a faculty member and policy analyst in the Center for Leadership in Disability. I am a lawyer by training and will be talking to you in a later module on the Legal Rights of Children. We think it is important for you to know what the law says about for the use of positive behavior supports in schools. As Emily mentioned, we know there is a lot of information in these videos. We recommend that you watch the videos in a quiet place with few distractions and that you watch the videos a few times to learn the information provided. We don’t expect that you will be able to understand everything the first time they are viewed. We’re excited that offering these over these online will allow you to watch as many times as you like. Hi, I am Donna Johnson and I am the coordinator in the Center for Leadership in Disability. I am the mom of three adolescent girls, including a set of twins, one of whom has autism. We want you to know that the written scripts for each video module can be found by clicking the tab labeled SCRIPT on the left side. Some of you may find it helpful to print the scripts to follow along as you are viewing the videos. As Jason mentioned, after each video, we ask that you click on the tab labeled TEXT on the left of the screen for additional information and activities related to positive behavior supports. Finally, after viewing videos three, four, and five, you will have the chance to complete the pieces of the F-B-A and B-I-P for your child or student. We provide a structure for that information, which will give you the outline of an F-B-A and B-I-P for your child. You will be able to print out the F-B-A and B-I-P to discuss with your school-based team. We hope that this will help generate more ideas for teaching positive behaviors that can be included into your child’s or your student’s educational program. One note of caution – we believe that the functional behavioral assessment and behavior intervention plan that you generate through this program will be helpful in organizing information about your child or student. This should offer a great start to a conversation about your child. We are working with this approach to determine whether it also leads to the outcomes that we are hoping to achieve. No plan should be implemented without consulting your school-based team and possibly collecting observational data related to the behavior of concern. We hope that you find these videos and the corresponding text useful. We appreciate any and all feedback that you are willing to provide.

Main navigation

Introducing the Project

Video Script