BEHAVIORAL MANAGEMENT (The Young Storytellers Way)
GENERAL APPROACH Our general approach to managing the room is to first provide a structured and stimulating session that keeps your writers engaged in the task at hand. Then, if behavioral challenges occur, try to identify the needs of your writers and work to find the best way to involve them in the session. If you ever come across a challenge that you don’t know how to approach, please use the teacher, Young Storytellers team, and school staff as a resource. We are all here to support you.
BEHAVIORAL MANAGEMENT TIPS Be proactive by using the structure and tips laid out in this packet. ● Create collaborative agreements on the first day. It’s easier to hold a group accountable to agreements that they had a voice in creating. ● Follow the structure of the sessions laid out in the student workbook. By giving your writers time to play as a class, write in their groups, and share, you are engaging them in multiple ways. ● Make sure you know the plan for the day and introduce that plan to the group. Letting your writers know what to expect can help alleviate anxiety, which can often be the root of disruptive behavior. ● Step up to lead! You can help engage your writers on a more personal level so the teacher can focus on keeping the whole class on track. Also, by helping your teacher lead games and exercises, you are creating a stimulating environment with multiple facilitators as opposed to a less interesting lecture-based class structure. When a simple agreement is broken, address it in the moment. do not wait until later or let it slide. By not addressing a broken agreement you could be communicating to the rest of the group that the agreements don’t matter. In order to do this, you can: ● Direct your writer towards more productive behavior (i.e. - I appreciate everyone who is listening to the group and waiting for their turn to share, let’s take 10 more seconds for everyone to get there.) ● Circle back to the agreements. State the behavior you see with no value judgement and explain how it is not in line with the agreements the group created. Re-explain that the agreements outline how the group wants to be treated in order to feel comfortable participating in the program.
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