Fostering Positive Behavior

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Fostering Positive Behavior

• Nickyia Cogshell
• Erica Gates

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Overview

• Discuss Basic Youth Needs
• Reasons Behind Misbehaviors
• Examining Personal Views
• Fostering Positive Behaviors - Programmatic
  Strategies
• Create a Management Plan
• Additional Tools

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• What does youth development mean to you?

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Basic Youth Needs

• Feel a sense of safety and structure
• Experience active participation, membership, and
  belonging
• Develop self-worth through meaningful
  contribution
• Discover self, gain independence, and gain
  control over ones life
• Develop significant quality relationships with
  peers and adults
• Discuss conflicting values and form their own
• Feel pride of competence and mastery
• Expand their capacity to enjoy life and know that
  success is possible
• Adapted from Requirements for healthy
  development of adolescent youth, by G. Konopka,
  1973, Adolescence 8(31), p. 2-25, and A
  rationale of enhancing the role of the non-school
  voluntary sector in youth development, by K.J.
  Pittman and M. Wright, 1991 (Commissioned for the
  Carnegie Council on adolescent development.)
  Washington, DC Center for Youth Development

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Reasons Behind Misbehaviors

• If you were observing your program, what are the
  kinds of things you would see and hear?

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Examining Personal Views

• Adult-ism (How do you see your role in working
  with young people?)
• Personal Values (How do you remember your own
  parents or other adults punishing you as a
  child?)
• Expectations/Consistency (When you begin your
  daily program, what is your approach?)
• Parental Involvement (Whos responsible for a
  young persons behavior and consequences?)

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Fostering Positive Behavior Programmatic
Strategies

• Establishing a Safe and Respectful Learning
  Environment
• Modeling Positive Behavior
• Planning Your Program
• Curricula and Educational Materials

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Before You Create a Management Plan

• Assumptions
• Foster mutually respectful relationships
• Understand youth and their families in context
• Questions
• What is the agencys position on behavior
  management or safety?
• What are you personal beliefs?

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Create a Management Plan

• Step 1 Establish Rules
• Step 2 Establish Consequences
• Step 3 Recognize Good Behavior
• Step 4 Be Consistent
• Step 5 Determine Protocol for Crisis
  Situations

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Additional Tools

• Fix-it Plan
• Short-term strategies
• Private-Three Step
• Privacy, Eye Contact, and Proximity (PEP)
• Listening, Acknowledging, Agreeing, and Deferring
  (LAAD)
• Long-term strategies
• Aligned with basic youth needs
• Know that context is critical
• Build meaningful relationships
• Establish group values
• Adapt curricula and program content
• Teach responsibility
• Mendler, A., Curwin, R. (1999) Discipline with
  dignity for challenging youth. Bloomington,
  Indiana National Educational Service

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Contact Information

• Nickyia Coghell Erica Gates
• 612.624.7758 612.624.7603
• cogsh001_at_umn.edu gates015_at_umn.edu
• University of Minnesota Extension Service
• Urban 4-H Youth Development
• 495 Coffey Hall
• 1400 Eckles Avenue
• Saint Paul, MN 55108