by Tad Shannon of The Register-Guard
Erik listened intently Friday morning as kindergarten teacher Christine White explained the day’s project making pancakes.
A few minutes later, when the girl next to Erik, 6, had trouble pouring flour into a cup, he offered to help.
That simple act symbolized a big change for the boy.
“He never would have been able to do that last year,” said Erik’s mother, Ramona, who asked that their last name not be used. She withdrew Erik from kindergarten last year at the request of school officials who had grown frustrated with his fighting and running away from school.
This year, Erik began participating in First Step to Success, an intensive behavior-modification program for young children that was developed at the University of Oregon. After just 12 days in the program, Erik is showing marked progress.
“It’s like night and day,” said White, a first-year teacher. “Before, I wasn’t sure what to do.”
UO education professor Hill Walker said the First Step program is designed to identify and curb antisocial behavior before it mushrooms into more serious problems.
“You really have to get them early,” said Walker, who helped develop the program and who is co- director of the UO’s Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior. “Experts agree that if you haven’t learned to walk a different path by the fourth or fifth grade, chances of getting a cure are slim.”
Jeff Sprague, the other co-director, agreed. “People assume that kids will grow out of their problems,” he said. “But they really grow into it.”
The institute, created in spring, 1995, has received more than $4 million in grants to develop and test programs aimed at curbing youth violence and antisocial behavior. Programs range from First Step, which targets individual kindergartners to the Peaceable Educational Practices Project, which teachers elementary and middle school students how to solve problems without resorting to violence.
First Step has proved so successful that it’s been adopted by school districts throughout Oregon and by schools in six other states and several Canadian provinces.
The Eugene School District and Lane Education Service District agreed to continue the program in area schools after the initial $400,000 federal grant expired.
Inspiration for the UO institute came at a 1994 conference in Santa Fe, N.M., on drugs and violence among youths. “There were only three people out of 120 who were educators,” said Walker, who was among about a dozen Eugene-area officials at the conference. “Clearly, schools were not part of the picture.”
While “the primary motivation of schools is to make them safe and to find a way to get rid of students who are dangerous,” Walker said, that approach just displaces the problem. He noted, for example, that 80 percent of daytime burglaries are committed by expelled or truant youths.
The First Step program relies on big helpings of positive reinforcement and requires close cooperation between teacher and parents during about a 12-week period.
Students who routinely exhibit antisocial behaviors such as fighting and defying authority are recommended for the program by teachers. School officials then work with the parents to develop a contract and identify behaviors that need to change. The teacher and parents, along with the child, also identify rewards for desired behaviors.
The student is then guided by a card green on one side, red on the other normally worn around the neck of the classroom teacher or by a First Step consultant, someone trained to work one-on-one with the child.
In the early stages, the consultant sits next to the child and displays the green side of the card every time the child exhibits a desired behavior raising his or her hand or sitting quietly while the teacher is talking. When the child exhibits negative behavior, the consultant shows the red side of the card.
At the end of each day, the consultant tallies points. If 80 percent of the points are green, the child receives a reward choosing a favorite activity for the entire class, giving classmates a stake in the outcome. The child also takes the card home, where, if enough points were earned, he or she will get to spend time with a parent doing a favorite activity.
After six weeks, the program shifts primarily to the home, where parents are trained in simple activities designed to foster positive attitudes toward school.
“The whole idea is to give a ton of attention on appropriate behavior and no attention for negative behavior,” said Annemieke Golly, who has trained hundreds of teachers and parents in the First Step program.
In Erik’s case, the positive reinforcement seems to be making a difference. Friday morning, he followed directions and easily interacted with classmates. His teacher flashed the red side of the card only once in the three-hour period, after Erik continued to play after being told to put some toys away. As soon as the card changed from green to red, Erik began putting away toys.
“It’s working,” said White, the teacher. “When I used to ask him to do something, it would escalate. Now I show him the card and he responds.”
According to follow-up studies, about 50 percent of First Step graduates are able to maintain desired behaviors without further intervention, Golly said. About a quarter of the children need further work in first and second grades, and another quarter wind up in specialized programs.
“It’s so incredible simple,” Golly said. “It’s clear expectations, lots of positive reinforcement and clear consequences.”
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 1998, The Register-Guard, www.registerguard.com.