The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Maia

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Casual Dance Teachers podcast. I'm your host, Maia. Today's episode is actually piggybacking off of last week's episode, so if you have not yet listened to my interview with Isaac Iskra, please go back and listen to that first.

I just came up with this idea, and to be honest with you, I only have a couple of days now to record and edit this podcast before I have to post it right after the previous one. But I did mention in that episode, if you missed the beginning of it, I have a son with autism. And speaking with Isaac, who is also autistic and has his own dance company that represents the autistic experience through much of their work, it really spoke to me.

And upon listening back, I realized that I had a couple of sort of practical points that I've learned through my work with my own son that I also wanted to share. So that's what today's episode is going to be about. Let's talk about it.

Before we get into today's topic, I do definitely want to start this with a couple of disclaimers. First of all, I'm not a therapist. I'm not a trained professional in any kind of therapeutic practices or practices for neurodivergent students.

So please take this as just a couple of things that I've learned that have worked for me that I'm sharing with you, like between friends. But I'm not a professional. If you want to learn more, please turn to professional resources and professionals that can help guide you in that area.

Second of all, I do want to mention that much of what I'm talking about today comes from the world of Applied Behavior Analysis or ABA therapy. Now this is actually quite a controversial practice. And many in the autism community have stated that ABA therapy is not a neurodiversity affirming practice.

It actually robs individuals of their autonomy. And it tries to quote unquote, train away autistic behaviors, rather than adapting the individual surroundings to fit their needs and behaviors. So I'm not approaching this in a way that I'm trying to encourage or push ABA practices, I totally understand the problems with the practice.

But I also believe that there are a lot of really functional and helpful tools underlying all of that. And we can take the parts that work and apply them without doing it in a problematic way. Again, if you're interested, this podcast is definitely not the place to learn about ABA or any kind of behavioral therapy.

But I'm taking my own experience with things that I've learned that work well with my son, that I can also see working for dance teachers in the dance classroom, and I'm going to try and keep it really short and sweet. So you get just a little taste of some of my tips and tricks. And then you can take it from there in whatever direction you feel is appropriate for yourself, your classroom, and of course, your students, every individual is different.

So nothing is going to be a one size fits all solution. So one of the first things that I learned about with ABA is that this practice looks at behavior as serving one of four functions. This is actually one of the areas where there's been some pushback with individuals saying that there's a lot more nuance to behavior than just serving for purposes.

But if you have a student that's displaying some behavior that you don't feel is appropriate, or is just a little bit atypical for what you've seen in the classroom, and you're trying to figure out how to help that student and serve their needs, maybe think about some of these and see is this behavior serving one of these four purposes. Those four are attention, access, escape, or sensory stimulation. Now much of this comes down to the home, right? We are not parents.

We are not with the students full time. In many cases, we are with the students for such a short period of time. Much of the student's behavior is probably coming from what's happening with them at home and at school.

However, there may be ways that we can address these needs. Attention, for example, could come from the place that a student is much, much slower to respond. Isaac talked about this when I spoke with him, that we need to give students time and that could be several minutes from asking a question or making a correction to allow them to process and then show you that they understand.

We don't always give students that we want immediate turnaround. So what can happen is if a student is not giving us an immediate indicator that they understood what we said to them, we might move on and overlook them. So they might actually be craving attention from us where we go back and check in with them to make sure that they understood or give them the opportunity to demonstrate their true ability.

Access is typically talking about the student wanting access to some tangible thing. Sometimes in dance class, the reality is it's just not appropriate if they want like a toy or they want something to play with or hold on to. There are certain cases where that's going to be a safety concern or impede their ability to do the dance work that we're doing in the class.

So again, this really comes down to a case by case basis. But I would just recommend that you approach this one with an open mind. Be open to asking the student if they are seeking access to something that you might be able to provide for them.

I know that my son likes to do what we call stimming, or holding a small object in one hand and sort of rocking it back and forth between his fingertips. This can really calm him down and allow him to process information more easily. And there's probably cases again, depending on the age, the level and what style of dance you're doing or what kind of class you're teaching, that allowing a student to stem with a small object wouldn't be the end of the world if it's the difference between them being able to focus and dance and them not being able to regulate themselves to the point where they can participate.

The third is escape or avoidance. This is another one that is very tough because if they're trying to escape or avoid your class altogether, that comes down to like a parental thing and trying to figure out if it's the right fit or not. However, they might be just trying to escape or avoid a certain spot in the room that they don't like.

Maybe there's some sensory things going on that we're not aware of that are affecting them. So being able to recognize if what they're trying to escape is just the situation as a whole, or if you can dissect the situation for them and with them a little bit with their input to figure out is there a way that we can make the situation comfortable for you where your escape or avoidant behavior is no longer an issue. And finally, sensory stimulation, which as you can see, kind of plays into all of these aspects.

But there's so many sensory things for any child, you know, I'm not just talking about autistic children in this scenario. It might apply more commonly among autistic students, but this can be any child, like every child has their own sensory needs. An itchy tag.

I feel sometimes when students are just wearing tights and a leotard, that feels so different from wearing normal everyday street clothes. That might just be a Is it hot in the room? Is it cold in the room? Is the music creating some kind of sensation that is challenging them in some way? And all of this plays into the next point that I wanted to share with you, which is that when we're analyzing behavior, one of the big things that we look for are patterns that will point to a specific antecedent or an initiator instigator of certain behaviors. So if you can start to document whether it's just in your head, anytime a student acts out in some way, you know, is disruptive in some way or displays a behavior that you would prefer that they didn't in your class, make some kind of mental checklist or physically write it down on a piece of paper if you can, if you have access to be able to do that quickly and efficiently without taking away from the class to try and spot patterns in when that's happening.

Again, we are then going to take those patterns and filter them through some of the different things that might be impacting the student that they might be looking for or looking to avoid. But if we're able to hone in on a specific antecedent, it helps us to be able to then work through what we need to do to regulate the behaviors for the classroom. So for example, if a student takes three classes back to back, and you're noticing that towards the end of that, their behavior starts to change a little bit.

Maybe they're getting hungry, and they need to have access to a snack in between or additional water breaks. Perhaps they're just tired, which is a tough one. You know, again, that might be a conversation of do they need to take a step back? Or are there ways that you can adapt that they're able to take that class load without getting to the point that it's throwing them into a dysregulated state? With music again, I know my son does not like when there is a sudden loud sound.

He is fine with loud music. He's fine with loud sounds. I've taken him to concerts totally fine.

But when it's sudden and unexpected, it can cause him to immediately cry out or display a very emotional reaction that you wouldn't otherwise. So if you have, say, like a hip hop class where the music's really loud and comes in with a strong beat, and your student is right next to the stereo system, and anytime the music starts, they get kind of thrown off, and they're not able to start on the correct count, let's say, that's not a super visible behavior. But trying to move them around to the opposite side of the room where they're not so close to that loud music, or do like a fade in.

So you turn the music down at the end, start it back up, and then turn the volume up so that it gets up to the level that it needs to be at in between could help regulate behaviors for certain students. Again, there's a bazillion different examples. And this is going to look different for everybody.

But trying to take note of any patterns you see in behaviors with students in your class can help you get to the root cause and make adaptations in your own classroom that could help the students instead of just telling them that their behavior is out of line and not helping them to regulate that. The third thing that I find really helpful for my son, and I believe that this can be most helpful in especially the preschool or younger students, is an immediate reinforcement. This is also a big tenant of ABA therapy where the student or the participant is granted immediate access to a reinforcing item as soon as they display whatever action is asked of them.

So when I'm thinking about this in the context of a dance class, I know for myself, a lot of times, I will use reinforcing things like, let's get through this class. If you can all be good for the first 25 minutes of class, then the last five minutes, you can play a game or something like that. Or like, okay, we have to all take turns going across the floor one at a time in a line.

And once we get through that, then you can play with the scarves that we have, something like that. It's so often that we use activities as a reinforcer, making them get through the whole class and giving a really, really broad criteria, like, be good for the whole class, and then you'll get this. If you're trying to use broad reinforcers like this, and you're finding that you're still getting a lot of behaviors from your students throughout the class that are not preferred, and you're like, oh, no, what am I supposed to do now? Do I not give them the reinforcer? Because you don't want to say like, okay, no one's playing a game, we're not gonna have any fun until everyone's good, right? Try an immediate reinforcer.

Try literally like four tendus, and you get a high five, right? For young kids, high five, very reinforcing. A sticker for each student or even a sticker chart for the class as a whole. I talked about in a previous episode how I love to use a felt board because it's reusable.

And you can do a nice big board with big felt pieces, and they get to take turns putting them up and everyone can see them. And it's a reward as a class. But instead of saying like, let's do x, y, and z. And if you're good, then you can do it.

It could literally be, you know, with some of these kids, I'm thinking like, stay on your colored dot for the itsy bitsy spider song. And then we get the prize, then we get the reinforcer. And you're going to have to do a bunch of them, right? You'd have to implement them over and over and over again.

But again, luckily with this age group, like you don't have to do anything crazy. Stickers are usually pretty good. High fives are good.

Getting to play a little game or do a little song that they like to do with like a follow along song or a 30 second free dance break. So instead of saying, you know, we have to get through x, y, and z and then do free dance, could be like one minute of structured time, 30 seconds of free dance, etc. An immediate reinforcer can really help, especially for students that have a hard time processing or process at a different pace than their peers.

We often look at that as like that one student is behind or just isn't at the same level as their peers. But we heard from Isaac, what's going on in their head might be very different than what we're seeing as presented to us. So it might be really hard for them to hold on to that idea that a reinforcer is coming for a whole 10, 20, 30 minutes.

But for one minute, or two minutes or three minutes, and you can work your way up to as the class progresses, holding on to that thought of, okay, the rules are very clear to me. We learned that from Nicole Perry, right, being very clear with our words and communicating the expectations to the students. So when they're clear on the expectations, and there's a distinct time limit, and there's a distinct beginning and end to the activity that they can look forward to, and they know what's coming after that, it can make so many things easier.

And it can fulfill so many functions of behavior that we look at in the first part of this. If you haven't gotten this point from what I've been saying yet, that's probably on me. So I apologize.

But there really is no such thing as bad behavior. All behavior is communication. This is one of the big things that I've learned working with a variety of therapists, we should always look at behavior as trying to tell us something and it's our job to take the time to look at it and analyze it to the best of our ability and respond appropriately.

Obviously, as adults, we need to regulate ourselves. We can't always expect our students to be regulated all the time. There are so many factors beyond our control, and sometimes beyond their control that cause them to display behaviors.

I'm not saying that this should be a free for all and you should allow any behaviors to just run rampant through your classroom, right? But take the tools that you have available to you. That's why I wanted to share this, even knowing that I'm not a professional. I just wanted to open that door to anyone listening that might not have had the same experience that I had to be exposed to these things to hear this and understand all behavior is simply a form of communication.

We're not therapists, maybe you're a therapist, in which case, call me and I can have you on the show. We can chat more in depth and share a little bit more information. But in general, you're not a therapist.

And actually, regardless, in the dance classroom, that's not the role that you're fulfilling. So you don't need to fix behavior. That's not your job.

You also don't necessarily need to create a space for everyone if you're not equipped to do that. Now the goal is to equip ourselves the best we can to serve as many people as we can. The goal is to set our dance classrooms up in a way that is affirming and welcoming to all different types of learning styles.

But if you're in a studio setting that's not equipped to serve a certain student on a case by case basis, it's okay to say that it is okay to admit that. And it's totally okay to admit again with any kind of behavior, that that behavior is not appropriate for the classroom and that something needs to be done and it's beyond the scope of what you can control. In so many cases, the parents might be able to step in and help.

The parents might be able to ask somebody else, find a professional that can help them work through that. That's not your job. And in the case where you know the behavior is continuing, and it's to the point where that student is not able to regulate no matter what you try, that's okay to recognize that that might not be the right situation because we still want to keep every student safe.

We still want to give the best experience we can to every student in the classroom. So that got a little preachy at the end. I do apologize.

Again, my intent was just to share a couple of things that I have learned through my own practices. And I really hope that it was helpful to you. Again, I'm not trying to be controversial here or like try and preach at anybody, but I just found these things really great.

And yes, I've talked a lot about how I practice these with my son. But as a dance teacher, I am 100% thinking about these things. I can think of probably at least a dozen students that I've taught over the past couple of years that I have been able to find some way to help them regulate.

And these are not students that have a formal diagnosis of any kind of neurodivergence. So everyone can benefit from these. I would love to hear more from you if we can chat on Facebook in the Casual Dance Teachers Network.

Go ahead and join that group if you haven't already. You can also find us on Instagram under the Casual Dance Teachers Podcast. I would absolutely love it if you would leave a review for the podcast on whatever your preferred platform is to listen to.

And while you're there, don't forget to check out GB mystical who wrote the theme music for the show. After this week, we're going to take a little step away from this particular aspect of dance education that we've been focusing on. It's been an absolute blast.

I have a lot of super, super fun episodes coming up some really great interviews. I'm so excited to share that with you. So stay tuned and I'll see you next time.