Mini Training Series: Ep 3 Planning Schedule Changes

Hi, I'm Sasha from The Autism Helper. Today I want to talk about planning changes to your daily schedules for your students. All of our students have either individual schedules, or maybe you have a class schedule, and it's important to utilize those schedules to show changes that are coming. And changes might not happen that often, or when they do happen, they're an especially challenging change, like going to an assembly or a pep rally or school pictures. So instead of waiting for those bigger, harder changes that are coming on our calendar inevitably, it's important to plan small changes throughout the year so our students get used to change. Change can be really hard for our kids. It's really hard for us. If you've been a special education teacher for a while, you're probably the first one downstairs in the office throwing a hissy fit when your art schedule gets changed or the gym teacher is canceled because we become— we take on that. We kind of avoid change as well. But change is part of life. When our students' parents are running errands on a Saturday morning, if they get a flat tire, they might not be going to the same stores in the right order like they had told their child. Or if Dad called and said, "We're out of, you know, milk," we might reroute and go to the grocery store. Changes are inevitably going to happen. It's an essential life skill to be able to roll with it and deal with those changes. So if you can start preparing your kids for small changes systematically throughout the year, when those bigger changes happen, they're gonna be much more prepared. So most of our kids have an individual schedule or maybe a class group schedule, and whether that's a picture schedule with movable pieces or a written schedule, you can easily utilize that schedule to show the schedule change, and that's really key. You want to prepare your students for for a change. Just like you and I know when it— want to know when a change is going to occur, so do they. If your student has a picture movable schedule, it's really easy to show schedule changes. You can just un-Velcro the pieces, move them around, add in a different picture. It's pretty easy. If your student has a written schedule that's just written paper on, typed out, you can easily use a pen, cross things out, write in what's going to happen. If the student has a laminated schedule, you can use a dry erase marker and cross things off. I also like to just use plain computer paper and cut something out and cover it with clear tape to kind of block out part of the schedule for that day, and then take one of the extra PECS pictures that you have or visual schedule pieces and just use clear tape to put it right in the spot on the schedule that the change is going to occur. If you have a whole class schedule, you can also move things around, use dry erase markers on laminated pieces, to cross things out or show the change. But the first thing with any small change that you're implementing in your class is to show it on the student's either individual or class schedule. So I mentioned earlier that changes are going to inevitably happen in our classrooms. There's going to be special events, classes might be canceled, maybe specials teachers are out, there's school picture day or assemblies or all of these different things that are going to change our students' schedule. Those are big changes. Those are changes that are taking our kids majorly out of their routine. Maybe putting them in a new environment that they're unfamiliar with. Going to an assembly or a pep rally is something they don't do on a regular basis. So we kind of have this double whammy there. Their schedule has changed, and not only has their schedule changed, but now they're going into this whole new activity that they're unfamiliar with. So it's hard— either of those things are challenging on their own, and then we're combining them, likely putting them in a very sensory stimulating situation like a pep rally, and then kind of hoping for the best. Instead, it's important to practice these skills ahead of time. So you want to start with small changes and do this on a regular basis. This is something when I tell teachers to do, they look at me like I'm crazy because We're trying to keep the peace. I get it. Once you have a schedule that's going well and the student— or your student is very reliant on that schedule, the last thing you want to do is change it. We go through great lengths to make sure the schedule doesn't change, maybe even avoiding things like assemblies or school pictures because we don't want to rock the boat. Again, I get that, but that's not real life, and we're not preparing our kids for the real world if we're not teaching them how to handle change. So start with small changes, things like alternating the centers in your classroom. Maybe you always do reading centers first and then math centers. Well, on Tuesday, today we're gonna do math centers first and then reading. Or maybe you squeeze in a new activity. Today before reading centers, we're gonna play a game, and you put that icon right in the schedule. So you do small changes at first that take place within your classroom, and the new activities that you're squeezing in or alternating are activities that are familiar. Something like a different center or a different activity that they've done before. So yes, it's not going to be in the same order, but it's going to be familiar activities. And this has to be done on a regular basis. This isn't a one-and-done. My advice is to do this once a week, every other week. Try to have a regular schedule. Write it in your lesson plans because a lot of times we're really well-intentioned on doing these things. We're like, "Yeah, I'm going to totally switch up my kids' schedules and practice this and it's going to be great." And then all of a sudden it's January and you've never changed anyone's schedules in your whole class the whole year. It happens 'cause we get busy. But if your goal is once a week, you pick one student's schedule to change, that's totally doable because you wanna give our kids practice at this skill. Again, it's all about repetition and reinforcement and talking them through the process. Just like we teach letters or categorizing or math skills, we need practice, we need practice in this skill too, and even more because this skill is pretty challenging of dealing with a change. So you want to incorporate these small changes on a really regular basis. Get your staff on board, get all of your paraprofessionals on board, and explain to them why this is so important. And they can kind of help you plan out these changes and maybe give them, hey, once a week can you pick one small thing in Johnny's schedule to change and let's go from there. And a warning: the first few times you do this might be horrible. Like, really horrible. Absolutely horrible. That's okay. You'd rather have the horrible big meltdown happen in your room with a small change where you can control the situation, not while you're walking down the hallway on your way to school picture day. So let's get through these big meltdowns over these changes in our room where it's safe, where we can implement behavior plans, where we have enough staff, where we can kind of plan ahead versus those bigger schedule changes like a fire drill or assembly or something like that where we're having to leave our room. And once we leave our room, you know, everything— all bets are off. Everything becomes unsafe instantly. Behavior plans are really hard to follow. So if those meltdowns happen, don't be discouraged. It's about giving that practice, giving the opportunities, putting those incentives there. Really utilize your kids' reinforcers to power through those changes, and the more opportunities that your student has to successfully transition to a new schedule change, the more— the better they're going to get at that. So start with those small changes first. Once your student gets successful with those smaller changes, then start to implement some of those bigger ones. Kind of slowly ease this up. The goal is, you know, hey, guess what? The whole afternoon's canceled, we're going to a pep rally, and your student being like Cool, let's go. That's the goal. So how are you gonna get there? If you first are just mixing up some schedule pieces, maybe squeezing in some new activities, that's great. Start to build it up where you maybe remove a few parts of the day, maybe you add something new. I also really love the idea of having just a surprise icon, maybe a star, something like that, where the student doesn't know what it's going to be. So they come in in the morning, they see they have 3 of their regular centers, and then there's a surprise icon. And the surprise icon, you don't always want to connect that with something that's super fun and reinforcing. It can just sometimes be something regular, just like a different center or a different activity. But mix it up, have that be variable. Sometimes the surprise icon means we're watching a movie, sometimes it means we're doing an extra round of reading centers. It's just a surprise, but that kind of unknowing factor of it is going to really kind of equate to things that happen in the real world. Sometimes we don't know what's going to happen next, and that's okay too. So those are some ways you can kind of up the ante on making those schedule changes a little more complex and a little more advanced as you're kind of gearing towards those bigger schedule changes. So as you're going through the process of implementing all of these schedule changes throughout the year, there's a few kind of important must-dos that you should implement along the way. First off, make sure you prepare your student of the change. Maybe the night before, if you have your students set up their own schedules in the afternoon, have them put that change in right then. Or first thing when they come in the morning, show them the schedule that's been changed, talk through it with them, explain kind of the change and all that, and use your visuals. Use the strategies that work for your students. If your student is a very visual learner, rely on those visuals. So really put that in there and don't just kind of jump the change out of nowhere. Give some preparation for it. You also want to utilize some type of incentive system during the change. This is an especially challenging situation for a lot of our students, so we want to reward great behavior during challenging times. Just like when you and I have a bad day, we reward ourselves with a special treat at the end of the night, like our favorite TV show or ice cream. We want to kind of make sure that the reinforcer matches the challenge, and this is an especially big challenge. So bust out your token economies, your star charts, your high-powered reinforcers to show your student that, hey, if we can work through this challenge together, something awesome is going to come, and you're gonna really make that situation easier for the next schedule change coming up. So the goal here is mimicking the real world. In the real world, schedules do change. Routines don't always exactly follow the same steps every single time. For our students, we want to teach them that change is alright, and we do want to rock the boat. It's really easy to just kind of stay where we are and keep things smooth and keep the schedules the same and never rock the boat. But if we're thinking about our kids becoming young adults, becoming independent adults, having jobs, Things happen in jobs, things happen on the bus, things happen when you're running errands with mom, you get a flat tire, we have to go pick up our brother suddenly because his soccer game got canceled. We need our kids to be able to roll with those changes, and that's really part of our job. Yes, we have all of our academics and social skills and life skills to teach, but this is part of that curriculum too, and I think we should really be approaching skills like this of being that problem solver as part of our curriculum. And our kids are never going to become problem solvers if they never run into a problem. And a schedule change is a really realistic problem that our kids are going to run into. So don't be afraid to rock the boat. I know nobody wakes up on a Tuesday morning and is like, "Hey, I'm gonna make sure Johnny has a massive meltdown today because I've been a little bored hard at my job lately. I know none of us think that, and yes, you might be setting yourself and your student up for kind of a rough day, but that's okay. Rough days are going to give our students more knowledge, more experience in these real-world situations. So buy yourself a venti coffee that morning and suck it up and deal with it, because it's gonna be in the long run so great for your student and you, because they're gonna have all of these really great life We think about life skills. I want to push you to not just think about sorting socks or kind of pre-vocational tasks, but skills that you really need in life, like handling changes and problem solving. So this is really part of your life skills focus in your class. So I hope that I've kind of encouraged or motivated you to try some of these schedule changes in your classroom. I promise it won't be easy at first, but it's definitely going to be worth it. And your students are gonna have some really great skills in the long run. So this was our third episode in the mini— in our mini training series. Please check out the other ones on YouTube, sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Facebook to see when the next one's coming out. I'm doing one a month, and I hope you've enjoyed learning about schedule changes.