Mini Video Training Series Ep 6: Crisis Plan

Hi, I'm Sasha from The Autism Helper, and this mini video training series is about developing a crisis plan for your team. So if you've been in the special education world a while, you— I don't need to explain to you what a crisis is. We've probably all been in those moments where we don't really know what's gonna happen next, where safety is a major concern, and basically all we want is for the crisis to end. Before you find yourself in that position, I really encourage you to set up a plan with your team. Get everyone on the same page so you're not in crisis mode trying to delegate, trying to tell staff what to do. Don't wait for the problem to come. Have a plan ahead of time. So if you have students in your classroom, on your caseload, or even your own children that have extreme behavior or any type of aggression, property destruction, self-injury, And even if it's been maybe on the mild side, sometimes we don't know necessarily where behaviors will go. So if you have any of those types of behaviors in your class, you need a crisis plan, and you want to set it up and discuss this with your staff before a crisis occurs. So when it does happen, which hopefully it won't, but if it does, you'll be ready. So in a crisis situation, you're obviously going to need help. You can't do this yourself. You you can't implement a behavior plan and keep a student safe, maybe provide some type of, you know, safety measures while keeping the rest of your class safe. You're gonna need your whole classroom team now more than ever. So with that being said, you definitely need help, but you need the right type of help. It is my biggest pet peeve to show up at some type of crisis situation or major behavioral episode and there's 18 adults around one child. These adults have like come out of the woodwork to pop into this situation. It's usually people that don't know the child, don't know what's going on. People suddenly, like the lunchroom manager, is an expert in autism and behavior, and it makes the situation so much worse. If this was an attention-seeking behavior, oh my God, did that kid get what he wants? He has a whole show going on and he's running it. So not only is this potentially causing an increase in that behavior, this is not productive. This is not effective. This is not the type of help you want. And first off, where were all those 18 people before the problem behavior happened? They weren't around. So it's frustrating when people just kind of pop in and want to help, and it's not necessarily that people are trying to do anything bad, they're just trying to provide a helping hand, but they don't realize that in doing so it might be counterproductive to your behavior plans. For those attention-seeking behaviors or even escape behaviors, it's really frustrating when someone new comes in even harder when it's an administrator, and kind of gives that student exactly what they want. If a student's in mid-meltdown mode and, you know, the Vice Principal walks up and is like, "Hey buddy, let me take you on a walk into my office so we can get a treat," you're like, "Oh my god, that was exactly— you're giving him exactly what he wanted!" But you can't in that moment be like, "No, stop!" I mean, you can, but it might not be received well. But if you had a crisis plan ahead of time that you filled your staff in on, you'd be able to prevent it becoming this big scene. And once you have that crisis plan with your staff, you can share that with your administrators so they also know how to respond in those crisis moments. So maybe now I've sold you on why you need a crisis plan for your class. So if you do set one up, there's a few things you want to make sure to include. Of course, every classroom is very different, every school is very different, so there might be other things you want to include. But the 4 main components that I always put in a crisis plan are: 1, a cue for when the crisis plan starts; 2, what you want everyone to be doing; 3, how you're keeping other students safe; and then 4, how we're transitioning out of crisis mode. So first up is that cue of when we get the ball rolling. How are we going to know that we're starting this crisis plan? I would not recommend shouting "crisis" across the room to all of your staff because That's not going to be productive and going to probably rile everyone up. So maybe have some type of simple code phrase or code word. A classroom that I was working in last year, they just had code red, and then she just quietly said it to staff. She was like, hey everyone, we're on code red, and they all knew exactly what to do. So just some type of simple cue that you can tell your staff, or a staff member can tell you, so we all know what's going on. Because in our classrooms that are center-based, you might not really be able to see what's going on in the break area, and vice versa. That your staff might not see what's going on over by the lockers. The next thing is the important thing— is what do you want each staff member to do? So how you set this up might really differ on the needs of your classroom. So you might want there to be one point person, and whoever that point person is could be whoever called the code. If that person is interacting with that child, they might be the point person. Or maybe you as the teacher want to always be the one to kind of run point and make sure the behavior— behavior plan is implemented correctly. But basically figure figure out what you and each of your staff members should be doing. How will you interact with the student that is having a hard time? And then how will you interact with other students? And so as far as interacting with the student that's having a hard time, whoever's initially working with that student, dealing with that student, you want to make sure there's some protocols in place for how you can get help from other people and also how you can say no to help from other people. So I mentioned walking up to a crisis or a behavior incident and seeing 18 people there. Those 18 people just want to help. They're not trying to do any harm, but they don't know what to do. So all they do is kind of jump in and give their two cents. Instead, I really like to teach schools and teams to ask the person that's dealing with the behavior, "Do you need help?" before they jump in. That's kind of my golden rule. Before I ever jump in anywhere, I say, "do you need help?" And if that teacher or that staff member says, "No, I'm good," even if it looks kind of crazy, like it's not going well, I'm still gonna like hang back and wait, maybe ask again in a few minutes. So have that as part of your protocol of what each staff member is doing. I'm working with this child, you're going to be over here with the other kids, but you can ask me, "Do you need help?" before jumping in if you see things are escalating. But make that kind of the golden rule. One teacher that I met at a training recently said that her school and her team uses the saying "kit kat" throughout the whole building, and if they see a teacher or a staff member working with a kid and looking like they might need a break, they'll say to them, "Hey, kit kat?" And it's kind of a cue, like, "Do you need a break?" And if that staff member needs a break, they're like, "Yep, let's like tap me out for a second." So I thought that was like a cute and indiscreet way of asking for people if they want help or not. So that's important to really include in your plan. So the next thing, which I've already touched on, is the other students. That example of 18 people all around one kid also really frustrates me because where are the rest of the kids? The rest of the class is probably running crazy, or potentially another dangerous situation could be happening. A kid could be running out the classroom, and sometimes in those situations of high stress and high emotion, that can be really hard for other kids to watch. There's a lot of commotion and noise, so that could be upsetting to other kids. So you want to definitely assign staff members to the rest of the class. Hey, when we're in crisis mode, me and Miss Thompson are going to be over here with this child, and Mr., Mr. Jones, you take the rest of the class and you go to the break area and you stay there. If the crisis is something that might really escalate high, you might want to have in that plan for bringing the rest of the kids out of the classroom. Maybe in your crisis plan, knowing your caseload and knowing your student's behavior, it would be best if the rest of your class actually left the room to ensure safety. Your number one goal here is keeping everyone safe. That means the child that's having a hard time, that means the staff members, and that means the rest of your kids. So if you think that would be best, of, hey, you know, you two staff members, why don't when we say code red, you bring the rest of the class and you guys just sit in the hallway. Because that might be better for them and safer for them. So really make sure to think about the rest of the class there. And then you want a cue for how— when we're done with crisis, how are we transitioning everyone back? You know, everyone goes right back to their scheduled activities. What is a cue word or code word for when the crisis is done? How are we bringing everyone back together? So have some type of cue there. So after you've set up this crisis plan, you can't just type it out, email it to your staff, or post in your room and hope for the best. You need to sit down with your team and talk about it. So go through each step, explain the why. Why do we need a crisis plan? Why is it important for you to ask me if I need help before jumping in? Why is it important to bring kids into the hallway? So go through that whole crisis plan together, write it all out in a simple way, give everyone a copy, ask them if they have questions, ask them for input. This is a team endeavor, so you need to spend that time working together to make sure we're all on the same page. And I know here everyone says, "Oh, I don't have common staff training time." I get that. Most schools don't. This takes 5-10 minutes. So just grabbing those first few minutes at the start of the, of the school day or the end of the school day, putting your kids in break or on iPads and being like, "Hey, let's have 10 minutes to talk about this together," or even at the start of the school year when you have those professional development days. Include this in your staff training, having 5-10 minutes to talk about this crisis plan and all get on the same page. It's really, really worth those few minutes. It's worth the time. When explaining to staff, I also try to really highlight that during a crisis, I might not be especially nice. I might not say, "Hey, can you please do that?" There might not be any pleasantries. I want to really illustrate that I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just trying to get stuff done. This is a good time to explain that during that kind of staff meeting when you're all talking about this, that, "Hey, I might be kind of short with you. I might be really direct. I'm not trying to be rude. There's a dangerous situation and my only goal is keeping everyone safe, so don't take that the wrong way." I think sometimes in a crisis we can be short with each other and people's feelings can be hurt, and this can kind of help avoid that. I also try to highlight during this staff training time that during the crisis is not the time for questions. During these 5-10 minutes when we're talking about the crisis plan, that's a great time to ask questions. During our debrief after a crisis, that's a great time to ask questions. But while we're in the middle of crisis mode, when you're dodging punches and trying to make sure someone doesn't get bit, I don't want to discuss the whys. I don't want a question of, well, why do I have to bring the kids outside? Or, hey, why, you know, why don't we try this? Or Isn't it better to do it this way? No questions during crisis mode. I really want you guys to illustrate that to your staff because it's just dangerous. You can't be, you know, sharing your attention with a staff member and a potentially dangerous situation. So you want to make sure you kind of shut that down ahead of time so you can, you can address the full needs of the situation. And it's not that you don't want questions. I love when people ask questions because it means that they're invested and they want to understand and they might have some valuable ideas. But just during that crisis situation is not the appropriate time for a question. So I mentioned the debrief. So after a crisis situation, you've had a really horrible day, you had a 2-hour meltdown, you know, maybe someone got hurt or had some, you know, pretty bad self-injury or some type of running situation. Everyone's exhausted. So maybe not that day, but maybe the next morning, find 5 minutes to sit down with your staff and kind of review what happened. Because like I said, you want to give the opportunity for questions, you want to give the opportunity for suggestions and ideas. As a teacher, when we're so in it, it's hard to get a bird's-eye view of, you know, exactly what's going on. So it's likely that you might have missed something that your staff didn't, that they can help and they can share. So find those 5-10 minutes either that afternoon at that day or maybe the following morning or following afternoon, and sit down and review kind of what happened. Explain, you know, what was going on, and then reflect a little bit and answer some important questions. Was this in your control? Maybe there are some things you can change in the future that could help prevent this behavior. But maybe this was just completely out of your control. The fire alarm went out while you were short-staffed, and You know, one student was, was having a hard time about a change in his schedule, and it was like all the stars aligned to just be kind of a huge mess. Things like that are out of our control, and it's kind of freeing to know like, hey, stuff happened and there was nothing we could do to change it. We dealt with it the best we could. Or in that situation that you could have changed something, problem-solve together. Hey, what can we do differently next time? What have we learned about this student and our kids that we could change to prevent this in the future? Every hard day is a learning opportunity. So even though those days are the worst and you probably went home and had ice cream for dinner and thought about a career change, it's okay. Learn from it and make those changes going forward, but learn from it with your staff. With your staff in that debrief, it's tempting to kind of let it go really negative really quick because it was a hard day and people complain about their hard days and they vent. I get it. Venting is totally healthy, but it's not healthy when you're the team leader. So if you, the teacher, need to vent about your hard day, cool. Go vent to your roommate, to your spouse, to your teacher colleague down the hall, to your best friend, to your mom. Do not vent to your staff. If they start to vent or they start to complain, put a positive problem-solving spin on it. That, oh my gosh, today was horrible. All these things happened. This, you know, I got a little hurt or this happened. I get it, but put that positive spin. Like, yeah, but we really learned that that type of schedule change is just a little bit too much for Johnny right now, so we've got to scale it back. Or we've really learned that, you know, this intervention is starting to help because this meltdown was 20 minutes where normally it's 2 hours. So when that venting happens and that complaining starts, put that problem-solving, productive spin on it and be the model for that. If you aren't— don't want your staff to do that, you can't complain and vent either like that. So in the debrief, talk about what you could have changed and what you learned from it. Avoid venting and complaining, and then provide praise. This is a very thankless job. Being a paraprofessional or a classroom assistant can be an even more thankless job, and we could be in control of changing that as the teacher. Provide positive feedback to your staff. It feels really good to be told that you're doing a good job, and it feels even better to be told that you're doing a good job on a day that went horribly. On those worst of the worst days, when someone tells you something that you did was great, it feels amazing. Make sure your staff feels that. Highlight what they did that was great, like, "Hey Jack, thank you so much for taking the rest of the class in the hallway right when I said it. That was so essential at keeping everyone safe." Sarah, thank you so much for helping me with this child and taking data while I was kind of in it, and I really appreciated that. And you know, Angie, thank you so much for getting the principal right here. That was all awesome. So really highlight specifically things people did that helped you out because that will go a long, a long way. So we all know during a crisis situation we need help. We need our team to work together, together, and as a team, but we need help in an appropriate way where everyone's productive and everyone's helping the end goal of making sure that everyone stays safe. In a crisis, we want to respond, not react. If you react, you're going purely off emotion, but if you respond, that means you're recalling a plan you've made and you're acting on a plan that's thought out. You're not just reacting to kind of the heightened situation that's going on. So I really encourage you, if you don't have a crisis plan with your team, to set one up. Share that plan with your administrators, get everyone on the same page, so when that crisis happens, if it does, you're ready. So we reviewed today how to get your crisis team, crisis plan set up, and then how to share that plan with your staff, and then also how to debrief after and make sure that everyone is still on the same page and really provide that feedback and that positive praise for doing a great job. So I hope you enjoyed learning about crisis plans in today's mini video training series. Please check the rest of this series out. We have a bunch of them on YouTube, and let me know any other ideas you'd like for other future videos.