This week, twenty-four members of our MRPS staff came together to begin learning about collaborative problem solving with Think Kids. This week’s training focused on understanding the model at the Tier 1 level. As a reminder, Tier 1 is considered universal instruction- all kids need this. Collaborative Problem Solving or CPS is based on the belief that all kids would if they could. It is a mental shift in how many people think about behaviors that can be challenging. I know my group definitely had our thinking pushed multiple times.
SOME MAJOR AH-HA’s I HAD
The top thinking skills that break down the most are: flexibility & adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving abilities.
Situations that require the most thinking skills are in: language & communication, attention & working memory, emotion & self regulation, cognitive flexibility, and social thinking.
We discussed at length what each of those look like. There were some great reminders!
We need to spend more time identifying thinking skills that may be lagging (we can teach skills!) and less time excusing behaviors. Think Kids called excusing behaviors “dead end explanations.” An example of this is something like, “Johnny just wants control.” While this may be true, it does not provide a teachable skill.
This is where a whole lot of bias can come into the conversation - something we have to learn how to avoid!
Internal Motivators are: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Rewards and punishments actually undermine internal motivators. They can also increase stress responses.
There are three major steps:
Assess - we need to solve a problem, not solve a behavior
Planning leads to being proactive
Intervene to build skills
The last session occurs after the publication of this blog post. It’s where we get to some good stuff - how to intervene effectively. I’m positive our MRPS team will be all ears for that one!
