Challenging Behaviors in Preschool and What to do about it - News Analysis

There seems to be a rise in preschool age children with challenging behaviors. Even teachers with excellent classroom management have been seeking extra help in how to handle these challenges. There are a number of reasons that I believe account for the rise in challenging behaviors. One of those are that preschool has become widely more accessible to families. With pre-k grants pouring into states, preschool is more readily available to at risk students. With the increase in enrollment and the diverse population of students entering school, challenging behaviors are on the rise. So what is a teacher to do?
One program that is becoming widely popular is the Technical Assistance Center on Social-Emotional Intervention (TACSEI). TACSEI (pronounced taxi) uses a pyramid model to show a tiered approach to providing supports to children. It begins at the bottom of the pyramid with ensuring that all staff understand and support the approach. Next, it focuses on building relationships. You must have an established relationship with a student in order to affect change. Too many times in the past if a student was misbehaving, they would be sent to the principal office. For most students this would be the first time that they have had contact with the principal. While preschool age children can and do recognize authority, they do not understand what a principal is and why they should listen to them over their teachers. It is much more effective to deal with challenging behaviors in the classroom with the teacher or teachers that the student has built a relationship with. Also, on this level of the pyramid you need to ensure that you are providing a high quality environment. The preschool environment should be set up to allow our students to be successful. This should include things like a visual schedule of their day, rules posted with pictures, a place for them to go for self calming, and visuals to help them identify their feelings and find solutions to problems they may be having in the classroom. Next, TACSEI requires that you should be specifically teaching social skills to students. So often we get distracted by ensuring that we are teaching reading, writing, math, and science, that we forget that social skills need to be taught too. Finally, at the top of the pyramid, when all of the other supports are in place, we have intensive interventions. When TACSEI has been implemented, this is a very small percentage of students. Each classroom should only have 1, maybe 2 of these students who need intensive interventions. Interventions include things like an individualized behavior plan, or bringing in a behavior specialist.

I have seen first hand how implementing TACSEI into a program can be beneficial. Our center started this program at the beginning of the year and have seen a dramatic decrease in behaviors. It also better equips teachers on how to manage their classrooms. I would recommend this program to anyone.