Four important tips that will significantly increase your success!  
by Juliya Krasnopolsky

My experience as a special education classroom teacher and now a BCBA consulting with classrooms helps me to recognize the challenges of both roles and provide a little perspective on how the two can work together effectively to create a classroom environment that works for ALL students.

If you are a BCBA or thinking about becoming a BCBA who works in the classroom setting, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) Collaborate on solutions: Before you spend hours writing a BCBA plan, outlining steps of a reinforcement system, or designing an awesome data collection system, talk to the classroom staff and get a feel for their reaction to how user-friendly it may be. The more say they have in its development, the more likely they are to use it.

2) Schedule your time with the teacher: While it may at times seem urgent to provide feedback mid-lesson, this can be very disruptive to the class and to the teacher. As much as is possible, plan ahead for a mutually agreeable time for you to be in the classroom and to provide feedback. This will show genuine respect for the teacher’s busy classroom schedule.

3) Really know the role of everyone in the classroom: remember, in addition to receiving feedback regarding students on your BCBA caseload, a teacher must manage many things: completing the day’s lesson plan, writing reports and IEPs, running to last-minute meetings, writing notes home to parents, providing instruction to support staff in the classroom. The more aware you are of the competing demands on the teacher, the more effective you can be in helping them implement your recommendations.

4) Build rapport with teachers: Buy-in from those who are on the front-lines with students is essential to effective intervention. Teachers and paraprofessionals have a wealth of experience and knowledge to share, and are ultimately the ones applying various behavior analytic strategies we suggest, and implementing behavior plans we write. Get to know them separately from their role in the classroom – what do they like? What are their favorite parts of their job? What are their hobbies or professional goals? Ask about these when you see them. Also, make sure that your presence in the classroom is much more positive and helpful than it is distracting from their work – can you help pass out papers, or help various students with their assignments? Can you help clean up a spill so the teacher can continue teaching the lesson? Lastly, teachers often get into routines with their teaching styles – modeling a lesson or a teaching strategy may be a great way for you and the teacher to switch roles – the teacher can observe and learn from how you teach (with some guidance to focus on important aspects of your teaching), and you can experience what it’s like to be in the teacher’s shoes teaching a lesson while prompting, correcting, reinforcing students and communicating with support staff all at the same time.

Ultimately, a strong and collaborative team will have the best success on our ultimate shared goal of effectively teaching the student. Let’s keep our eyes on that prize…

To find out more about becoming a BCBA, click