Kaitlyn Laprise

Teaching/Learning Example Skinner

As I was reading about Skinners work this week, I was reminded of a student
Richard and I both had who was in the behavioral program at our middle school.
This program was for students who could not be in traditional classrooms because
of major behavioral issues, but their elective courses were still integrated with all
other students in the school. For the first few months of the school year, I had a lot
of issues with Larry in band. He was very disruptive, often swearing loudly, and his
outbursts would derail the whole class. I always felt I had to react to get him to stop
his behavior, but it almost always became a power struggle which wasnt working
for either of us. I know now that Skinner would say, Of course its not working!
Punishment is ineffective in the long term!
One day, he took a test in Richards music class and got a 93. Knowing that
this was a big accomplishment for Larry, I told him in his lesson that day that I was
really impressed and proud of his work. I had just meant to compliment him, but
that reinforcement lead to a great response: his behavior was appropriate and he
was more focused than I had ever seen him that day. When I got home that
afternoon, I called his dad to tell him about his test score, how great he was in his
lesson that day, and how proud I was of Larry for his work in both music classes. His
Dad then told me how nice it was to get the phone call; he said he got called often
by teachers at the school, but never for anything positive, and said he guessed that
music must be good for Larry. When I saw Larry again, he told me that when I
called, his dad had put me on speaker phone and that he heard everything I said.
Through my new lens of Skinners research, I realize now that the positive
reinforcement from both his father and I encouraged a positive response from Larry:
he started behaving so differently in class that I actually felt bad for not seeing this
potential in him sooner. At the time, I just felt lucky to get to see a completely new
side of Larry, so, I tried a different approach with him to see how I could get this
behavior to continue. I assigned seats that sat him away from students he was most
likely to react to, which changed some of the circumstances causing his behavior,
and tried to ignore minor behavioral issues rather than punish them in front of the
class. I would try to talk to him often after class, thanking him for specific aspects of
his behavior on particularly good days and, on bad days, I asked him to tell me what
happened to upset him and told him how I would like him to handle that situation if
it happened again. When he would help another student with a fingering or rhythm,
I would thank him in class for his leadership. While Larry did not completely stop
acting out, his good behavior, participation, and effort became much more frequent
than his bad behavior. Richard handled his time with Larry in a very similar way and
he saw a lot of improvement as well.
At the time, I thought I was just giving a misunderstood student an
opportunity to be a better version of himself. According to Skinner, though, I was
using differential reinforcement to shape his behavior by reinforcing his good
behavior and redirecting his unwanted behavior through modeling instead of using
punishment. As a result, his desired behavior occurred much more often. Sadly, our
classes seem to have been a type of discriminative stimulus for Larry, as he
behaved differently for other teachers than he did for us. His behavioral teacher saw

Kaitlyn Laprise
so much good behavior from him in our classesand so much bad behavior in other
classesthat he kept Larry in music all year instead of rotating him through gym
and art. What scares me most about Larry after having done this reading is
Skinners ideas about extinction. I hope that Larry has someone else to reinforce his
good behavior now because, if Skinner is right and not Allport, without that
reinforcement Larry could be back to his baseline behavior. Larry is not only a
student that I will never forget, but also a student who has changed the way I will
think about all of my students in the future.