Neurodivergent Space

By Coy Hamm, parent of a child with autism

Our son, a 12-year-old with autism, has transitioned to middle school this year. His new school, with a strong tech focus, has introduced a powerful tool, the Unified Classroom Behavior (PBeh) app, previously known as Kickboard. PBeh replaces the take-home folder system we used to communicate with our son’s teachers and other faculty members. The app works well for our son, helping his behavior and adjustment to middle school. We are excited about my son’s future and love celebrating his successes. I certainly do not miss the take-home folder!

Despite not being the most technically-minded person, I can tell you that the PBeh app works. My son’s teachers can track his behavior, evaluate the program, and reward him for meeting his behavior goals. My wife and I feel more involved and understand his behavior better.

This year’s transition to middle school is a significant change for my son. It is a new school with different faces, and his anxiety has been up. The behavioral support he gets from the app helps him adjust and helps us understand our son’s behavior a little bit better.

Positive Behavior Support for Autism

The idea of positive behavior support is that people’s behavior in a situation depends on their previous experiences of similar situations. You can help a child with autism learn a new behavior when you understand what they are getting or trying to communicate when they behave in a certain way. For autistic children, positive behavior support:

• Improves school performance
•  Helps child ask for things
• It can help reduce meltdowns
• Helps child share information
• It can help reduce aggression toward self and others

The value of behavior tracking is its ability to gather objective and measurable data about an individual’s behavior over time, which helps develop effective intervention strategies. My son’s teachers can gain insights into what is influencing his behavior, set measurable goals, and check the effectiveness of any interventions.

The faculty can identify target behaviors that require intervention and establish a baseline for measuring progress. The behavioral data shows patterns and how the school can adjust to improve the classroom and community culture and environment.

The Software

School administrators can check student or classroom behavior. The software has pre-programmed behavioral categories, such as cooperation, perseverance, engagement, resilience, and kindness, along with training for teachers and administrators. Teachers can use portable devices to enter student behavior data and see patterns on a dashboard. The patterns can be for an individual student or an entire classroom.

The data shapes student-teacher interactions through rewards given to students who attain a certain number of behavior points, or in my son’s case, play money. The money is not the real thing. It is just digitally displayed on the dashboard. But the balance accumulates, and he can put the money toward things like an extended recess or candy. The app dashboard displays his earnings per class and his running account balance. School administrators can track outcomes at the school level and by classroom and teacher. A few of his pre-programmed behaviors include:

• Homework complete? If his homework is complete, he will receive a $2 reward of play money.
• In uniform? If he arrives dressed in his school uniform, he will receive a $2 reward.
• Disrupts class? He will lose $2 from his account.
• Does he pay attention in class? If so, the reward is $1.
• Off task? He loses $2 from his balance.

Patterns and Trends for Teachers

Positive behavior support can help educators find ways to support the needs of their students with autism. Teachers can teach and encourage positive actions and a growth mindset. Faculty can identify patterns and trends in the behavior data, significant increases in specific behaviors, and changes in the frequency of occurrences. The information helps my son’s teachers understand his behavior so that they can plan an effective intervention.

Teachers use patterns to address my son’s behavior. They identify patterns and then consider the reasons for the behavior. Additionally, behavior trends can help the staff learn about the effectiveness of their behavior strategies.

If there are positive changes over time, the intervention works successfully. Negative trends indicate the need to modify the intervention. Schools using the app are experiencing successes that include:

• Higher academic scores
• Increased family engagement
• Improved family-teacher collaboration
• Reduced discipline referrals
• Reduced suspension rates

The process is ongoing, and the teachers constantly refine their understanding of my son’s behavior. The behavior data ensures continuous behavior modification, increasing the chances of successful behavior adjustment. Of course, the app is most effective when part of a well-designed plan for positive behavior support in the classroom.

For Parents 

The tool updates us on my son’s behavior daily and lets us check on Parker via phone during his school day. The parent dashboard displays my son’s progress and rewards. It has been a teaching tool, helping us understand why our child might be doing something and helping us improve his behavior or reinforce it at home. It lets us see what is going well and where improvement is needed. Parent messaging is a terrific way to stay in touch with the teachers, and it is lovely to check in real-time how our son’s day is unfolding. The behavior app streamlines communication.

The details of his behavior greatly help us understand our son better. We can monitor his aggressive outbursts, track any self-injury episodes, and keep a total of successful interactions with others. This system lets us rank the severity of my son’s actions, watch for patterns, and visualize behavior with graphs and charts.

For Students

The play money my son’s teachers reward him each time he completes a task like a token economy: He performs a desired behavior and receives a token as a reward. The dashboard provides a running tally of his money, and he can cash in his money for rewards. An everyday example of this is earning a paycheck. To earn a paycheck, you go to your job and take care of your responsibilities. You receive money (tokens) for your work. You can then exchange the cash for choices or reinforcing items. Here is a typical scenario for my son:

• Target behavior. This is the desired behavior. Examples include being on time and being prepared.
• Baseline. Before any changes occur, the state is the starting point, serving as a point of comparison. The baseline should include what constitutes being prepared and “being on time.”
• Measurement. This is the method used to track and record the target behavior. When my son arrives on time and is prepared for class each morning, $2 goes into his account. The running tally of money is displayed in each class every day.
• Reward. The rewards are typically classroom-contained. He might cash in his money for extra recess time or a treat. However, he might earn enough points (or play money) to attend an external event like a gamer or board game club. 

However, the real reward for Parker is motivation for positive behavior. This app breaks down skills into smaller, more manageable steps. There is positive reinforcement at each step, which helps my son develop self-confidence. For instance, he is positively rewarded for the behaviors “asks clarifying questions” and “gives opinions.” Both of the behaviors are small steps toward improving his communication skills.  We are seeing consistency in his behavior in the classroom and believe the positive reinforcement instilled by the app is already making a noticeable change. We have also now instituted chores for monetary rewards and are having success with positive reinforcement in the home. 

A Connection for All

Many great apps are now available for people with autism. These apps can help students, their parents, and their instructors better understand behaviors and the steps they can take to reinforce or correct them. The PBeh app connects all. It can put teachers, students, therapists, medical professionals, and parents on the same page regarding a student’s behavior. Students can set goals with teachers and with themselves. We can track my son’s behavior goals and celebrate when he successfully attains them. I am a big fan of the new app, but more importantly, Parker is doing well with it and likes it. The Unified Classroom Behavior app is part of the cloud-based solution PowerSchool, a software provider for K-12 education in North America. It is a subscription service that charges his school per student per year. The app is free and available in the app store. If you are a parent looking for a free behavior support app for autism not associated with school, check out Thumsters or iRewardChart. Both are great tools.