Classroom Strategies for Prevention, Teaching, & Response to Student Interfering Behavior

SEBH skills are part of universal teaching and learning in effective classrooms. These skills directly influence students’ academic success and post-school outcomes. They are necessary for students to set goals, work with others, communicate effectively, and handle stress – important for academic learning, social connection, and access to higher education and employment opportunities.

Educators and school staff can support student development of SEBH skills by creating learning spaces in which they intentionally embed teaching of those skills, instead of merely reacting to undesired behaviors as they occur. Many interfering behaviors can be prevented when school staff cultivate an organized, clear, inclusive, and engaging learning space. The following practices, adapted in part from the recommendations of the Center on PBIS, support student SEBH skill growth and can help prevent the use of restraint and isolation.

Welcoming and Organized Space

The design of a classroom often sets the stage for how students and adults will interact there. Well-designed classrooms are safe and inviting spaces intentionally designed to include and represent students, promote focus and participation in learning, facilitate smooth transitions between activities and movement through the space, and build a sense of community in the classroom. 

Key Features of a Welcoming and Organized Space

• Classroom areas are arranged so that all staff and students (including anyone with mobility devices, service dogs, and other accommodations) can easily move around the space and access learning areas and materials
• Classroom areas are planned and defined, including space for a break and/or quiet work available for any student who needs it
• Clutter and distraction are minimized in all areas of the classroom, and both students and staff have a regular place to store belongings and materials when not in use
• Classroom bulletin boards and other visual elements are easy for students to see, and reflect student contributions, interests, communities, and cultures
• Unstructured and independent time, including transitions between activities and free time, is intentionally designed for student learning and practice of SEBH skills
• Transitions between activities and/or locations are practiced and efficient

Clear Expectations, Routines, and Procedures

Defined schoolwide expectations, classroom expectations, routines, and procedures set the stage for learning and SEBH skill development. Just like adults value clear expectations and understanding of usual routines and procedures in the workplace, students benefit from the same clarity as learners in in the classroom. Expectations, routines, and procedures create a cohesive environment in which students can feel safe and secure to engage in learning, challenge themselves, and make mistakes with support to learn from them. 

• Schoolwide expectations describe social, emotional, and behavioral skills for students and staff to collectively create a safe and supportive school community. Schoolwide expectations are usually phrased as character traits or concepts, such as “responsibility” or “safety,” and are often established through a school’s multitiered system of supports (MTSS) program. For further information and resources on MTSS, see Section 2.
• Classroom expectations connect schoolwide expectations to specific social, emotional, and behavioral expectations relevant to the classroom setting. Teams can create other sets of expectations for a variety of school settings, including the bus, cafeteria, and hallway. This can be helpful in teaching context-dependent skills, like hand-raising, that are expected in some settings but not others. 
• Routines and procedures connect common classroom routines for students – like turning in work, transitioning between locations, and meeting personal needs – with the teacher’s preferred procedures for how students complete those routines. Identifying common routines and then teaching the procedures for each can help the classroom run smoothly. 

Educators who teach expectations, routines, and procedures in their classrooms are equipping their students with the SEBH skills to navigate each school day with greater confidence. Settings in which these are not taught can be frustrating for students and staff, with frequent staff reprimands, raised voices, and lost instructional time. When designed well, expectations, routines, and procedures proactively name the specific SEBH skills students and staff will engage in for learning and community. Educators and students can also work together to co-create expectations, routines, and procedures. This can cultivate a sense of shared responsibility and ownership between students and staff for a positive classroom climate. 

To achieve these positive results, expectations, rules, and procedures must be taught and re-taught throughout the year. Strategies for selecting and teaching classroom rules and expectations are outlined below.

Key Features of Clear Classroom Expectations, Routines, and Procedures

• Describe expected social, emotional, and behavioral skills:
  • That build student skills and contribute to learning
  • With clear and grade-appropriate language
  • Describing observable student actions, not feelings or attitudes
  • In terms of what students are expected to do, rather than what they should not do
• Align classroom expectations with schoolwide expectations whenever possible
• Ensure students can recall each classroom expectation by not exceeding 3–5 overall
• Teach and refer to classroom expectations and routines regularly and frequently
• Post information about expectations, routines, and procedures at student level, ensuring they are accessible for all students (e.g., including visual aids, translated text, and/or braille)
• Seek feedback from all families and students to ensure that expectations, routines, and procedures are culturally sustaining and inclusive of all students, including students with disabilities 
• Avoid expectations, routines, or procedures that are arbitrary or for adult convenience only

Identifying and Intentionally Teaching SEBH Skills

To address student behavioral needs in the classroom, educators should identify the SEBH skills their students need and instructional strategies to teach those skills. Staff who take a preventative and skills-focused approach are more effective at creating safe and supportive classrooms than those who manage interfering behavior solely by reacting to it afterwards. For a student who has been restrained and/or isolated, it is even more important that educators identify and teach the student needed SEBH skills so they can learn, engage with others, and meet their needs in healthy ways. 

Positive development of SEBH skills should be intentionally incorporated into teaching plans and instructional design of learning spaces. Planned and embedded teaching to support student development of SEBH skills leads quickly to improved classroom behavior and wellbeing for both students and staff.

Washington State’s Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Standards and Benchmarks

Washington state supports teaching many of these critical skills through the SEL Standards and Benchmarks, developed and adopted in January 2020. They follow four guiding principles that practices be equitable, universally designed, culturally-sustaining, and trauma-informed⁸². The six standards represent areas of social emotional competence that a student develops by learning, practicing, and demonstrating skills in prosocial behaviors. Each standard is listed below, along with an example of a related skill that supports reduction of interfering behaviors.

SEL Standard and Prevention of Interfering Behavior

• Self-Awareness: Student is aware of their emotions, allowing them to understand their experiences of agitation or escalation.
• Self-Management: Student has learned strategies for managing stress, allowing them to regulate themself while agitated or escalated.
• Self-Efficacy: Student is able to self-advocate, allowing them to explain what is causing ongoing distress that previously led to a crisis situation.
• Social Awareness: Student is aware that their classmates have many different opinions, cultures, and values, allowing them to better understand disagreements that might cause escalation.
• Social Management: Student is able to resolve conflicts with peers, allowing them to avoid escalating to crisis during challenging social interactions.
• Social Engagement: Student is aware that their actions affect others, allowing them to understand how they can help build a positive school community.

Key Features of Intentionally Teaching SEBH Skills

• Plan and provide instruction on SEBH skills, with examples and non-examples of each skill when appropriate based on student grade level and learning context (e.g., demonstrating how to request a hall pass, use and clean up materials for an activity, or follow expectations in the locker room)
• Help students understand SEBH skills in relation to context, including the use of different skills for different settings and activities
• Model SEBH skills for students (e.g., demonstrating taking a deep breath to calm oneself)
• Monitor students’ use of SEBH skills using proximity to support skill use (e.g., reduce the distance between the teacher and student when providing directions and/or when interfering behavior may occur)
• Teach students how to monitor their own use of SEBH skills
• Allow and create opportunities for students to practice SEBH skills in natural contexts, planning ahead to provide positive acknowledgment or effective feedback when needed
• Use attention signals and/or scripts to help students know when to use a certain skill (e.g., using a clapping signal that students echo as a signal that it is time for quiet voices)
• Give directions to students that are phrased as directives that describe the expected behavior, rather than asking students to stop a certain behavior
• Remind students of expected SEBH skills at the beginning of the day and prior to routine transitions throughout the day

Engaging and Relevant Instruction

Well-designed instruction is a necessary component of effective classroom management. Students who are deeply engaged in learning are less likely to engage in interfering behavior and more likely to learn SEB skills (such as collaboration and problem-solving) that support learning. This sort of instruction is relevant, challenging, contextualized, and designed for students’ individual needs, strengths, and interests. 

Educators who deliver engaging and relevant instruction: 

• Maintain and signal appropriately high expectations of all students 
• Understand and expect individual learner differences
• Intentionally establishing supports to helping students meet those high expectations
• Provide universally designed and culturally sustaining learning experiences that allow for student voice and multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression⁸³

Key Features of Engaging and Relevant Instruction

• Recognize that there is no perfect “one size fits all” strategy that will effectively engage all students. Relevant instruction uses diverse practices
• Communicate instruction using multiple representations of the content, such as graphics, media, and/or text 
• When using imagery and other visual materials, ensure that they represent the school community, and do not promote stereotypical depictions
• Prompt students to make connections to previously-learned concepts, including their own experiences
• Relate content to real-life applications that might be encountered by students, such as current news, school events, or future interests
• Invite students to engage with materials in different ways, such as through writing, drawing, or verbal discussion
• Provide opportunities for students to become involved in lesson creation or topic selection
• Provide opportunities for students to collaborate with peers in co-creating a shared understanding of a text or topic
• Consider student demographics to identify any specific materials that should be included, or that should be excluded, from instructional use 

Authentic and Supportive Feedback

As students learn and refine their SEB skills, school staff can support these skills with thoughtful encouragement and feedback. Specific praise, when delivered authentically, is an evidence-based teaching practice to support SEB skill development.⁸⁴  Just like any area of learning, when students make mistakes in their use of SEB skills, school staff can provide timely and teaching-focused corrective feedback to help students self-correct and learn from each mistake. Through both specific praise and corrective feedback, school staff can enhance teaching and learning of SEB skills in a growth-focused way.

Key Features of Authentic and Supportive Feedback

• Use specific praise to reinforce students for using SEB skills by naming the skill or behavior and providing sincere positive feedback
  • “Thanks for helping your partner brainstorm – I noticed you really listening to their ideas before jumping in with your own”
  • “Hey, thanks for welcoming [new student] to class today. I bet that made them feel more comfortable.”
  •  “Thanks for keeping your hand up and waiting for me to call on you – I appreciate the patience!”
• Cultivate opportunities for students to provide gratitude and appreciation to one another
• Provide corrective feedback in a calm, matter-of-fact voice to redirect students to use SEB skills (e.g., “Remember to walk when you’re headed out to recess”)
• When a student makes a mistake in their use of SEB skills, focus on supporting/reteaching the intended skill instead of focusing on the mistake
• Provide corrective feedback on an SEB mistake quietly and away from other students
• Aim to provide five specific praise statements for every one corrective feedback statement
• Give all feedback as soon as possible to maximize student learning
• Learn how students prefer to receive feedback (e.g., public, private, written, verbal) and provide feedback in that manner whenever possible

⁸² OSPI (2025). Social emotional learning (SEL).

⁸³ CAST (2024). Universal Design for Learning guidelines version 3.0.

⁸⁴ IRIS Center (n.d.). Behavior-specific praise.