GUEST POST: Interview with a Leader for Behavior Interventions in Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

Cover photo of BIST Conference provided by Guest Interviewee

Marty Huitt is a seasoned educator and visionary leader dedicated to revolutionizing how schools support children struggling with behavioral and academic challenges. For over two decades, Marty has served as the Director of the Behavior Intervention Support Team (BIST) program in Kansas City, Missouri, shaping the landscape of educational intervention and support in more than 330 schools in nine states across the country.

With a steadfast commitment to fostering environments of empathy and understanding, Marty has trained over 4,000 educators annually and coached leaders and teacher teams nationwide, equipping them with the tools and strategies needed to empower students, teachers, and parents alike. She is a champion of the BIST Model, a transformative, trauma-informed approach that centers on nurturing a shared belief system among educators, one that prioritizes compassion and consistency in care for all students.

This February, Marty published her first book, "Cultivating Behavioral Change in K-12 Students: Team-Based Intervention and Support Strategies,” a comprehensive text that covers timely topics including fostering family partnerships, increasing teaching time, and collaborating with students and other adults to create lasting change. As a respected authority in her field, Marty has taken the stage as a keynote speaker for several national conferences, drawing on her charisma and fervent passion for the BIST Model to instill hope and resilience in educators.

Reflecting on Marty’s impact, one educator shares, “Listening to and learning from Marty changed not only my sense of obligation to students who struggle, it truly changed my life. From that point on, I began to see my purpose as teaching students, not content, and working to have a life impact with those students who deserved it the least but needed it the most.”

Can you start by telling us a little bit about your background? How did you get to where you are today?

I “accidentally” started as a teacher for emotionally disturbed students in a residential facility in 1990. My original goal was to be a PE teacher and coach; however, at that time in education, very few PE positions were available. There were numerous available positions to work with students who struggled with behavior, so I picked up an additional certification.

After teaching for several years in residential, I went to Liberty Public Schools, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, to work with 9th-grade students who struggle with behavior. That position provided the opportunity to collaborate more frequently with parents, something I now see as key to children’s success in the classroom. While teaching at Liberty, I was introduced to BIST (Behavior Intervention Support Team). The building in which I was teaching implemented this model, and I had the opportunity to become a lead teacher.

Inspired by the impact of BIST on my students and myself, I left the classroom in 1997 and joined BIST as a consultant. This opportunity afforded me the privilege of being mentored by Nancy Osterhaus, the visionary behind the BIST model and then Director of BIST. This was an invaluable experience in my development and growth in supporting educators in their care for children. During this time, I had the opportunity to work with numerous schools and educators in how they support children who struggle with behavior. In 2003, I was invited to step into the role of Director of the BIST program.

Two decades later, we are a growing team of 26 consultants partnering with teachers, administrators, and families in more than 300 schools in nine states. I have witnessed the remarkable growth of this program, driven by passionate, innovative educators who are willing to be vulnerable and open to new ways of working with students who struggle behaviorally. I continue to be amazed by how dedicated teachers are to helping their students experience success. That original drive to become a coach has translated into championing aspiring educators and coaching my BIST Consultants, and I love what I do.

What is the BIST model?

In a nutshell, BIST is a psycho-educational model that helps support students who struggle with behavior. It was implemented in schools in 1989-90 and has continued growing since its initial implementation. It is also a philosophical model that allows adults to become cohesive and like-minded in the way they think about students who struggle.

Image of BIST conference provided by Guest Interviewee

When students struggle repeatedly, we believe it’s because of a student’s missing skill, not an adult’s inadequacy. Reframing challenging behavior as a missing skill allows adult educators to use their academic expertise and teaching skills in the behavior arena. This mindset change promotes collaboration among adult educators on how to support the struggling student and the primary teacher so that they can both stay in the relationship.

BIST provides practical strategies so that educators can implement the concepts of grace and accountability. Grace is defined as the unconditional relationship that adults provide for students. Grace is giving kids what they need and not what they deserve. And grace helps teachers learn how to lean into the relationship when they are rejected instead of pulling away due to feeling defeated by the student's behavior.

Accountability is the ability to be honest and reflective and solve problems for future success, which is critical to helping students experience significant change. Adults must learn how to guide students through this process in a kind, curious, and question-based way instead of lecturing them.

Four practical strategies for addressing behavior through the BIST Model include:

· Early Intervention

Early intervention begins with setting clear boundaries both inside the classroom and in common areas within schools. Once clarity around boundaries is provided, BIST Consultants work with educators to verbally redirect out-of-bounds behavior one time. If the student does not respond affirmatively, the adult takes action to stop the behavior. This process allows adults to consistently stop behavior at a procedural level and address students in a manner that reduces resistance and avoids escalation.

· Caring Confrontation

Caring Confrontation uses language that is common to all adults in the community to reduce student resistance. To reduce resistance through language, adults must become intentional about five qualities in their redirection. Adults must be quick, kind, calm, firm, and close when they redirect students.

Quick means that we are concise with our language and do not lecture students. Kind means that we are not angry while helping students get back on track. Calm allows the adults to model appropriate body language so that students don’t mirror our emotions. Firm helps set a boundary for students through our words and our voice without being angry. And close allows for privacy in the redirect which helps eliminate the need for students to save face in front of their peers.

· Processing

Processing is problem-solving for accountability after a behavioral mistake has been made. This event allows adults to facilitate accountability with students so that they can be honest, reflective, and create solutions for future success. This also allows adults to rebuild the relationship with a student and reassure them that we are not angry and that we still care about their success.

· Outlasting for Change

Outlasting for change means staying in the relationship with the student until they can partner with the correct adult to solve the event. Being accountable for our actions is hard no matter our age. To help students in this process, we must allow them time to deescalate if needed so they can problem-solve from a logical place. Students will often resist being accountable and stay stuck in denial or blame. When this happens, the adults must stay in the relationship while enforcing restrictions that protect the student from continuing to get in trouble.

Before you were involved with BIST as an organization, you used the BIST model in your classroom. Can you describe what that looked like and how it was helpful?

I had the incredible opportunity to utilize BIST in my classroom and be a lead teacher in implementing BIST throughout the school building. As a classroom teacher implementing the BIST Model, the most significant realization occurred when I started using Early Intervention. When I adopted this strategy, I was less emotional with students and, therefore, a more consistent teacher. I could also stay in the relationship with students more consistently because I had the skills to stop the behavior before it became a significant concern.

Without BIST, teachers often feel alone in managing students who struggle and may feel adversarial towards other adults who disagree on how things should be handled. I’ve experienced this side of behavior management, too. At Liberty, the adult community relied on BIST to give teachers the skills to collaborate cohesively in a manner that included the student for increased student ownership. It empowered us to work together to create significant change instead of each teacher working individually – cultivating a culture of camaraderie, like-minded thinking, and trust.

A lot of people think that trauma-informed care is primarily for students who have experienced abuse. What other students could benefit from a trauma-informed approach and why?

I believe that all students and adults can benefit from a trauma-informed approach. A popular study on the prevalence of trauma suggests that 89.7% of people will experience a traumatic event in their lifetime (1). There is no one definition of trauma. The Sanctuary Model of trauma-informed care talks about trauma as a continuum that can include ongoing events (abuse and neglect), one-time disruptions (a car accident, health scare, mass shooting), and more discrete forms of trauma (parent with mental health issues, divorce, substance use).

With this broad understanding, we can assume that most children have experienced some form of trauma or, at the very least, have been in relationship with another adult or child who has; therefore, a trauma-informed approach for everyone just makes sense. Trauma often includes feelings of shame, which keeps the suffering private, so if we only apply trauma-informed strategies to children who “look” like they have trauma, we risk missing those who need support the most. Assessments and trauma-informed staff members can help identify which students have the highest level of need.

For those that aren’t familiar with “trauma-informed care,” it includes practices that center children in their own care, giving them a voice and empowering them because trauma often takes these things away. Trauma-informed environments like schools create spaces that are safe, predictable, and consistent for children because traumatized children have experienced the opposite. It also means training staff to recognize signs of trauma and know how to respond to it. These ideas, which are just the tip of the iceberg of trauma-informed care, are built into research-based models like The Sanctuary Model, in which BIST and other programs of Cornerstones of Care are certified.

What trauma-informed care doesn’t mean is lowering standards for children and adults but becoming more intentional about our approach and increasing the support needed to meet high standards. In the BIST community, we know we must start where the kid is, and that place will look different for each kid. By using trauma-informed strategies, we can increase partnerships with all students, allowing students and adults to achieve more frequent success.

Can you describe some of the research that supports trauma-informed care and the BIST model?

Research shows that children who have experienced trauma often struggle to manage overwhelming feelings and will display this through three different responses: fight, flight, and freeze. Herman’s “Stages of Trauma Recovery” model tells us that establishing safety and stability and helping kids with emotion regulation is where we need to start when healing from trauma of all types. This is probably the biggest impact that educators can have on students who have experienced trauma. For many students, feelings of safety and stability come from predictability, consistency, and structure, which are inherent in trauma-informed approaches like the BIST Model. Predictability builds trust, and trust is the root of healthy relationships.

BIST helps educators become more aware and intentional when addressing and responding to students who have experienced trauma. We’ve all seen educators who burn out because working with trauma can be exhausting – and trauma-informed models like BIST recognize this, which is why adult collaboration and support are key to success. While it makes sense that adults get angry and frustrated with certain students, it’s never going to work when we address behavior from that place.

Dr. Bruce Perry’s groundbreaking work integrates neurobiology and the impact of trauma, helping us to see how consistent, responsive, trauma-informed care can help young brains heal from traumatic events. Research shows us that childhood trauma can have a devastating impact on a child’s development, but that children’s brains are remarkably “neuroplastic,” meaning that they have the ability to change and evolve over time in response to life experiences. Perry also found that relational health – connectedness to family, community, and culture – is more predicative of one’s mental health than their history of adversity. “Connectedness has the power to counterbalance adversity,” writes Perry in his popular book, “What Happened to You?” Building relationships with children and outlasting their behaviors makes a difference and this work is so important.

What is one concrete piece of advice that you have for educators that could make a difference for their students tomorrow?

The most significant piece of advice I would give to educators is to begin to view student behavior as a missing skill. This mindset shift will help you be less emotionally reactive about the behavior and more hopeful that you can teach and change that behavior. The three missing skills that BIST refers to are:

I can have an overwhelming feeling and make good choices.

I can be okay when others are not okay.

I can do something when I don’t want to, or it is hard.

If educators are interested in learning more about trauma-informed care or the BIST model, what resources are available to them?

Those wishing to learn more about BIST can visit our website to find resources and training opportunities. Resources include classroom materials like handouts and posters, as well as educational books and manuals that cover a variety of topics. This February, I published my first book Cultivating Behavioral Change in K-12 Students: Team Based Interventions and Support Strategies which is the first comprehensive text about the BIST Model. Topics covered in the book include helping school staff develop a vision to increase the consistency of care for children, fostering family partnerships, increasing teaching time, and a wealth of practical strategies to successfully implement the BIST Model.

Additionally, the goal of BIST is to not only train teachers in the philosophy and practice, but also to support buildings as they implement strategies to help them problem solve when there are challenges and obstacles. Our BIST Consultants believe in this work and are walking alongside building leaders all the way.

References:

(1) Kilpatrick, D. G., Resnick, H. S., Milanak, M. E., Miller, M. W., Keyes, K. M., & Friedman, M. J. (2013). National estimates of exposure to traumatic events and PTSD prevalence using DSM‐IV and DSM‐5 criteria. Journal of traumatic stress, 26(5), 537-547.

Apr 18 GUEST POST: Interview with a Leader for Behavior Interventions in Trauma-Informed Pedagogy