The 3 Cs of Behavior Shaping

Over the years of working with students, and especially students with challenging behavior, I have noticed that there are 3 things that need to be part of any plan to change a student’s or even a classroom’s behavior. Conveniently, I figured out how to make them all start with C, so the 3 Cs are:

• Clear expectations they can do:
  • A student must understand and be able to do what is expected of them. If they don’t understand it or can’t actually do it, there will be no change.
  • Sometimes our expectations must adjust to something they can do and as the student experiences success or gains skills, we can raise our expectations.
• Consequences that are meaningful:
  • Not all students respond the same to positive or negative ways we respond to their behavior.
  • What we do doesn’t have to be big, expensive or take a lot of our energy either. Most important is doing what is meaningful to them in responding to their behavior.
• Consistency:
  • If a student believes you will do what you say when you say it, then they buy into change.
  • Often it takes experiencing the positive or negative consequence with consistency for the student to buy in.
  • Consistency is one of the hardest parts to do because it’s the part that requires the most action and commitment from us. 

Most of these may seem pretty obvious when spelled out this way, but if we’re frustrated because what we are doing isn’t working, I can bet that one of these are missing from the plan or they aren’t working in the way we thought it would. 

The great thing is that we can look at what we’re doing in the framework of the 3 Cs and adjust as needed to get the outcome we’re looking for so our students can succeed.