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What If We Stopped Asking, “How Do We Stop This Behavior?”
There is a question I have heard many times in my years as a parent, educator, and advocate: “How do we stop this behavior?” It is an understandable question. When a child is screaming, running from a classroom, hitting, refusing to participate, throwing things, or otherwise struggling to regulate, adults need to respond. Teachers have…
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Making Restraint and Seclusion Data Accessible: Introducing Our New Data Explorer
How often are children being physically restrained or secluded in your school district? Which schools report the most incidents? Who is being subjected to these practices, and what questions should we be asking about the numbers? Families, educators, advocates, and policymakers need access to this information. But finding it, understanding it, and using it should…
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What Happened When I Started Letting My Students Track My Goals, Too
I see a lot of special education teachers talk about how difficult it can be to track IEP goals consistently, collect meaningful data, and keep students motivated to actually work toward those goals. As SPED teachers, we are balancing instruction, accommodations, progress monitoring, documentation, meetings, family communication, behavior and regulation needs, and everything else that…
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What Are Your State’s Laws on Physical Restraint and Seclusion?
What does your state allow when it comes to physically restraining or secluding a child at school? What practices are prohibited? When must a school notify a parent, and what information must be documented after an incident? These are questions families should be able to answer without spending hours searching government websites and trying to…
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How PBIS Affected My Internalized Echolalia and Social Status Long-Term
I was the kid who won. Constantly. I was the kid who loved the reward system, figured out exactly how it worked, and became incredibly successful within it. If there was a sticker chart, I wanted the stickers. If there were points, I wanted the points. If there was praise, recognition, a prize, or some…
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The Door Opened but the Trauma Followed: My Life After Restraint, Seclusion and Segregation
My name is Chris Hall. I am an autistic adult from Braintree, Massachusetts. Over the years, I have worked with computers, bicycles, and accessible transportation while trying to create a life and a way of working that fit my abilities. Chris Hall with two RadBurro cargo e-bikes used for transportation, mobile repair work, and community…
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What My Students Taught Me About Disability
When people find out that I am an autistic ADHD special education teacher, one of the first assumptions I hear is that I must automatically understand all my autistic ADHD students. I understand why people think that. I have lived the experience of being autistic and ADHD. I know what it is like to be…
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The Child Welfare Economy: How Group Homes, Behavioral Management, and the Medical Model Can Perpetuate Intergenerational Trauma
Across North America, child welfare systems have increasingly relied on group homes, residential treatment programs, and congregate care settings to manage children and youth who present with complex behavioral, emotional, and mental health challenges. These systems are often justified as necessary responses to trauma, mental illness, aggression, substance use, and placement instability. Yet a growing…
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What Happens After the Restraint? The Part We Rarely Talk About
I have spent a lot of time thinking about what happens before a restraint. What happened in the minutes leading up to it? What did the student signal? What changed in the environment? What demands were placed on them? What did the adults do? What warning signs did we miss? But the more I think…
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What Happens Before the Restraint? The 10 Minutes We Keep Ignoring
When a student is placed in a restraint or secluded, the incident report often begins at the moment the crisis becomes impossible for adults to ignore. The student “became aggressive.” The student “refused to comply.” The student “escalated.” The student “became a danger to self or others.” Then comes the intervention: staff responded, the student…
