Students who avoid or refuse work. We've all had them, but what do we do about it?
Work refusal is one of the most common behaviors we see in classrooms. From students who destroy work, passively refuse or engage in other intense behaviors to avoid work all together us teachers find ourselves so often ripping our hair out trying to get a student to do work. But why do we see this behavior so often and why is it so frustrating?
Before we talk about strategies, let's talk a little deeper about what maintains work refusal. Work refusal can serve a variety of functions for students or can be prevalent based on external factors happening in a student's life. Work refusal can also get personal for us as teachers. We spend countless hours creating fun, engaging lesson plans for a student just to refuse to do it. This creates intense bouts of frustration for us as teachers, which ultimately doesn't make a student work any harder for us. It's important to recognize that just as we have feelings and emotions, so do our students. This blog focuses on students who may be habitually refusing work or refusing so much work that it is impacting their learning or that of others. There will be many days our students won't walk through our doors at 100%. Let's be honest, we don't always walk through our doors at 100%. We have to be ok with that and give students the grace and support they need. Using your best judgement on the days students may just need a 'break' is best practice for supporting all learners in your classroom environment.
So if i'm in a classroom and a student is actively refusing to work, what can I do? What strategies can I use? Read below the 10 strategies I have learned through the years that have helped me engage the students who avoid work the most:
Does this student need an evaluation? It's important to remember that we as teachers can be the biggest advocate for our students who need it the most. If this is a student who is habitually refusing to complete work and it is impacting their learning or manifesting into behaviors that are impacting the learning of others, it may be time to refer the student for a special education evaluation or a functional behavioral assessment (FBA). Talk with your principal, the previous teacher, school psychologist, the child's family, etc. Do other people have similar concerns? Is this a continual pattern of behavior? Are there other active steps that need to be done before a student is referred for an evaluation? Would it be helpful if we knew the function of the behavior? Investigate that process and advocate for that student. Sometimes an evaluation is necessary to understand the deeper reason for work refusal.
Avoid assumptions: So often we see a student refusing to do work and we create negative assumptions to fill the void of what actually may be impacting their work performance. "They are just being lazy. They are just trying to see what they can get away with. They will learn in my class they can't get away with this". We need to remove ourselves from always assuming the notion that students are actively avoiding work just because they don't want to do it. Think about Ross Greene's work. 'Kids do well if they can.' What instead of assuming that the child won't do work, we assume they can't do work. They have some unmet need, lagging skill, barrier or factor contributing to their lack of work performance. When we avoid negative assumptions, we can dig deeper into thinking holistically about skill deficits that may contribute to the lack of work completion. Does this student need more accommodations? Do they need a break in between classes? Are they requiring more small group practice time? Negative assumptions only allow us to keep admiring the problem, and not develop solutions.
Meet the student where they are: When students don't feel work is attainable, they aren't going to do it. Work at attempting to find the level the student is successful. How can you build behavioral momentum and scaffold learning off of that? Meet the student where they are at. Find areas and times in the classroom where they feel successful. Use the success to encourage them to build momentum and continue to work on things that are slightly harder. Start with smaller, easier tasks and work towards harder ones. So often for our students work can be really overwhelming and hard for them even with adult help. Especially students with learning disabilities or emotional dysregulation issues that impact their ability to process and obtain new information. Students are more likely to engage when they can find moments of success in their work.
Avoid the power struggle: Too often we find ourselves in the situation where a student tells us and the rest of the class "i'm not doing this stupid work" and makes it known they are going to actively avoid the work. What does our instinct tell us to do? We tell them they are going to do the work. 9 times out of 10, the student wins this struggle every time. Avoid the power struggle, avoid the conflict, avoid the confrontation. When a student is actively avoiding work and making it known that they are avoiding work with outward defiance, you need to give you and the student space and time. Respond to their behaviors in a way that reduces conflict by pulling them in the hallway to talk to them, talking with them after class, wait to address the situation until feelings have de-escalated, listen/validate and restate expectations. Avoid reacting with intense emotions or telling the student that they are going to be doing the work. Engaging in a power struggle may be inadvertently reinforcing a student's function of their behavior.
Problem solve with the student: Too often when building behavior plans for students, we fail to include the student in that behavior plan. What do I mean by that? We build plans FOR students not WITH students. If you have a student actively avoiding work, set up a 1:1 meeting with them or with them and their family. Use the meeting as a way to show the student you support them and want to help develop solutions to help them engage in work. Use the meeting to listen to them and be open-minded about things they suggest may help or improve their work engagement. What systems do they need to motivate them? How do you know if they need help or don't understand something? How can you structure the classroom so they are more likely to feel successful? Family, student and teacher collaboration can be key to developing positive plans for students.
What accommodations or supports does this student need to feel successful? If we are struggling getting a student to engage in any work, we have to at least get them to engage in some work. Think strategically about what accommodations may help the student be more successful? What are the learning or emotional regulation deficits that may be hindering their ability to perform? Does the student need extended time on assignments? Do they need an intensive reading intervention group 3 times a week? Do they need a reduced number of problems on math homework? Do they need a visual schedule of their reading block? Do they need a checklist with all their assignments? This goes back to avoiding negative assumptions, and looking at the child from a skill deficit approach. What accommodations may they need that could mitigate the negative impact of the skill deficit?
Incentive system: Let's be honest, we all work for things. For many of our students work avoidance can be seen as a skill and motivation deficit. It's really hard to get motivated to do a 90 minute reading block when you don't feel successful or feel you have the skills to engage in the reading block. Work with the student and develop a positive incentive system to get them motivated to want to engage. Whether it is a behavior chart with pre-determined expectations, a token board, checking off their to-do list to earn rewards/reinforcement or showing appropriate behavior during work periods. An incentive system can be a game changer for some of our students. Interview the student, ask them what goals they want to set for themselves and what they want to earn for those goals. Allow the student to work through setting their own personal goals and developing buy in for achieving those goals.
Pre-determined, logical consequences: Along with avoiding power struggles, we also want to avoid power struggles that arise from administering consequences. I'm sure you are shocked to see a behavior teacher talking about consequences, right? Well, I'm a firm believer that there are consequences (both positive and negative) to every action or behavior. The key is ensuring the consequences are logical and pre-determined. If a student is refusing to complete work in class they may have to finish it during free time in the classroom or it goes home for homework. It's important we outline positive pathways to get students to engage in work (ex: incentives, accommodations, etc.), but also outline negative pathways for not engaging in work (ex: loss of free time, work sent home, etc.). Logical consequences should make sense for the negative behavior the student engages in. Giving a student an out of school suspension for work refusal wouldn't be a logical consequence. Avoid threatening language such as 'if you don't (insert target behavior) then (insert consequence). Utilize positive language with a lack of reinforcement as the consequence. 'If we get through our reading block, then we can use the last 8 minutes for a game'. Consequences shouldn't be a surprise, consequences should be pre-determined and hold logic to the maladaptive behavior.
Reflect: Sometimes when we encounter students who struggle to engage in work we focus so much of our time and energy on the behaviors we want to see change from the student's perspective, but we often don't think about what behaviors need to change from ourselves that would elicit a positive change for the student? Do I need to restructure my learning block? Do I need to develop more time for breaks or regulation in my classroom? Do I need to build in more time to work with this student directly? Do I need to ensure my positive interactions with this student always outweigh the negatives? So often we ask our students to adhere to our systems, but for many of our neurodivergent students, learning disabled or student with emotional and behavioral disabilities we have to create systems that may help mitigate the impact of their disability on their work engagement. Our own self-reflection is key to collaboration.
Praise the process, not just the outcome: It's important that as students move to make changes to engage in more positive behaviors towards work engagement, we have to praise them for that. Withholding praise until the student has reached the desired outcome, won't make the student reach the desired outcome any quicker or faster. What it tells the student is that we only give them positive praise and attention when they have adhered to our expectations, not the process it takes to meet those expectations. And for many of our students, the process to the expectation is twice as hard as the expectation. Praise students in the process to higher work engagement.
