Six to Eight Weeks Later

-by Dr. Tim Grivois, Executive Director

The most important data in behavior support planning is our teachers’ lived experience.

Teachers already mentally track patterns in real time: when a behavior happens, what seems to trigger it, what helps, what makes it worse, and what strategies have already been tried. They are living the data out loud every day, while trying to teach 20 to 30 other students at the same time.

And then, when they finally bring that lived data to a behavior support team meeting, the first response is often procedural: “Collect 6 to 8 weeks of data and come back.”

This vignette is a composite. It’s not about one teacher, one student, or one school. It’s about a system design flaw that delays support for the exact students who need it most.

A vignette: Six to eight weeks later

Thomas is a third-grade student who frequently runs out of the classroom when the demands of the moment exceed what his nervous system can handle. The teacher, Mr. Fernandez, notices that this usually happens during whole-group instruction or when he corrects Thomas’ behavior. Some days are better than others, especially when Thomas finishes his snack and mostly has activities that he knows how to do. Nevertheless, Mr. Fernandez knows that Thomas is capable of higher levels of learning and wants to keep expectations for learning high. However, that can’t really happen if Thomas is always leaving when the learning gets tough. 

Just yesterday morning during a science lesson, Mr. Fernandez turned to write a sentence frame on the whiteboard. He could hear Thomas’ chair scrape fast against the tile, but by the time he turned around, Thomas was already out the door, his footsteps disappearing down the hallway.

Mr. Fernandez has already tried a few good strategies. For example, if Thomas doesn’t come to the carpet for read aloud, he doesn’t command him to sit on the carpet. Instead, he involves Thomas in the story and class conversation from wherever Thomas is. Also, Thomas participates in CICO and seems to have a good relationship with his CICO coach. Mr. Fernandez values the opportunity to give small doses of positive coaching throughout the day, and Thomas seems to smile when he gets positive recognition. However, anytime Mr. Fernandez presents anything that looks like a demand, especially if it’s for an academic task that Thomas doesn’t think he can do very well, Thomas’ first reaction is to run away before he can even try.

Mr. Fernandez talks with his principal, Ms. Shah. He describes the situation he’s been working with since August and asks if he can attend the next Behavior Support Team meeting. Ms. Shah asks, “What relationship-building strategies have you tried?” Mr. Fernandez is unsure how to respond to the question because he cares deeply about all his students. He’s not here to complain—he’s here to build a better classroom for Thomas and the rest of his students.

“Yes. I’ve worked hard on that. I’m warm with him, I check in with him, and I make sure he knows I’m in his corner. He likes me, and I like him too. I’ll definitely keep working to strengthen that relationship, but I also want Thomas to be a successful learner and a good member of our classroom community. Is this something we could bring to the Behavior Support Team meeting?”

“Well, we could certainly add Thomas to the list. The next meeting is in three weeks. In the meantime, here’s a ‘Request for Assistance’ form that the team will need to see.”

Mr. Fernandez thanked Ms. Shah and took the Request for Assistance form back to his classroom. The form was more of a dense packet that asked for a lot of generic information that everyone already had access to. There were also dozens of highly sensitive questions about family trauma that he neither knew the answer to nor felt were appropriate to ask Thomas’ family. The main problem with the form, however, is that it didn’t ask for any information or context that would allow him to describe the problem, what solutions he’s already tried, and how most of his solutions worked, just not enough to keep him in the classroom. He thought wryly, “At least I have three weeks to finish the packet before the next Behavior Support Team meeting.”

Three weeks later, Mr. Fernandez comes to the Behavior Support Team meeting. He shared the Request for Assistance form with the team a week prior, and filled out as much as he could. The principal was there as well as the school social worker, a counselor, and a special education teacher. The counselor who was facilitating the meeting asked Mr. Fernandez to talk about Thomas and describe what brought him to the meeting. Of course, everyone at the table had found Thomas alone in the hallway or hiding in a place he wasn’t supposed to be many times, but Mr. Fernandez went ahead and explained everything again, the same way he’d already explained to Principal Shah, documented on the Request for Assistance Form, and now to the Behavior Support Team who met once a month for 40 minutes before school. He could feel the clock running, and had just used half of the meeting time explaining something they all already knew.

After Mr. Fernandez finished, the counselor said, “It sounds like Thomas needs more support than what you’re doing in class, and CICO isn’t enough. Before we can design a plan, we’ll need 6-8 weeks of frequency data on elopement. Then we can revisit and determine next steps.”

Mr. Fernandez nodded, already thinking about the six to eight weeks of learning Thomas would undoubtedly miss.

What the system accidentally teaches

If you’ve worked in schools, this probably felt familiar.

And that’s the point.

Nobody in this vignette is a villain. Everyone is trying to do the “right thing.” But the system design is flawed, and the flaw is predictable: we confuse documentation with understanding, and compliance with support.

In too many schools, behavior support teams unintentionally send this message to teachers:

“We’re not ready to help yet. First, prove it.”

That’s what six to eight weeks of tally data becomes in practice. Not information, but permission.

And in the meantime, Thomas keeps running.

He keeps missing instruction. Adults keep chasing him into hallways. The class keeps getting interrupted. The teacher keeps carrying the emotional weight of a situation that has become unsafe, unsustainable, and unfair for everyone involved, especially the student.

Yes, we need data. Strong teams use data.

But we need to name what’s happening when a teacher comes to a team meeting with months of observation, real patterns, and multiple strategies already tried, and the first response is, “Come back later with more paperwork.”

That’s not a behavior plan. That’s a delay plan.

A better starting point

A healthier process doesn’t treat teacher insights as a story that needs to be proven. It treats those insights as valid functional information and starts support immediately while continuing to learn more.

So here are the questions I believe teams should be asking instead:

• What patterns are already clear based on teacher observation?
• What has been tried, and what happened?
• What immediate support can we put in place this week to reduce elopement risk?
• What can we adjust in the environment so that expectations stay high and the demands feel doable?
• How can we make the classroom more predictable, emotionally safe, and accessible for this student?

Because the goal of a behavior support team isn’t to produce perfect paperwork.

The goal is to help sooner than later. We can build systems that care while the data catches up.