Job Description: Teacher – Behavior Support Classroom for Intermediate Grades
Position Summary
The Behavior Support Classroom teacher provides specialized instructional, emotional, and behavioral support to students with significant social-emotional and behavioral challenges. Working under the direct supervision of the principal, this role focuses on creating a highly structured, safe, and positive environment designed to teach self-regulation, improve social skills, and reduce crisis behaviors. The teacher plays a pivotal role in implementing Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs) and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), when applicable, to help students successfully access their education.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Behavioral Support & Crisis Intervention
- Implement BIPs: Execute student-specific Behavior Intervention Plans, utilizing approved proactive and positive behavior support strategies.
- De-escalation: Identify early behavioral triggers and utilize verbal de-escalation techniques to defuse emotional outbursts or crisis situations.
- Crisis Management: Respond calmly and firmly during physical or verbal crises, using school-approved safety and physical intervention protocols (e.g., CPI or Safety-Care) only when a student poses a danger to themselves or others.
- Teach Self-Regulation: Guide students through coping mechanisms, sensory breaks, and self-soothing techniques to promote emotional recovery and independence.
- Reinforce Expectations: Consistently apply the classroom's point sheets, token economies, or leveled behavioral reward systems.
Instructional Assistance
- Academic Modifications: Deliver academic lessons and accommodate materials under the direction of the principal.
- Small-Group Delivery: Lead individual or small-group instruction to reinforce core academic concepts and behavioral goals.
- Social Skills Coaching: Actively model and teach positive peer interactions, conflict resolution, and appropriate communication.
Data Collection & Documentation
- Track Behavior Metrics: Maintain objective, meticulous daily records of student behavior, tracking specific targets like frequency, duration, and triggers.
- Academic Progress: Help monitor and document progress toward specific academic goals and functional IEP goals (when applicable).
- Incident Reporting: Assist in compiling detailed incident reports following physical restraints, de-escalation events, or severe behavioral disruptions.
Classroom & Safety Management
- Safe Supervision: Maintain constant visual supervision of students in the classroom, during hallway transitions, lunch, and recreational periods.
- Environment Maintenance: Assist in organizing a predictable, tidy, and low-stimulus classroom environment that minimizes sensory overload.
Qualifications & Requirements
- Education: Undergraduate degree in education with K-6 licensure OR Special Education licensure
- Certifications: Ability to obtain and maintain valid certification in crisis intervention
- Experience: Experience working with youth experiencing emotional disturbances, trauma, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or severe behavioral difficulties is highly preferred.
Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Emotional Resilience: Ability to maintain professional boundaries and remain calm, objective, and empathetic under stressful or provocative conditions.
- Communication: Exceptional verbal communication skills to effectively collaborate with the classroom team and de-escalate students.
- Flexibility: High adaptability to rapidly changing classroom dynamics and fluid shifting between academic and behavioral management modes.
Physical Requirements
- Must be physically capable of standing, walking, crouching, kneeling, and bending for extended periods.
- Must have the physical stamina and capacity to safely implement physical crisis intervention protocols, which may include lifting, moving, or restraining students according to approved policy.