7 Phases of Acting Out Behavior Scenario

In 4th period math class Charlie reacted to two students talking during independent math
practice. Below I have identified the 7 phases of acting out behavior and described what
happened during each phase.

Calm: Charlie was sitting in math class doing independent practice following teacher instruction.
He began working quietly.

Trigger: During his independent work, Charlie was triggered by another student talking with a
neighbor. The conversation was near him and led to the agitation phase. This distraction was
identified as the trigger.

Agitation: After Charlie was triggered by his neighbors talking, he began to bite his nails and
seemed to lose focus of his independent work. I could see the frustration on his face and he
seemed to get tense after the trigger.

Acceleration: Charlies behavior accelerated and he began to verbalize his frustrations toward
the students who were talking. He told them to shut up, more quietly at first. When the two
students responded with no, and chuckled, Charlie became even more agitated. He continued
to yell at the students to shut up.

Peak: Charlies behavior reached its peak when he started to punch and kick his desk. He did not
appear to be a threat to the other students. Charlie was cursing and still yelling while he was in
his peak phase.

De-escalation: Once Charlie decided he wanted to calm down, he went in the corner and sat
down in the bean bag with a math picture book. He began to read and seemed to be settling down
from what had just occurred. His breathing normalized and he appeared to get less tense.

Recovery: After Charlie had recovered from his reaction, I decided to discuss the situation with
him at a later time. I chose to get the class focused on the independent work again, hoping to
draw attention away from the reaction that just occurred. I gave Charlie the option to either
continue reading his math book or to begin working on the independent work. He chose to read
more until he was ready to practice the math problems. Shortly after, Charlie returned to his
work and completed the math practice. I talked to him later about his reaction and how to
approach agitation in the future by giving some options of how to settle down.