Designing Teaching
That Actually Changes Behavior
How to figure out why the behavior happened, what to teach, and how to structure incentives that motivate students to engage.
Identifying Why The Behavior Happened
Start With Consequences, Some You’re Already Using
The easiest way to start using HEA is to take a consequence you're already giving and add teaching to it. Don't create a whole new consequence structure. Don't overhaul your entire classroom management system. Just pick one consequence you're already using and integrate teaching into it.
Here's how:
Pick your most common consequence. What consequence do you give most frequently? Detention? Loss of recess? Moving seats? Calls home? Start there. The consequence you're already giving most often is the best place to practice because you'll get multiple opportunities to refine your approach.
Identify when you'll teach. Teaching has to happen during the consequence, not after. So if you're using detention, teaching happens during detention. If you're using loss of recess, teaching occurs during the time the student would have had recess. If you're calling home, you're also setting up a time to talk with the student about what happened. The key is that teaching and consequence overlap—they don't happen sequentially.
Start with a simple teaching structure. You don't need a complex accountability project or a formal intervention on day one. Start with a conversation. When the student is serving their consequence, pull them aside and ask three questions: What happened? Why do you think it happened? What are you going to do differently next time? That's teaching. It's not sophisticated, but it's more than they were getting before, and it opens the door to more profound teaching if needed.
Add a basic incentive. The simplest incentive structure is this: if the student engages with the teaching and can articulate what they'll do differently, they get some control over the consequence. Maybe they serve half the detention instead of the full detention. Maybe they earn back the privilege they lost sooner than initially planned. The incentive doesn't have to be complicated—it just has to give students a reason to engage with the teaching rather than passively serve time.
Here's what this looks like in practice: You assign a student detention for talking during independent work. Instead of just having them sit silently for 30 minutes after school, you spend 10 minutes of that detention talking with them about what happened. You ask why they were talking, what need that was meeting, and what they could do differently next time. If they engage with that conversation and can explain what they're going to try differently, you let them leave 10 minutes early. They still served a consequence—they lost time. But they also learned something, and they had some control over how long the consequence lasted based on their effort.
That's HEA in its simplest form. You didn't create a new consequence. You just added teaching and incentive to the consequence you were already giving. And because teaching occurred during the consequence and the incentive was tied to engagement, all three components worked together rather than operating in isolation.
Match Teaching To The Underlying Cause
If you're not sure where to start, here are three quick wins that let you practice HEA without overhauling your entire approach:
Quick Win #1: Add a reflection conversation to detention. If you're already using detention, spend the first 5-10 minutes discussing with the student what happened. Don't lecture—ask questions. What happened? Why? What are you going to do differently? If the student engages and gives thoughtful answers, let them leave detention 5-10 minutes early. You've just integrated teaching and incentive into a consequence you were already using.
Quick Win #2: Turn "move your seat" into a teaching opportunity. When you move a student's seat as a consequence, don't just move them and walk away. Move them, then check in with them at the end of class or during a transition. Ask what was happening that led to the seat change and what they're going to do differently when they move back. If they can explain it, they earn the right to move back to their original seat sooner—maybe tomorrow instead of next week. Teaching happened, incentive was present, and consequence still occurred.
Quick Win #3: Add teaching to phone calls home. If you're calling a parent about a behavior issue, also set up a brief follow-up conversation with the student. After you've talked to the parent, pull the student aside and say, "I called home because of X. Let's talk about what happened and what you're going to do differently." If the student engages, you can tell the parent in your subsequent communication that the student worked on it with you. The consequence was the call home. The teaching was the conversation. The incentive was the student knowing that their effort would be communicated back to the parent.
These quick wins let you practice the core structure of HEA, Consequence + Teaching + Incentive, without requiring significant changes to what you're already doing. You're just adding layers to onsequences you're already comfortable giving. Once you've practiced with quick wins and you're comfortable with the basic structure, you can start scaling up. You can design more sophisticated teaching interventions. You can create more structured incentive systems. You can integrate HEA into larger consequences, such as in-school suspension or structured days. But you don't have to start there. Start small, build confidence, then scale.
Structuring Performance-Based Incentives
HEA isn't the right tool for every situation. It's designed for a specific type of behavior problem, and knowing when to use it—and when not to—will save you time and frustration.
Use HEA when the behavior violates operational expectations. These are behaviors that disrupt the learning environment or violate school/classroom rules but don't involve harming another person. Examples: talking during instruction, off-task behavior, not following procedures, skipping class, dress code violations, and disrupting transitions. These behaviors need accountability, but they're not about relationship harm—they're about students not meeting the expectations of how the classroom operates.
Don't use HEA when the behavior involves relationship harm. If a student disrespected you, got into a conflict with a peer, bullied someone, or damaged a relationship, that's not an operational violation—that's a harm that needs repair. Use Restorative Practices for relationship harm. HEA holds students accountable for breaking rules. Restorative Practices repair relationships that were damaged.
Use both when the behavior does both. Some behaviors violate operational expectations and harm relationships simultaneously. Fighting is a good example. It violates school rules (operational) and harms the relationship between the students involved (relational). Theft is another—it violates rules and damages trust. For behaviors like these, you need both HEA and Restorative Practices. Use HEA to address the rule violation and hold the student accountable for changing the behavior. Use Restorative Practices to repair the harm done to the relationship.
Here's the simplest way to think about it:
If the behavior is about "you're not following the rules," use HEA.
If the behavior is about "you hurt someone," use Restorative Practices. If it's both, use both.
And here's what HEA is not:
It's not therapy. If a student needs therapeutic support to address trauma, mental health issues, or deep psychological challenges, HEA isn't the answer.
Students who need therapy should get therapy—separately from the behavioral accountability you're providing through HEA.
HEA addresses behavioral skill-building within the school accountability context.
It's not designed to heal trauma or replace counseling.
Creating “Earn Back Time” Systems
Once you've practiced with quick wins and you're comfortable integrating teaching and incentive into the consequences you're already giving, you're ready to scale up. That means designing more intentional teaching interventions, creating structured incentive systems, and addressing challenges when students don't engage or when the approach isn't working. Page 2 of Navigator will walk you through designing teaching components that address the root cause of behavior and implementing performance-based incentives that motivate students to engage. Page 3 will cover troubleshooting—what to do when students game the system, when teaching isn't working, and when you need to adjust your approach.
But for now, your focus is simple:
Pick one consequence you're already giving,
add a teaching conversation to it,
and give students some control over the outcome based on their engagement.
That's your starting point. Everything else builds from there.
Quick Teaching Incentives for Common Behaviors
Once you've practiced with quick wins and you're comfortable integrating teaching and incentive into the consequences you're already giving, you're ready to scale up. That means designing more intentional teaching interventions, creating structured incentive systems, and addressing challenges when students don't engage or when the approach isn't working. Page 2 of Navigator will walk you through designing teaching components that address the root cause of behavior and implementing performance-based incentives that motivate students to engage. Page 3 will cover troubleshooting—what to do when students game the system, when teaching isn't working, and when you need to adjust your approach.
But for now, your focus is simple:
Pick one consequence you're already giving,
add a teaching conversation to it,
and give students some control over the outcome based on their engagement.
That's your starting point. Everything else builds from there.
What Happens Next
You now know how to identify the reasons behavior is occurring, design teaching that addresses the root cause, and structure incentives that motivate students to engage with that teaching. The next challenge is what to do when it doesn't work—when students game the system, when teaching isn't producing change, and when you need to adjust your approach or escalate to additional support. Page 3 of Navigator will walk you through troubleshooting common implementation challenges, monitoring whether HEA is actually working, and knowing when to refine your approach versus when to bring in additional resources.
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