The Replacement Skills Approach: Teaching Behavior Instead Of Managing It

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Discipline has quietly become one of the most misunderstood parts of school. In a lot of buildings, it’s the thing most educators dread messing with. And yet, discipline should be one of the most human parts of school. We’re interacting with someone who has something going on or is actively struggling. But somehow, it ends up feeling dehumanizing for everyone involved.

When I first transitioned from youth work to education, I felt like I’d walked into a different universe. In residential care, when a kid acted out, we’d try to understand why the behavior happened, figure out why they may have committed past crimes or large behaviors, and diagnose whether the student had the skills to be successful. Then we would not just identify but actually teach and measure the development of the skills before they would graduate and level up back into reintegration into the community. To be successful and have some of the lowest recidivism rates across the state of Indiana, we worked in systems, not silos.

But in schools, discipline was often more about control, compliance, and consequences. A kid yells in class? Send them out. A kid shuts down? Write them up. It was fast. It was standardized. And it almost never seemed to change behavior long-term when a student may have had a missing skill to be successful.

Over the last seven years working in some of the most complex schools across most states in the US and working in 30+ countries, I became obsessed with one question: What actually makes discipline work? I noticed small sets of patterns that are showing up across schools, communities, and workplaces. Different adults and kids, different locations and cultures, but the same breakdowns.

That’s when my book, The Science of Discipline, really started to take shape. In the book, I focus on the need for buildings to have consistency in discipline practices, accountability linked with repair and skill building, and progressive consequences from the classroom to the school administration. Student behavior changes with a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and schools succeed when they focus on creating a culture of belonging in their classroom environments. This book weaves my personal lived experiences from childhood through 17 years in education, teaching a methodology that centers human connectedness, aligns with youth development, builds accountability, and leads to connected school communities.

One of the biggest discoveries was this: Most common misbehaviors in schools are typically the result of skill gaps, not character flaws. When we look at behavior this way, it changes everything. Instead of asking “How do I stop this?” we start asking “What skill is this student potentially missing, and how do I teach it?”

What Are Replacement Skills?

The shift I’m talking about is simple: Instead of simply punishing negative behavior, we teach the skill that was missing in that moment that caused harm and then guide the student to take actionable steps towards repair. When a student yells out, shuts down, skips class, or explodes, that behavior is information. It’s telling us something didn’t go well — sometimes not morally, but skillfully. It also caused harm that needs to be repaired. But if a student doesn’t know how to regulate frustration, ask for help, manage time, or even how to repair harm, what will success look like for them?

Think about it like this: If a student can’t read, we don’t assign detention until they magically decode words. We teach phonics. Behavior works the same way. If a student interrupts constantly, maybe the replacement skill is learning how to wait and enter a conversation. If they walk out of class, there needs to be a logical consequence and then teaching a skill like how to ask for a break appropriately. If they lie, maybe it’s learning how to own a mistake safely and understanding what emotions they had that led them to lying.

The Strategy in Action

To illustrate how this works, I’ll walk you through four common scenarios.

Scenario 1: The Student Who Can’t Stop Talking

A student is talking while the teacher is giving directions. The missing skill here is often impulse control and patience — the ability to hold a thought and wait for the right moment to share it.

The standard redirect is “stop talking.” But that only tells the student what not to do. The replacement skill approach teaches them what to do instead. Here’s how to teach it:

First, create a silent signal between you and the student. This can be something private, like a light tap on your own shoulder or a specific hand gesture, a nonverbal cue that says “I see you, and I need you to hold that thought” without calling them out in front of peers. A verbal redirection with a student who is sensitive to correction can sometimes feel oppositional and escalate the situation. A silent signal avoids that entirely.

Second, designate a talking buddy. Pair the student with a peer for focused discussions during appropriate times, like group work, transitions, or break periods. This gives them a structured outlet for the social energy driving the behavior, rather than just trying to suppress it.

Third, build in a designated share time. Tell the student: “If you have something to say during my instruction, jot it on a sticky note and I’ll give you time to share in two minutes.” This teaches the actual cognitive skill of holding a thought, which is an executive functioning skill a lot of students haven’t developed yet.

When you see that student raising their hand or writing on the sticky note instead of blurting out, reinforce it immediately: “Thanks for being patient and writing that down. Let’s hear your thought now.” That positive feedback will help the new behavior stick.

Scenario 2: The Student Who Shuts Down

A student refuses to work in class. They put their head down. The instinct is to redirect with “Get your head up” or “You need to start working.” But the skill gap here is usually how to ask for help or communicate needs. Instead of interpreting this as the student choosing defiance, we can recognize that they’re stuck and don’t know how to get unstuck.

Start by approaching with curiosity instead of correction. At your desk or quietly next to them, you can say: “If you’re stuck on something, if you show me where you’re stuck at, I’d like to help.” This models the exact language you want them to eventually use on their own.

Then give them a concrete scaffold. Teach them sentence stems they can use when they feel stuck: “I don’t understand the part where___” or “I need help with___” or even just “Can I have a minute?” Post these on the wall, put them on a small card on their desk, or have them write their own version in their notebook. The goal is to move them from shutting down to communicating, even if the communication is minimal at first. For an in-depth look at how to teach this skill, see how Connie Hamilton does it here. 

You can also create a signal system for the whole class so asking for help doesn’t feel so risky. Something as simple as a colored cup system — green means “I’m good,” yellow means “I’m slowing down,” red means “I’m stuck.” This normalizes the need for help across the room, which makes it safer for the student who is most likely to shut down.

When that student eventually raises a hand or uses the signal or says “I’m stuck here,” respond immediately and warmly. You’re reinforcing that asking for help actually works, which replaces the learned behavior that shutting down is the only option.

Scenario 3: The Student Who is Violent 

A student gets frustrated and quickly raises their voice and argues with the teacher in front of the class, then walks out after pushing over a chair. In this situation, we found that the missing skill is self-regulation — specifically, the ability to notice when their emotional state is shifting and use a strategy before it takes over. 

Violent, largely disruptive, and disrespectful behavior needs this replacement skill to be first developed outside of the classroom, at a time after the harm has taken place.  As a school administrator, I taught students a simple cycle to guide real self-regulation in action:

Trigger → Cue → Coping Skill → Act → Evaluate

With self regulation as the skill we need to develop, the student will need the ability to recognize where they are in their cycle and intervene with this skill early, before an escalation takes over.

Trigger processing: What usually sets you off?

Cue processing: What does your body feel like when it starts building?

Act processing: What happens when you hit your “crash out”? (or peak escalation) What can you do instead when you get upset? 

Evaluation processing: How do you know you’re starting to come back down? What does success look like for you after ___? 

Once students understand the cycle, you can help them build their own coping skill. This skill can be developed when the student is working with a school administrator or a school counselor. It’s helpful to go over a few different types of coping skills but have them commit to just one for a set time period of at least 2 weeks. The favorite three I see students finding the most successful for them are  deep breathing, pleasant imagery, and giving them a reminder to visualize. 

Every student should be able to say:
“When I feel ___ , I do____.”

It’s also a priority to teach regulation in the calm, not the chaos. If the first time a kid tries deep breathing is during a meltdown, it’s not going to work. What’s more effective is building micro-routines into every day, like right before transitioning to a new topic in class, you have the entire class follow along for a 1-minute mindfulness technique with deep breathing, so students have practiced these skills before they need them. This takes approximately sixty seconds and it trains the brain to shift from reactive to reflective. Regular practice of coping skills also trains the brain to better manage our stress responses. 

Scenario 4: The Student Who Is Always Late

A student is chronically tardy. The standard response is a consequence: detention, a mark on the record, a call home. But the skill gap here is often time management and transition planning — skills that many students, especially those with ADHD or executive functioning challenges, genuinely struggle with.

Instead of just punishing the lateness, teach the skill. Work with the student to set up a personal alarm system: (for secondary students who are allowed to have phone in the hallways) a phone reminder that goes off one minute before they need to quickly head toward your class, or a buddy who gives them a heads-up in the hallway. This is a concrete, low-effort tool that directly addresses the skill gap.

You can also have them map their transition. Where are they coming from? What’s slowing them down — a locker stop, a bathroom break, a social conversation? Once you identify the bottleneck together, build a micro-plan: “Hit your locker between second and third period instead of before mine, and that gives you an extra three minutes.” This teaches planning and sequencing, which are executive functioning skills they’ll use for the rest of their lives.

Then implement a tardiness tracker where improvement gets recognized. Instead of only logging when they’re late, track the streak of on-time arrivals. When they hit five in a row, acknowledge it: “Five days on time. The plan is working.” 

When Classroom Strategies Aren’t Enough

I know the pushback: “What happens when I do all this and it still doesn’t work?” That’s a fair question, and I’ve heard it from hundreds of teachers across the country.

In the book, I talk about classroom redirections and replacement skill teaching as just step one. What works best in schools is having a clear, consistent, actionable discipline plan that shows progressively tiered consequences and continues to teach replacement skills outside of the classroom. If the teacher uses these strategies and the behavior persists, the question becomes: How do we continue to reinforce and teach those same skills through systems of support with adults beyond the classroom, like counselors, administrators, and mentors who are aligned on the same approach?

That’s a system conversation, and it matters. But what happens in the classroom every day between one teacher and one student is the foundation, and it’s a great place for individual teachers to start.

Two Prerequisites for Making This Approach Work

Schools are complex ecosystems, and we need to make sure our ecosystem is ready for new approaches that can be used consistently. There are two main prerequisites for teaching replacement skills effectively.

Separate the Behavior from the Identity

Discipline too often labels the student instead of addressing the behavior. Disrespectful. Defiant. Lazy. But behavior is a tool for getting a need met, even if it’s misbehavior. When we respond to identity instead of skill, kids internalize the label and stop seeing a reason to change. When we respond to the skill gap, they internalize growth. That difference determines whether a student sees themselves as broken or growing, especially after misbehavior. And growing helps them become more open to understanding how their behaviors affect others.

Regulate Before You Reason

You can’t teach a replacement skill to a dysregulated brain. When a student is flooded with emotion, their processing brain is offline. Regulation has to come first. That might look like a calm voice, a break from the interaction, or a specific breathing strategy — but it has to happen before the teaching. 

And we also need to consider our own regulation. As Dr. Bruce Perry says, “A dysregulated adult can never regulate a dysregulated child.” When we approach the student calm and grounded, we’re already co-regulating with them through our presence, modeling the very skill we want them to learn.

Conclusion

Discipline doesn’t have to be something we dread. It is meant to teach and develop someone. We can humanize the process by teaching the skills the student lacks instead of using fear to punish the behavior we don’t want to see. When we take opportunities to develop a skill in the discipline process, or to seek to understand what a behavior is communicating to us, we break a broken cycle. We see a student for what they need instead of just responding like an unalive algorithm. 

You can feel it when you walk into a school that has consistent logical tiered discipline, teaches empathy, follows a framework for forgiveness, and focuses on students and educators alike feeling a sense of belonging. Schools train society at scale, 50 million kids per year are spending 12 years of their lives in them, so we should ask ourselves, what type of citizens do we want in our future society?