Behavior Intervention Plans are designed to facilitate learning for students with behavioral challenges. Through careful, individualized assessment, these plans are built specifically for the needs of the student.

As a paraprofessional, you are not involved with crafting a BIP. Probably, you're not the one parents go to with complaints, concerns, and recommendations. Ultimately, though, you're on the front lines working, sometimes even more closely with BIP students than their primary teachers.

In this article, we explain what BIPs are, how they influence your approach to education, and why your role as a paraprofessional is core to the process.

What is a Behavior Intervention Plan?

BIPs are formal documents. They outline strategies designed to modify difficult student behaviors, particularly behaviors that interfere with the child's ability to learn. The standard for assessing whether or not a BIP is necessary is rooted in:

• Severity of a behavior

• Persistence of a behavior

• Unsafety of a behavior

BIPs are a federal requirement. Often, they are components of a larger Individualized Education Plan, or IEP. 

These plans are shaped by Functional Behavioral Assessments, or FBAs. Together, this educational alphabet soup helps students with difficult or problematic behaviors comply with academic expectations.

The Four Elements of Behavior

In the context of BIPs, there are four recognized categories of behavior. These include:

• Escape / Avoidance: The student behaves in a way to get out of a situation that is making them uncomfortable or frustrated. For example, if a student tears up a math test that they didn't study for, they're demonstrating avoidance behavior.

• Attention-Seeking: The student is looking for attention, even if it means causing trouble to get it. A good example is a student who disrupts regularly with rude or irrelevant comments.

• Sensory Stimulation: The behavior feels good. Sensory-motivated actions manifest as tics. For example, rocking in the chair, chewing on their shirt, humming, whistling, etc.

• Access to Tangibles: The student wants something. They grab an item from a classmate, whine for extra snacks or food at lunch, or refuse to transition from an activity they enjoy into one that they are not as fond of.

Understanding the motivation behind a behavior can inform the way you as a paraprofessional, respond to the actions of difficult students.

Where Paraprofessionals Come In

BIPs are designed by:

• School psychologists

• Administrators

• Special educators

As a paraprofessional, in this case, and in most others, your role is to implement the plan. You are legally obligated to follow what is written as exactly as possible.

 You might have this obligation presented to you with the phrase “Implementation Fidelity”. 

This means that you maintain consistency even in situations where it feels awkward or, by your estimation, counterintuitive to the needs of the student.

The Importance of Compliance

There are a few important things to understand about Implementation Fidelity: 

• It’s a requirement of data collection. Most educators do not assume that they have developed a flawless BIP right from the start. These plans are often modified—but only in response to convincing data. You can’t gather accurate intelligence without first trying the plan as it is written. Without Implementation Fidelity, the data set is corrupt. 

• Results are not immediate.  In the same way a student won’t turn their grades around after just two or three sessions with a tutor, they significantly adjust their behavior in the early weeks of a BIP. Progress takes time. 

• BIP compliance is a legal requirement. Finally, sticking with the program is an important legal requirement. An inability to follow through with a BIP can compromise your position within a school and possibly even your standing in the education community. 

IEPs are relatively easy to follow. BIPs can be harder. There is a subjective element that often tempts educators into straying from the described course of action. 

You as a paraprofessional, will experience firsthand (and often to a greater extent than anyone else) difficult students’ behaviors.

 It can be tempting to stray from the playbook when you believe there are better ways to handle undesirable actions. 

In the next heading, we examine common challenges and how you can navigate them. 

Common Objections

It's relatively common for educators to feel uncomfortable with the requirements of a BIP. For one thing, it will feel in the beginning as though the plan is not working.

 It often takes time for progress to be made. And even in these situations where the BIP is functioning as intended, there will often still be challenging moments, difficult days, situations where you might feel as though you've progressed all the way back to the beginning.

Sometimes, Implementation Fidelity also just feels unkind. You're working with a student. You see that they're young. You understand that they're vulnerable. You don't want to withhold attention from them or punish them. 

Unfortunately, these actions are often a required element of what's necessary to bring the plan to fruition.

Finally, you might simply doubt the methodology. It's possible that you're correct. BIPs are often amended, but only in response to data. 

This means that if you're not following the plan exactly as it's written, the BIP will never develop enough accurate data to make whatever modifications are necessary.

 It can feel very frustrating to be beholden to a teaching strategy that you had no part in creating.

However, it's important to remember that BIPs are always designed with the student's best interests at heart. 

Sometimes, they will be adjusted with time, but your role is always to stick with the plan as it is written until the data required to modify it has been established.

Conclusion

Paraprofessionals are the linchpin of so many educational interventions. You're the boots on the ground, the professional who often works the closest with students. 

BIPs are more emotionally volatile interventions than most.

You’ll feel frustrated and maybe even confronted in a way that usually doesn’t happen with individual tutoring or implementing an IEP. 

Patience is key. Dial into the plan. Communicate with the instructors. Advocate for the student when necessary.

 Perhaps most importantly, be there, and be ready. That’s the ultimate responsibility of any paraprofessional. 

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