Patrick Mulick: Why “Bad Choice” Is the Wrong Language for Schools ~ 1332

Patrick Mulick

We were going into the pandemic, the world is in a very interesting place, and we’re concluding a school year that we didn’t even finish the in-person, right? We shut down in March. In that school year alone, we had over 400 incidents of restraint reported, over 300 incidences of isolation. We knew we had to change it, and that step away from the in-person allowed me some time to process and think through what is it that we could be doing differently.

The data point that I am the most proud of is the isolation, the seclusion. I told you during the pandemic, we had over 300—or just the school year leading into the pandemic, the one that got shut down in March, we had over 300 incidences of isolation.

Our last school year that we just concluded, we had 17.

Tim Villegas

Wow.

Hey, friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive, real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about what happens when a school stops waiting for a student to fall apart and starts asking what is missed. Think of it like this: most schools have a protocol for what to do after a student escalates, and fewer students have a real plan for everything that comes before.

My guest has spent his career trying to flip that script. Patrick Mulick is a board-certified behavior analyst, a certified speaker, trainer, and coach with the John Maxwell team, and the director of student engagement at the Auburn School District in Washington State. He earned his degrees in special education and behavior analysis from Gonzaga University, spent years teaching students with disabilities, and found his focus working with students with autism and complex behavioral needs.

These days, he’s a nationally recognized speaker who travels the country sharing what actually works, not just theory, but practical tools educators can use on Monday morning. In our conversation, we get into what it takes to move a whole district away from restraint and isolation, the data, the tools, the mindset, and why Patrick thinks the word choice might be quietly working against us in schools.

Before we meet our guest, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place.

As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive. All right, after a quick break, it’s time to Think Inclusive with Patrick Mulick.

Catch you on the other side.

Patrick Mulick, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Patrick Mulick

Super excited to be here.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, let’s go. Let’s go. You are in Washington, is that correct?

Patrick Mulick

Washington State, yep. I live in Renton. I work for the Auburn School District, which is about a 20-minute drive south with no traffic. With traffic, it probably takes about three days, so.

Tim Villegas

That sounds like Atlanta traffic. And you’re a principal?

Patrick Mulick

I am the Director of Student Engagement, so that’s a fancy—

Tim Villegas

Ah, okay.

Patrick Mulick

title for a special education director.

Tim Villegas

Ah. Oh, okay. So fancy. All right. Very good. Very good. Okay, and you and I first met at the CEC conference in Baltimore.

Patrick Mulick

Baltimore. Wow, that was a few months ago. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas

And so I attended your session about reducing seclusion and restraint. Actually, Reducing Restraint and Eliminating Isolation, and I was blown away by your presentation and I said, “Hey, we’d love to have you on the podcast to talk about this very topic.”

So I love origin stories, so I’m wondering if we could start there. What was your turning point that made this reducing restraint and eliminating isolation a priority for you?

Patrick Mulick

Yeah, so I’m a former preschool, middle school, and high school teacher, and when I got into the field very early, I was assigned to working with those very aggressive students with autism.

And I was trained in what the de-escalation training was that we had available at that time, and early on in my career, I used restraint and I used isolation, accessing a timeout room. And I always didn’t feel good about using it, but I didn’t know another way, and then once I got into the administrative role, I started doing a lot of the trainings around de-escalation for a lot of staff.

And we always had that mantra of only use this as a last resort, but now let’s go teach you 10 different ways to restrain kids. And then we always scratched our heads like, “Okay, why do we have such high numbers around restraint?” Or, “Why is this not going well?” And the turning point for me really happened right around 2020.

We were going into the pandemic, the world is in a very interesting place, and we’re concluding a school year that we didn’t even finish the in-person, right? We shut down in March. In that school year alone, we had over 400 incidents of restraint reported, over 300 incidences of isolation, and we knew we had to change it, and that step away from the in-person allowed me some time to process and think through what is it that we could be doing differently.

Historically, I had gone to conferences that presented on restraint and isolation and how we can shift away from it, and I never found those presentations helpful because mainly it was just a shame game. It was just—

Tim Villegas

Right.

Patrick Mulick

saying, “Gosh, educators who use restraint or isolation, shame on them.

How could they do this to kids?” And I felt it was quite disingenuous to the challenges that our educators face on the front lines. And it wasn’t until the pandemic I attended a virtual PD where for the first time I heard content that laid out some realistic steps that a district may take to begin the work to actually shift practices instead of just saying, “Let’s just stop restraining kids.”

Like, we need the replacement behavior, and some points were laid out of how you might be able to do that. And at that point, I recognized that this is not something that I could do alone. I can’t make a policy and then just say, “Here you go, everyone. Now we’re doing this.” This is definitely something that we have to go together with.

So during the pandemic, I assembled a committee within my district, a restraint and isolation steering committee, and we met for about a year and a half to identify the gaps that we have in our practices, where we can improve, and there were quite a few gaps that we identified, but we made a plan to address each one of them.

And from there, we rolled out with those recommendations and have seen great results on the other side. But really if we wanna talk about the turning point, it was taking the moment to step back and just reflect on what is the impact of restraint and isolation, what’s the impact on our students?

What are our systems and what’s our data telling us? Oftentimes when we think about the practice of restraint and isolation, we think about it in the context of, well, that one situation with that one student on that one day, and we get emotionally invested into that conversation and thinking about what could have been done differently.

It’s a lot more effective to make progress if we just take a step back and have a non-judgmental conversation about where we could go, and then hear the voices, the many voices that are supporting the work within the system to make recommendations to move forward.

Tim Villegas

So what were the things that were holding your team back from moving on from this practice?

I mean, I’m a former educator.

Patrick Mulick

Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas

I spent 16 years as a special education teacher. Some of that time was as a district support specialist. And a lot of the times when we’re talking about restraint and seclusion, specifically restraint, like what you said, it was always last resort, right?

But there’s all these things you can do before you get to that part.

Patrick Mulick

Right.

Tim Villegas

So what was holding your team back, or your colleagues back, from seeing a different way to support kids?

Patrick Mulick

I’m not sure if I would say it was holding back. I would say we had situations where staff weren’t empowered yet, and teams weren’t empowered yet. So one of the gaps we identified was that not everyone knew what restraint and isolation was, right? Some people would use it and would have no idea that that’s what legally is restraint.

That legally is isolation. And I know we’re using isolation and seclusion interchangeably here. In Washington State we refer to it as isolation. I know most of the country refers to it as seclusion, so forgive me if I go back and forth on those terms.

Tim Villegas

No, no, that’s fine. No, thank you for that clarification, yeah.

Patrick Mulick

Many people didn’t even know that that’s what it was when they were doing it.

Tim Villegas

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Patrick Mulick

Many people didn’t know the laws around when it’s permissible, why it’s prohibited, and how to navigate that with a student who’s escalated. Our previous practice in the district for our certified de-escalation training that would teach staff about restraints, that was primarily attended by our paraprofessional staff.

It would be very few teachers would actually take it, and very few administrators would actually take it. So we had to make a shift there to equip the right folks to have the right tools. But then we also had to recognize that, you know what? Sometimes it’s not an issue of that person responding to the escalated behavior.

It’s not a matter of them not having the training, it’s the other people who are passing by. You might have a student who’s escalated in the hallway. They’re tearing apart a bulletin board that someone spent a lot of time putting up, and the staff member is there supporting the student, but the student is tearing things off of the wall and the passing librarian or office staff might think, “Well gosh, they’re just letting them tear the wall apart.”

Tim Villegas

Right.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. “They’re not doing their job. Let me step in and show them how you’re supposed to do it.” And then they step in and then cause more harm than provide help.

Tim Villegas

Yes.

Patrick Mulick

So part of that was recognizing that it’s not just people who respond to escalating behaviors that need to be trained.

Everyone in the system needs to have at least some knowledge around de-escalation and what the point is, how we can be proactive in that, but then in the moment of crisis how we might be able to respond so that teams could more effectively work together. And when everyone is on the same page around the legalities of restraint and isolation, the impact it has on students, who needs to be trained, when everyone is consistent with that, then you have a consistent approach, and people are able to agreeably support students in a way that’s less intrusive and less impactful, knowing that the best intervention we’re gonna use for a student is prevention, is preventing the opportunity for that to happen in the first place.

Tim Villegas

Right. Right. And I would imagine—I’m certainly not an expert on this data—but I would imagine that it’s just not effective at changing behavior, you know?

Patrick Mulick

No, I mean, that’s one of the misconceptions out there is that it’s a behavior change tool. Restraint or isolation is intended to be at the end of a very long continuum of strategies that you might use for a student in crisis.

And yes, it is a last resort, but it’s not meant to be a behavior change mechanism. It is there merely to help maintain safety. But it’s a method that has its own consequences in itself in terms of the lifelong impact it can have on a student. But no, it cannot be looked at as a behavior change agent.

“Okay, because you threw that chair, now you’re getting put in the isolation room.” Right. Unfortunately, in education, that has happened in the past and kids have been very negatively impacted by that. But even as it’s used, and I’m not advertising its use or promoting it, but it’s intended to be used at the end of a continuum of many other interventions that we would want to consider first before going there.

Tim Villegas

Right. Right. Yeah, it’s just not effective. There’s a lot of reasons why not to use that. And so when you are trying to help shift mindsets for staff about how to support a student, what does that look like? You’ve talked about student-centered behavioral support.

So can you walk us through what that looks like for a particular school or student?

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. We have to move away from a one-size-fits-all model of how we address behaviors in schools. And that’s a hardship that public education is dealing with. Even more so nowadays, we’re continuing to see results from the pandemic of students missing out from being in school, and there are behaviors that have come from that.

So we have to be genuine about the behaviors that public education is facing, the challenges our students bring with us every day to school. The backpacks that our students carry, for many of them, that’s not the only baggage that they’re bringing in. And those challenges are unique and different for each student, and we have to be able to see each child as unique and different and maybe not always needing the same support that another student needs that has similar looking behavior.

So within our schools, we need to have tiered behavior supports to help reach all of our students. But for students with the most complex needs, we really have to dive deep and look at the individuality of it and think about—in the same way for our students with disabilities, right, they have IEPs.

As we create behavior plans, we really need to think about how are we individualizing it for this individual? How are we bringing into account their strengths, their interests? How are we using that to help move them in a better way? And the supports that they’re provided, the skills they need to be taught, what are the deficits that that student has that need to be taught and that’s unique to them?

When we think about a behavior plan in and of itself, there was an analogy that was given. Dr. Paula Kluth, she’s an inclusion specialist from the Chicago area. I was listening to a course from her earlier this year. She was referencing an IEP. She said, “If you read a student’s IEP, and at the end of the IEP you can’t tell me what to buy this kid if I go to their birthday party, then the IEP isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

And I was like, that’s such a beautiful way of explaining it. When we think about how we talk about kids in our behavior planning process, yeah, we need to talk about the challenges we want to change, but we have to do it from a positive, student-centered perspective. We have to talk about their strengths and how we’re going to utilize those in a specific way for that individual, because that’s exactly what we’re supporting, that one individual in that one case.

And we’re not thinking about, “Well, this is what we do in this school when this behavior happens.” Every time the student is loud in class, they get sent to the main office. When they do this, they get suspended for a day. We can’t do one size fits all anymore for students. It does not work.

We need to be thinking about how we’re individually supporting students to meet their individual needs.

Tim Villegas

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, like seeing them as human beings too.

Patrick Mulick

Right. Yes.

Tim Villegas

You know?

Patrick Mulick

Yeah.

Tim Villegas

After the break, Patrick walks us through the tools his team built to make behavior plans actually usable in the moment and shares what the data looks like on the other side of doing all of this work. This episode is sponsored by Adaptiverse. If you are a special education teacher, you already know the time problem.

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Kinda like Paula’s comment. It’s like, if you’re going to a birthday party, you probably wanna know the person, you know?

Patrick Mulick

Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas

And often behavior plans—’cause I definitely have written plenty of them—they don’t… It’s a lot about what is going wrong with the student—

Patrick Mulick

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Tim Villegas

instead of, you know. And sometimes you have those intervention strategies, or the antecedent strategies.

Patrick Mulick

There you go.

Tim Villegas

But it doesn’t always have the full picture of the student, right? So I think that’s really important. I wanna throw a curveball here.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah.

Tim Villegas

So I think there definitely in the last 10 or so years, definitely since I’ve been out of the classroom, there’s been more of a focus, or a de-emphasis, on rewards and, like, very specifically positive behavior strategies or interventions and supports, like a de-emphasis.

And a lot of people are kind of reframing that whole how are we supporting students. And I’m wondering where you are on that, because you talked about tiers, and you talked about levels of support. And so I’m just wondering, is that something that you’re working through? ‘Cause I know in general in special ed in the field, it’s a big talking—

It’s a—there’s a lot of discussion around that.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. No, that’s a really good question. Reinforcement still has its place in the behavior change process. That’s never going away. Unfortunately, over the years, there have been—

How do I say it? There’s been horrible misuse of reinforcement, or it’s been the sole thing that you’re relying on.

Tim Villegas

Mm.

Patrick Mulick

You can’t sticker chart your way out of a bad relationship with a student. You can’t reinforce a skill that the student doesn’t have. And a lot—

Tim Villegas

Right.

Patrick Mulick

in education what we’ve done is we’ve put out these big elaborate reinforcement systems to try to compensate for other things that aren’t happening that should be happening, right?

In the same way with punishment. You can’t punish a skill into a student. And so I understand why people have moved away from that because in the past it has been used incorrectly. It’s been used in a way that’s been detrimental to students. So yes, should reinforcement still be used? Yes, but we need to do all of the other things as well on our side as educators.

We need to be teaching the skills. We need to be helping the student be their own person. We need to be taking into account their trauma history, all of their background and really double down on what you spoke about, the antecedent strategies. Preventing the behavior before it comes up in the first place.

And then as we think about what reinforcement is, reinforcement doesn’t have to be candy. It doesn’t have to be food. Reinforcement can just be a note home to the family saying how well the student did that day, or extra time with the counselor, or something specific of where they get to sit in class or what they get to do.

Reinforcement doesn’t have to be just our cookie cutter, “Well, here’s a star chart. Here’s a—”

Tim Villegas

Yeah.

Patrick Mulick

here’s extra computer time.

Tim Villegas

Yeah.

Patrick Mulick

Reinforcement can look many different ways, and it should still continue to be used, but used in conjunction with the whole picture of what behavior change is supposed to look like.

Tim Villegas

Well, I feel like sometimes people de-emphasize reinforcement like it doesn’t matter. Like, it absolutely matters. You and I—our behavior is shaped all the time, every day, through the interactions that we have with our family, with our friends, with our coworkers, and that’s reinforcement, right? It’s not like—

Patrick Mulick

Right.

Tim Villegas

it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. I think, to your point, it’s such a powerful tool, right? That you could kind of overemphasize and be so clinical about it that it’s like, okay—I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, where I’ve been in a classroom and the teacher is putting Skittles in little kids’ hands to sit in a chair, you know?

Patrick Mulick

Right.

Tim Villegas

And like, “good sitting. Good sitting,” you know? That’s not, I think, what you and I are talking about. And something else that popped into my brain as you were talking about reinforcement—reinforcement can be the feeling that a student gets when they are feeling proud of what they did in class.

Reinforcement can be the feeling that genuine relationships are happening between their peers or their teacher. So all that is very positive and natural and organic, and has nothing to do with a sticker chart or a piece of candy, right?

Patrick Mulick

Yeah, most kids thrive off of that natural reinforcement.

Most kids don’t need some sort of extrinsic system. There’s a lot of things that happen within the schoolhouse that is naturally reinforcing for students. Some with more complex needs, we do need to dive deeper and might need to provide something to get things going. But once we have some momentum in the right direction, we certainly wanna be handing that off to the natural environment in ways that would be more like what all kids access every day.

Tim Villegas

Right. Right. Right. Awesome. Thanks for engaging me with that whole thing. I think it’s a really important discussion—

Patrick Mulick

Yeah.

Tim Villegas

that anyone who’s listening should be having with their team. I think there’s a lot of great resources out there.

I wanna talk about competing pathways. Can you, um…

It’s a tool that you developed, the Competing Pathways Form and De-escalation Strategies. I’m wondering if you could describe to our audience what that is.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. So okay, I wanna give credit where credit’s due. I technically didn’t create the competing pathways itself. I did make it in a way that’s more digestible and user-friendly.

So, first of all, before I describe what they are—when we think about behavior planning just in general, it is, in my mind, really important to go through that detailed process of creating a robust behavior plan for a student with complex behavioral needs. And it’s not just let’s do it to check a box to say that we did the behavior plan.

Right. Like, we need authentic behavior planning. A behavior plan that doesn’t lead to change in the adult’s behavior is nothing more than professional doodling. And we need more than professional doodling happening in schoolhouses today.

Tim Villegas

For sure.

Patrick Mulick

So that process needs to happen, right? We need those robust behavior plans.

But on the backside of that, when we think about students in real time in classrooms having needs, the most important thing isn’t what was written on that plan. The most important thing is what actually happens in the classroom. It does no use if we have it written in a plan somewhere in a filing cabinet, but then the staff are doing something completely different, right?

Never in the history of a student escalating has a staff member just said, “You know what? Hold on, time out. Freeze. Hold on. Let me go over to my filing cabinet, get the behavior plan, and bring it back. Okay, page 13, line 26. Oh, you’ve brief statements to redirect. Okay, and action. Let’s go.” That never happens. I find high value in having avenues where we can take that complex behavior planning and synthesize it down in a way that in the real time, in the moment, a staff is going to be able to follow through with that information in an effective way, right?

If they can’t consistently do that, we’re not going to be able to consistently change behavior. So all that said, what I have done essentially with a behavior plan—just think about a behavior plan, but a behavior plan at a glance. It is a one-page cheat sheet of how to proactively address the behavior, what’s the challenging behavior we’re trying to change, and what’s the desired behavior, how that might be reinforced.

It is a behavior plan at a glance. It’s a PDF document with typeable boxes where you put in the information and staff can then take that, and they could pin it on their corkboard, right? It’s easy to follow ’cause it’s a one-page cheat sheet. The escalation cycle, that is a tool I created many years ago and have used it many times.

The teams I work with have used it many times and found great success. And what it does is it visually represents the cycle a student might go through when they escalate, from calm all the way up to the height of their escalation, and it goes on a level of one, two, three, four, five. And so for each level, there is a box where you fill in what does it look like?

What does the student’s behavior objectively look like when they are at a level two, at a level three, at a level four? And what are the staff to do to support that student when they’re at that level two, so that when they get to a level two, they’re just slightly agitated, what can the staff do in that moment to bring the student back down?

We shouldn’t have to wait till there’s chairs being thrown at us for us to realize we should probably do something different, right?

Tim Villegas

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Mulick

So it is, again, a one-page cheat sheet, a playbook if you will, of what to do as the student escalates. And you could take the competing pathways and the escalation cycle and put it on a double-sided sheet of paper, and there you go.

That’s the cheat sheet right there. That helps out with implementation in the classroom. That helps people get a visual understanding. If you have a substitute teacher or staff member in the classroom, “Hey, this is the plan for this kid.” If you have a security officer, if you have a counselor or principal running down to help out a situation in a classroom, when they arrive, they at least have that so they know what the plan is for that student instead of just assuming what needs to happen and jumping in with uninformed practices.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. What I like about that is it can be universally applied to any sort of behavior plan that’s written. ‘Cause as you know, every district is different.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah.

Tim Villegas

Every district has a special form, or certain ways of writing things. And a lot of times those behavior intervention plans are five to 10 pages long depending on—

Patrick Mulick

Yeah.

Tim Villegas

you know, what is going on. So distilling all the information into a one-page, two-sided document that anyone could reference seems like a very, very helpful tool. And I’m assuming that those resources are somewhere for people to find.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. If you go to my website, yes. Also, if people just wanna email me, patrickmulick@gmail.com, I’m happy to respond.

Tim Villegas

Okay. And we’ll make sure to put that in the show notes. Hopefully you’ll get lots of conversations, so.

Patrick Mulick

Okay.

Tim Villegas

I’d like to talk about success stories.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah.

Tim Villegas

So is there a story on top of mind for you with a school or a district that’s made significant progress with eliminating isolation and supporting students?

Patrick Mulick

Well, I’m gonna talk about my own district. How about that? So—

Tim Villegas

No, I like it. Yeah.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. So the Auburn School District, we have 17,000 students. And again, we’re south of Seattle. I told you that our turning point, when we decided to make some shifts, and we’ve improved our practices.

The data point that I am the most proud of is the isolation, the seclusion. I told you during the pandemic, we had over 300—or just the school year leading into the pandemic, the one that got shut down in March, we had over 300 incidences of isolation.

Tim Villegas

Hmm.

Patrick Mulick

Our last school year that we just concluded, we had 17.

Tim Villegas

Wow.

Patrick Mulick

Okay. And over spring break, we tore down our last isolation room. So for those who aren’t familiar, isolation rooms are built into buildings, or they’re built within classrooms. They’re spaces that are designated just for that, that students go into, and they’re held in there without their will.

There’s a space that they can’t get out of. It looks like a big box from the outside. You know, it’s usually about six feet by six feet on the inside, and then someone’s standing on the outside holding the door shut with a magnetic switch. And that’s primarily where our cases of isolation were happening.

Technically, with at least Washington State definition, you can still isolate someone and it can be outside of an isolation room, right? You could have someone in an office space, and the adult on the other side is holding the door shut and not letting the student leave.

That still would be isolation. You could isolate someone in a classroom by surrounding them with a series of mats and not allowing them to be allowed to leave. So we’ve made that significant shift, and that has been just a joy to see that work happen. But I will say to get to that point where we don’t even have an active isolation room anymore and have the dramatic dip, that shift was made not because we said, “You know what?

By this date and time, we’re just gonna be done with isolation rooms. We’re not going to use them anymore.” We knew we needed to change that, but we put all of our chips on the replacement behavior. “Okay, if we can’t isolate kids in isolation rooms, what can we do?” And we have effectively utilized BCBAs within our school district.

I have four BCBAs that I oversee, so BCBA is board-certified behavior analysts. We’ve also hired on about 15 registered behavior technicians to work with students with our most complex behavioral needs. We’ve improved some of our tiered behavioral systems. We still have a long ways to go, but we’re slowly making improvements.

And we’ve been doing what we’re talking about here, thinking about each student individually, in what their specific needs are. Instead of just saying, “You know what? That looks like a behavior kid. Let’s send them to the behavior program,” we’ve been able to identify how to meet the unique needs of students in their home schools.

And so the cause of all of that has led to us not actually requiring a behavior program anymore. Most districts have a behavior program for students with high SEL behavioral needs, and they put students with these highest needs together in the same classroom, and then people are surprised when things don’t go well.

And that’s where we found most of our—

Tim Villegas

I think it seems like a great idea, right?

Patrick Mulick

Yeah, most of our cases of isolation were happening in our behavior program.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. Uh-huh.

Patrick Mulick

Yes. And so by doing all of the other work right, doing that well, we got to a point where we don’t need a behavior program anymore, and we don’t need an isolation room anymore.

And when you don’t have an isolation room, your numbers tend to go down quite a bit. So that’s been a big shift. Our restraint numbers have gone down as well. Not as dramatically, but we’ve been able to cut our numbers in half, and that’s been a great success. Still more work to be done.

We know that even one case of restraint or isolation, that there’s a need to question, “Was that necessary? Are there other things that we could be doing?” But doing so in a supportive way. Again, in this process, I never want to wave my finger at an educator who’s already exhausted and doing the best they can with what they have.

This work requires the support, not shaming process to get there. But we’ve been able to make some impressive progress, specifically around the use of isolation.

Tim Villegas

I appreciate the reframing of not shaming educators, because something I wholeheartedly believe—and I wanna tie it back to something that you said—is a replacement behavior.

I love that you’re calling your own change a replacement behavior. So that’s beautiful. It’s like, think about the last time you were shamed for something and if that caused long-term behavior change.

Patrick Mulick

Right.

Tim Villegas

Probably not.

Patrick Mulick

Right. Right. Exactly. No, no. That doesn’t help out.

Sometimes it helps out the person who’s shaming, right, to feel like justice is being done.

Tim Villegas

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Mulick

But if we’re actually talking about changing behavior, we need to be focusing much more on support.

Tim Villegas

Exactly. Exactly. That’s fantastic news, so I appreciate you sharing that with us. And for those of you who are listening who are administrators and who are desiring a change—if you’re looking at your numbers of restraint, seclusion, or isolation and you are thinking, “Gosh, there’s gotta be a better way,” here we have an example of a district that’s probably not unlike yours that has made this change.

So thank you, thank you.

What advice would you give educators who want to move away from this process, this cycle of restraint and seclusion? What advice would you give educators if they want to move on from this?

Patrick Mulick

If we’re talking about a district, an organization moving away from this, it is something that the entire organization has to adopt.

And if that’s going to happen, it needs to include everyone from the superintendent to the paraprofessionals in the classroom and everyone in between. There needs to be a whole system movement to improving practices in a supportive way. The old African proverb is, “If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.”

Tim Villegas

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Mulick

And if we wanna go far with the work, if we wanna make it last, it has to be a whole system movement. It can’t be, “Well, let’s get extra special training for the three people in that one classroom.” No. It needs to be everyone in the system, and for everyone to come along at the same time, it takes stepping back and, again, looking at practices, looking at numbers, looking at gaps.

But it takes an investment, but no one should try to carry this on their own. It’s too complex. And quite honestly, no one person is going to have all of the answers. We can talk about the principles around how you change the system, but you also need to take that into consideration, well, what are the unique factors within your community, right?

Within the families that live within that district, socioeconomic pieces, cultural pieces that we run into, because sometimes it is a collaborative piece with the families. We need to bring them into the conversation. I know many families will say, “You know what? If my four-year-old starts to get upset, just pick him up and move him.”

And that’s what many families do. I have a four-year-old at home, and when she needs to get moved, I pick her up and I move her. We can’t do that in school. We just can’t pick up kids and move them against their will. And so it requires that community of educators and, honestly, the families as well getting on the same page of what we’re shifting to, the why behind that, and then having levels of accountability to make sure that we’re making progress with it.

Tim Villegas

All right. I want to… This is a—what do you call it? It’s a thought experiment. There we go.

Patrick Mulick

Okay.

Tim Villegas

So if I gave you a magic wand and you could change one thing about how schools approach behavior, and you’re just gonna wave that wand and be like, “Okay, done,” what would it be?

Easy questions for you. Easy.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. How big can this wish be? Can I wish for more wishes?

I would say if I could just make one shift, one wish, is moving mindsets away from the punitive to the proactive. And some people are there, but not everyone. If we could have everyone just at that baseline, that starting point, that we’re not focusing on the punitive, we’re not having kids show up at school and then waiting for the behavior to come up, and then we’re surprised when it does and then giving the consequence, “Well, you can’t do that, so this is what happens to this kid.”

But we’re thinking as kids are getting off the bus every day, as they’re walking into school, we’re already thinking about what are we doing to positively engage students, to embrace them for the unique individuals that they are? What are the systems that we have set up in place so that they can be properly supported?

And if behavior comes up in class, the first thinking should be, “Oh gosh, I missed the opportunity to get in front of that one.” Right? “I missed the opportunity to change that behavior, so now I’m dealing with this.” And we’re taking ownership of that. I think language plays a big role in the work because the words we use, it reflects how we think about behavior, and how we think about behavior, it impacts what we actually end up doing.

What I’ve heard over the years many times over in classrooms is, “Well, he made a bad choice.”

Tim Villegas

Mm.

Patrick Mulick

“They made a bad choice. They knew what to do, but they didn’t do it, so now they get this punitive consequence.” And reflecting on that, the word choice implies—

Tim Villegas

Yep.

Patrick Mulick

that the student has the skill set to do that. Yes. And they’re just saying, “You know what? No, heck with it. Yeah, I’m just gonna go kick this garbage can. No—the whole fact that my mom was up all night having a fight with live-in boyfriend and I didn’t get any sleep, and my medication’s out, that… No. That has no role in this. I’m just being difficult right now.”

Right? We use these terms, we use choice of it as if kids have a choice, and that leads to some poor thinking and poor intervening. So I like to think about, not about choices kids have, I think about strategies that kids have. And some kids walk into school and they have no strategies in their toolbox that’s gonna help them deal with what they have going on personally.

And when you think about strategies, well, if they don’t have the strategies, someone needs to teach them the strategies. Oh, and who’s it? We’re the teachers. We’re the ones who teach. We’re the ones who are going to equip. We need to take ownership with that. When we say kids are making a bad choice, it’s very much, “Well, that’s on them.

That’s their fault. Yeah, bad things happen to kids who do bad things, so now they’re gonna get this.” When we shift to strategies, we’re part of that equation, and we’re taking ownership of some of that behavior because we have to own some of the development that is or isn’t happening for that student. So that’s the shift, the moving from the punitive to the proactive, and how do we wrap around this together.

If I just had one wish, that one thing. If we could just do that.

Tim Villegas

That’s it. That’s all you need.

Patrick Mulick

That would be fantastic.

Tim Villegas

Wow, that was great. That is a great point. I love what you said about us saying kids making bad choices. I think that’s brilliant, so appreciate that. Okay, before we get into our last segment, if you could share with our audience where people can find you and your resources.

Patrick Mulick

Yes, so patrickmulick.com, and then I’m on Facebook quite a bit, LinkedIn, Instagram, and then you’ll find me out on the road quite a bit. I travel around the country training administrators, teachers, bus drivers, around the use of behavioral supports across the board. It’s not just about students with disabilities, which I think is very important in this conversation.

Tim Villegas

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Mulick

Restraint and isolation is not just about students with disabilities. I do a lot for training paraprofessionals and reducing the reliance on one-to-one paraprofessionals. That’s a big passion of mine. So I’m out on the road quite a bit. So actually, I put on my Facebook page the towns that I’m in.

I’m a full-time employee in a school district, and I use all of my vacation time to go talk about the same type of stuff that I do at work, so. But it gives me a lot of joy being able to connect with people who are making a difference for kids. So check out my website, check out my Facebook page.

There’s a lot of good content there. And then if you wanna reach me, patrickmulick@gmail.com.

Tim Villegas

Oh, thanks. Thanks, Patrick. And if you’re ever in Atlanta, hit me up.

Patrick Mulick

Okay.

Tim Villegas

We’ve covered a lot of ground, from what it takes to shift a whole system to the language we use when kids struggle, and why Patrick thinks taking ownership might be the most important thing educators can do. One more thing before we go, and I’ll warn you, it has nothing to do with behavior plans.

Patrick Mulick

Okay.

Tim Villegas

So the last segment is called the mystery question, and these are questions written by my 12-year-old, soon to be 13.

By the time this airs, she’ll be 13. And so I’ll answer the question—there’s only one. Normally I pick, but there’s only one left, so it is what it is. I’m gonna read the question and we’ll both answer it. Are you ready? Okay.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. Okay. Go.

Tim Villegas

If you get stranded on an island, what four things would you bring with you?

It says “to me,” but I’m almost positive it’s with—

Patrick Mulick

Okay.

Tim Villegas

I was like, “I’m not bringing you anything if I’m stranded on an island,” so.

Patrick Mulick

Okay.

If you get stranded on an island, what four things would you bring with you? Hmm. Okay. Let’s think.

Tim Villegas

And this doesn’t have to be, like, reality.

Patrick Mulick

Okay. I was like, yeah, boot supplies—

Tim Villegas

Like, yeah.

Patrick Mulick

toilet paper. I mean—

Tim Villegas

I think it’s, in general, like, you know, a desert island type of thing. Like, I always think about, like, the desert island music. Like, what would you bring with you? Do you listen to vinyl? I’m, like, a vinyl collector, so.

Patrick Mulick

Not really, no.

Tim Villegas

So that’s what I was thinking, like maybe I could—maybe if I could just have my vinyl collection, then maybe that would be one thing.

What about you? Anything on top of mind that you’d like?

Patrick Mulick

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think a really good book, lots of sunscreen—

Tim Villegas

Yes, yes.

Patrick Mulick

for the heat this year.

Tim Villegas

Okay.

Patrick Mulick

Right?

Tim Villegas

Okay.

Patrick Mulick

Right, right. I think a really nice fan and, yeah, an infinite amount of relaxing music and a nice hammock. A really nice hammock—

Tim Villegas

Oh, a hammock—

Patrick Mulick

because I could put up a shade.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Patrick Mulick

That would be… I think those would be on the top of my list.

Tim Villegas

I’m thinking—so we went on vacation in like a tropical area, so I was thinking like bug spray. An endless amount of bug spray.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I need to add that to my list.

Tim Villegas

They love my skin.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. Yeah, good point.

Tim Villegas

And then, I don’t know, just, man, if I could have like a cooler full of beverages, but it’d be hard to keep it cold. That’s the only thing.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah. Well, I mean, if we’re wishing for anything, then ice that never melts, right? I mean—

Tim Villegas

Ice that never melts—

Patrick Mulick

with a cooler—

Tim Villegas

Just want the, you know, an ice machine and—

Patrick Mulick

A cooler of assorted beverages for all sorts of occasions.

Tim Villegas

Exactly. Exactly, exactly. And then electricity—

Patrick Mulick

Yeah.

Tim Villegas

of course, so.

Patrick Mulick

Right. Yeah, naturally.

Tim Villegas

To power my ice machine. Okay.

Patrick Mulick

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Villegas

And a nice motor home. Yeah, so. All right, all right. You know, it’s funny ’cause I’m, like, not a beach person. I don’t know, are you? Do you like the beach?

Patrick Mulick

I’ll go there if I’m in the area, but I don’t purposefully seek it out.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. It’s just not my thing. But, you know, kind of like half my family loves the beach and half don’t. So we went to this tropical area, but it was mostly like jungle.

And we did not go to the beach, so it was not a beach trip. But yeah, it’s just I prefer, like, not being in the sand, you know?

Patrick Mulick

Right.

Tim Villegas

Yeah.

Patrick Mulick

Right. Well, then you gotta get off and it gets everywhere and—

Tim Villegas

Uh, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Patrick Mulick

Yep.

Tim Villegas

All right. Thank you for indulging me and my daughter in our mystery question, so I appreciate that.

Patrick Mulick, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast. We appreciate your time.

Patrick Mulick

Thank you so much. It’s been fantastic.

Tim Villegas

That was Patrick Mulick. Here’s what I’m taking with me from this conversation. Patrick talks about moving from punitive to proactive, and for me, that reframes what it means to be an educator in the first place. It’s not just about having a behavior support plan, it’s about taking ownership of what a student hasn’t been taught yet. Patrick put it simply, “If a student doesn’t have the strategies, someone needs to teach them, and we are the teachers.” That’s not a small thing. One practical step for educators, the next time your gut calls something a bad choice, pause and ask instead, “What strategy does this student need, and who is going to teach it to them?” Bad choice implies the student had the skill in the first place and didn’t use it.

Missing a strategy implies someone needs to teach it, and those two phrases lead to a completely different mindset. Try swapping the language for a week with your team, in your notes, and in your head, and notice what else changes.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. If you have something to share, you can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas.

This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Ray from the internet. Scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and adaptiverseapp.com. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive Inclusion Crew.

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Thanks for hanging out, and remember, inclusion always works.