Deep in the throes of grant-writing and candy-eating season, Nikki Michalak ’02, M.S. ’11, and Dr. Stacey Jones Bock are implementing the Behavior Assessment Training (BAT) project, a grant-funded program staffed almost entirely by Illinois State College of Education alumni.

The $7.5 million grant, awarded by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), provides training for teachers to better understand student behavior and make function-based interventions.

Michalak, statewide director and lead principal investigator (PI), explains, “All behavior serves a purpose. We view behavior as communication, and we want to identify the reasons why a student is engaging in a behavior. Then, we want to teach an appropriate replacement behavior that meets the same function in a socially acceptable way.”

Jones Bock, associate dean and co-PI, adds that without understanding the function of a behavior, educators often put negative practices in place: “They try to squash a behavior rather than to teach an alternative replacement to that behavior.”

Michalak and Jones Bock have been working together since the early 2000s, and the BAT is a natural extension of their longstanding collaborative work.

Jones Bock first came to Illinois State in 2000 after graduating from one of the first personnel preparation programs in the country focused on training teachers how to work with children on the autism spectrum. She found an initial lack of services for children on the spectrum, so she dove into the Bloomington-Normal community to meet scholars and practitioners engaged in the work.

She developed an undergraduate course on autism and taught a graduate-level course on applied behavior analysis.

In 2002, Michalak was a graduate student in that class. Jones Bock remembers how she was not only talented but actively working in the autism community.

When ISBE reached out requesting a proposal to help develop support in the area of autism, Jones Bock partnered with Michalak, and 23 years later, they are still working together to support teachers and learners across Illinois.

The initial autism-focused grant they co-directed ended in 2013, but in 2019, the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica published the “Quiet Rooms” series, which exposed the frequent, oftentimes inappropriate use of restraint and timeout throughout the state. Many of the schools cited were ones that their grant had provided services to, demonstrating how a lack of high-quality professional development and on-site coaching support was having a negative impact.

“When the articles came out in the Tribune, we were like, ‘Hey, let’s just reach out to them and tell them we have a solution,’” Jones Bock recalls. Within 10 minutes, their email was elevated to the state director of special education, who drove to Illinois State the next week to talk.

Through their conversations, Jones Bock and Michalak emphasized the necessity of intensive coaching in classrooms and high-quality professional development to support educators through modeling, practice, and feedback. One month later, they received the Autism Professional Learning and Universal Supports Project (A+) grant.

Additionally, the Center for Intensive Behavioral Supports Project (CIBS) was funded in 2022 in response to Public Act 102-0339, which amends the Illinois School Code regarding the use of timeout and physical restraint interventions. The legislation calls for targeted training on proactive and preventative approaches to teaching and supporting behavior. The CIBS program provides a learning platform where any educator can access the required training for free.

Their ongoing work in the local community and throughout the state makes Jones Bock and Michalak trusted experts on supporting the autism community and approaching all students’ behaviors through the lens of function.

Michalak thinks this reputation informed ISBE’s decision* to select Illinois State to house the BAT project: “Because of the work we have done through the A+ and CIBS grants, we’re very well known for doing good work. And so, I think they have a lot of trust and faith in us because we are effective, efficient, we deliver, and we always deliver more than what we’re required to deliver.”

Through their professional journey, Jones Bock and Michalak also connected with Ann Penicook, who is the CIBS program administrator and BAT co-PI.

Penicook hopes that through the BAT program training, educators will learn to remove the personalization they feel when they are the recipient of a student’s behavior. She wants them to understand the reason behind the behavior and use different techniques for supporting students.

Jones Bock echoes, “It’s all about changing teacher practice, so how can we give teachers the tools to be more successful?”

Almost all staff contributing to this success through the BAT project are College of Education alumni.

Jennifer Panganiban ’05, M.A. ’10, current doctoral candidate in the Department of Special Education, is excited to work with “a fantastic team of experts who are dedicated and passionate about this work.”

As a content area specialist with the BAT program, Panganiban is creating the resources, training materials, and support documents that will be used to facilitate the trainings.

Chasity Alexander ’01 is one of five regional behavior specialists who will provide this on-site coaching and model best practice in implementing tiered behavior supports, functional behavior assessments, and behavior intervention plans.

From her own experiences as a special education teacher, Alexander understands how “so many teachers are dealing with challenging behavior but haven’t always been given training and practical tools to handle it.” She thinks school teams will become more confident in teaching students better ways to cope and communicate through function-based behavior plans.

BAT program administrator Ashleigh Gibler ’10, M.A. ’18, also thinks that the project will have a lasting, statewide impact: “We hope to partner with districts to build sustainable systems that reduce exclusionary discipline, staff burnout, and inconsistent behavior support.”

Michalak summarizes that understanding behavior and teaching behavior are skills that can be taught. The BAT grant provides the resources necessary to teach these skills and cultivate this support for learners across Illinois.