Improving Your Jen Ratio and That of Your Students

Four Hours-

Intended Audience: All staff K-12 (educators, administrators, ancillary staff, paraprofessionals, family members)

Short Description:

o  Jen Ratio is an ancient Chinese philosophy. Basically, described as “Energy Flows Where Attention Goes” (Dr. Riffel’s motto for life). Your Jen Ratio diet is what you spend your time focusing on. When we spend our day pointing out all the “don’t, stop, quit, and no” behaviors we see manifest more negative behaviors. When we spend our day pointing out all the things that are going correctly in the classroom or school, we manifest more positive behaviors.

o  This is a great philosophy, but how do we change? We think we are positive. When I taught Applied Behavior Analysis at Georgia State, I had my master’s level students videotape themselves teaching for a whole day. They were asked to write a paper on their impressions of themselves and they were also asked to count how many times they labeled appropriate behavior versus how many times they pointed out negative behavior. They were always surprised at just how much time they spent focusing on the negative.

o  Dr. Riffel will share ideas for changing our own focus so we manifest positive behaviors.

·      Long Description:

o  Jen Ratio is a fraction. The numerator is the number of positive interactions you have in a day and the denominator is the number of negative interactions you have in a day. This is tabulated and turned into a percent. One of the activities Dr. Riffel does with students is assign them to watch four hours of television for an evening. They are taught what is a negative and what is a positive. They are given a sheet of paper that is a giant fraction with positive at the top and negative at the bottom. They bring the paper back the next day and they learn that it is a fraction and taken to the lowest denominator and turned into a fraction. The students talk about how much more negative TV programs were than they thought. Then we discuss how the same is true for social media, music, and just our everyday interactions with each other. It is a good lesson for the students. 

 We also work with the teachers to help them measure their own positive to negative interactions. We have some simple things they can do if they do not want to video tape themselves. We are striving for an 80% positive. In the beginning it will not be that for most staff members including administrators standing in the hallway during class changing periods. We will talk about ways to build in positive interactions with students using behavior specific praise. This can be a whole school project. In Australia, when I was working with a middle school, we had the students and the staff working on increasing their positive interactions. I was there for two months. My main contact frequently contacts me and comments on what a difference this philosophy has made to the climate of the school. We can manifest what we want to see as far as behavior is concerned.