Self Contained Emotional Behavior Disorder Classrooms....are they the solution?

   Last Friday two of our three administrators were out of the building so it was up to an assistant principal, me and our counselor to hold down the fort, so to speak. Thank goodness it was Friday and we were able to wear tennis shoes because I needed them! From the time the bell rang until the buses pulled out we were consumed with discipline issues, mostly from our self contained EBD children. After reflecting on the day and assessing the student's behaviors as well as our reactions, I was left to question if a self contained classroom for children with emotional and behavioral disorders is the most effective setting. Because many of the children are significantly below grade level due to their behavior impacting their learning and possibly other learning disabilities or difficulty with attention and focus, they are not able to mainstream into the general education setting for academic subjects which means they may all be together throughout the day with the exception of specials and possibly recess or lunch. Throughout this time they feed off of one another's behaviors. There is not a model for them to use who displays appropriate social skills nor classroom behavior and when a child escalates, the reaction of the other students is often escalatory which causes a downward spiral of the classroom. While I understand that this is the very nature of the disability, I am perplexed as to what we can do to create a more constructive, conducive learning environment. There has to be a better model out there than the self contained classroom for these children.
I am open to any ideas, models you have seen as successful, strategies you have seen implemented that maximize student potential for achievement, articles you have read that may provide insight....anything that can help our children would be fabulous!

Mind Shift

   As our department chair it has been my goal to ensure that our special education teachers and staff have a student centered approach when developing IEPs and discussing services, as it should be. Under our past school administration this was not our focus, and instead we were very aware of teacher schedules which may have impacted student placement. For example, this year alone I have worked with 2 children from the self contained setting, who were mainstreamed with me for reading. Both of these students were well above their general education peers academically and in my opinion, should have been mainstreamed much sooner. This threw up huge red flags for me and drove me to assess our self contained classroom's data on student achievement. I found that there were, in fact, several students who had the potential to be mainstreamed. When we met as a grade level to discuss this, I realized that the school climate prior to our new administration was still impacting our self contained teachers. They were afraid to recommend their children be mainstreamed due to lack of support from administration and acceptance of their children. To me this just further illustrates how administrators set the tone for the school and directly impact student's education. Even after said administration is gone, some teachers continue to make decisions based on the fears that were faced  prior. It has been a challenge to break through these fear-based decisions and ask teachers to trust the new climate and do what is best for children, every time.

I wonder.....have others experienced a similar situation of trying to re-teach or re-train teachers thought processes when there has been an administrative shift? I know that trust is of the utmost importance, but has anyone experienced specific techniques which can help expedite the process?

One strategy I'm trying is to vertically observe one another. For example, our self contained K-1 teacher will go into a classroom where there is general education support for our K or 1st grade children so she can see what a day in general education looks like and get a better handle on if any of her kiddos could benefit from that environment. I've also asked them to assess data from each grade level to see how their children compare. They were surprised to see that some of their students perform well in comparison to their general education peers. Granted, their performance is measured through the support of a self contained setting, but if their performance is at that level, then we should definitely discuss looking at different services.

Any other ideas out there would be much appreciated as we try to ensure that our goal is to be advocates for our students, and develop IEP's which reflect the least restrictive environment for each student's success.

Parent Contracts

Recently, a group of colleagues and I were discussing the changing communities of many public schools in our district. We evaluated how little some schools know the communities they exist within. This manifests itself in many ways. One way we talked about was how some schools have a bias towards parents by projecting a school-based ideal of what good parenting looks like instead of asking parents. Schools force parents to sign contracts that are constructs of the school and not based on the ideals and values of the parent. Schools make assumptions that high performing schools have high parent involvement, which is not necessarily supported by data. Globally, in fact, other countries have low parental involvement and that made my friends and I wonder how critical parent involvement in day-to-day instruction is to student performance. These parent contracts and mandatory volunteer hours could possibly silence parents and ultimately isolate some of them from their students’ education. I began thinking of some things schools can do to alleviate this parent exclusion. Schools could build a parent contract by reaching out to parents and taking input on what they value from schools and what their roles should be in the school house. Schools could send more text updates to parents and reach out on social media. Using email and flyers are outdated ways to passively communicate with parents and do not ensure a two-way conversation. Schools could hold monthly meetings with the PTSA on new strategies and initiatives that grow out of our initial efforts with parents. Lastly, we could reach out to business and community members. Being tourists in these communities does not help us engage parents or develop students into change makers. Our schools should reflect community and family values and we can only gather those values from parents and community members.

Welcome to EPEL 7000 Course Reflection Blog!

Welcome to EPEL 7000 Course Reflection Blog!

I am excited about reading your blogs for this semester!  We will follow the format and schedule below for posting Blogs.  This schedule includes the minimum number of posts and responses. Remember, you can always do more than what is required.  Students must write 5 blog posts throughout the semester and comment on posts by at least five of their peers.  Students should do this over the semester rather than posting all posts at the end of the semester.  Below is the schedule for your blog posts and responses.

Dates	Schedule
January 23, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
February 6, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
February 27, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
March 20, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
April 10, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response

Students should post about something education related that they have on their mind.  Some post prompts are below:

• I’m really passionate about…
• I’ve really been struggling with…
• A recent success I’ve had was when....
• A recent challenge I’ve had was when....
• Can anyone help me with....

Posts should be approximately 300-500 words in length and students can use them to reflect on any leadership activity.  

Including links, pictures, videos, and resources is a great way to strengthen your posts.