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!
Bernardo,
ReplyDeleteYou raise an excellent question, and I am curious to hear about any other successful EBD methods too. I agree EBD self-contained courses are not as useful as I'd like and worst scholars begin to feed of-of each other's behavior. Self-contained classes do protect the general population of scholars from negative influences and even danger. The negative influence portion is huge in our school. We have battled to regain a positive culture in some of our classes because at the beginning of the year EBD scholars, struggling with their disability, set a negative influence on a lot of our impressionable scholars. Understanding and realizing this hurt me because I never want to see scholars become worst off because of their school environment. That makes me feel like the school is not winning at its' job.
Jamal, since this post I have tried a few things at our school....we have re-aligned our para support so there are paraprofessionals in the EBD classes at all times. If there is a child who is mainstreamed with adult assistance, our special education team has come together to support those kiddos in gen ed. Although this has not garnered a solution to the influence of each other within the EBD classrooms, it has allowed the teachers more support to handle the behaviors.
ReplyDeleteAnother strategy is to align the behavior management system with earning privileges, instead of taking them away. This has spun the perception of the students and encouraged them to "earn", given them a sense of control and helped them find accountability in their behavior.
Yet another difficulty I have identified through reflection and observation is our need of more support from mental health professionals with many of these students. I wish there was a way to provide more extensive services so we could address the root of the problem instead of putting a band aid on it daily. In my opinion, this is an area of huge growth need within our special education community, and our greater community as well. So often many of the students served within this program go on to have tumultuous adult lives which then cost our society money in prosecution, treatment and facilities. If we could address these issues when children are young, and provide an educational setting to meet all of the child's needs, perhaps we would not only save money in the future, but more importantly,create thriving, productive members of our society.