Students with emotional and behavioral disorders, physical disabilities, health impairments, and traumatic brain injuries are in every school. Students that have emotional and behavioral disorders look just like every other ‘normal’ students. According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) emotional disturbance is defined as a condition exhibiting one or more characteristics over a long period of time that affects their education performance. Children with emotional disorders are unable to show proper behavior, maintain healthy relationships, and suffer from depression and/or anxiety. There is no known cause for emotional or behavioral disorders, but some can result in genetic, biochemical, or neurological influences. Physical disabilities are more noticeable, because the student are physically different than other children. Some may have require special equipment that helps them move about in the world. Some may need canes, walkers, crutches, or even wheelchairs. Students with health impairments have limited alertness and strength. They also have an amplified watchfulness to environmental motivations. Normally a health problem, chronic or acute, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Tourette’s syndrome, diabetes, asthma, leukemia, epilepsy, etc. can contribute to a student’s heath impairment. Injuries such as closed head trauma, items piercing the brain, poisons of the brain, tumors, hypoxia, and strokes can cause a traumatic brain injury. Traumatic brain injuries causes some type of loss of their communication, psychological, cognitive, perceptual, and psychomotor abilities. There are many different strategies that teachers can use when it comes to emotional and behavior disorders. They can design certain rules to help anticipate the possibility of a problem within the classroom. Instead of the student getting up from his seat or yelling out, they will have to raise their hand whenever they need any type of help. The “Golden Rule”, treat other how you would want to be treated by them is a great rule for a classroom to help foster an environment of support and caring. Help students resolve issues that they have peacefully and without out inappropriate behaviors. A few teaching strategies for students with physical disabilities are to learn what safety precautions that you will need to make to make sure they are able to have full participation within the classroom. Learning what types of devices are need to help them better be able to participate in things such as projects and field trips. Students with health impairments can be given more time on their assignment, a different assignment, more help on the assignment to help them complete the assignment. Teachers need to plan assignments and activities in advance to help these students with health impairments to get organized and allow more time to finish their assignment more successfully. There are many teaching strategies for students with traumatic brain injuries. Allow students to divide their assignment into sections, have students summarize information and repeat it, having the schedule written so that the students can see their daily routine, have the students repeat the steps of the assignment either written or orally to the teacher or another student. Self-esteem is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a “feeling of having respect for yourself and your abilities”. To nurture the self-esteem of students with emotional and behavior disorders, physical and health impairments, and traumatic brain injuries I would help each student feel special. These students with these types disorders are already ‘labeled’ and I want to help them know that they are able to accomplish great things, not only in school, but life as well. Encouragement is a great motivator for self-esteem. Giving these students encouragement and praise when they accomplish any type of task that is normally difficult for them. Students that are not consider ‘special needs’ need to know about the disability and what it entails. Students without disabilities need to be able to understand what the disability is so they can respond to their classmate(s). They need to understand that these students need extra help sometimes and that we support each and every student in our classroom, no matter what. This is where the ‘Golden Rule’ comes into play. These students may be different than them, but aren’t we all different in our own way. I have attended many IEP meeting with a student that has a behavioral disorder. I have a five and a half year old son, who is in Kindergarten and has had an IEP since he was three years old. He has not been diagnosed with a particular name of a disorder, but through assessments and observations between daycare teachers, Pre-K teachers, Kindergarten teachers, parents, and family we have all determined that he does have some type of behavior disorder. His IEP is mostly developed for his behavior. Educationally he is extremely smart, almost the top of his class. He is very intelligent, when it suits him. His behavior is tied to his emotions and he has a difficult time controlling his emotions and when he gets upset he can become very disruptive in the classroom. He is quick to act and then think, after he gets caught or told on. We recently reviewed his IEP, the team consist of his principal, Kindergarten teacher, a special needs teacher, and myself. We looked over his goals on his IEP. We modified a few detail when it came to consequences of his actions. He is quick to act before he thinks about what will happen. I suggested that we make the consequence a little more severe. I do not have as many problem at home, but I have noticed the same things at home as well. I suggest to do what we do at home, we know that he hates to take away his outside time. They have a color system, each day they start on green. If they break a rule or do something that they know is wrong, such as hitting or throwing things, they have to move their name down to yellow, then orange, then red. Yellow is a warning, orange is normally a time out (about five minutes), and red is parent contact either by phone or note home. They can also receive rewards if they get to move their name up. They get the chance to move their name up for being caught following the rules, for example, they are the standing in line quietly in the hallway when going to the bathroom. The rewards are great incentive, because he wants to pick his job such as door holder, line leader, pet feeder, teacher helper, etc. The consequences did not seem to matter to him. He was leaving school on orange or red every day for almost two weeks straight. We revised his IEP and now when he misbehaves or breaks a rule, the first time, so the color yellow, he has to take work to the ISS room to complete an assignment instead of being with his friends and possible miss out on a fun assignment. With the modifications that the school has made along with us at home his behavior as dramatically improved. It is nowhere near perfect, but it is stride in the right direction. Now he comes home on yellow maybe once a week. We have set a goal for him here at home as well, one he wants just like at school so it intergrade their reward system with ours.
References
Amanda, S. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://amandastahl.wordpress.com/poetrywriting/glossary-of-terms/
