Week 6

Think about our work with the brain and stress, the conflict cycle and counter aggression. Post a blog describing a difficult situation with a student that did not go according to plan. Then explain what you might do differently considering some new insights into human behavior. Reply to at least one other person's blog.

When I read this blog topic, I immediately thought of my first semester teaching. I had a student who had a very bad temper and was known for getting into fights. He was the oldest kid in the class and many other kids were scared of him. One day, while I was actively teaching my class, he would not get off his IPOD. I gave him two warnings and then took his IPOD and told him I would leave it on  my desk until I was done. He was okay with this and gave up his device. Once I went back to teaching, I noticed he was playing with something in his lap. It was his cellphone. I try to teach my students respect for people who are speaking and to not use their devices at these times. They are instructed to wait until the person is done speaking. I told this student to give me his cell phone. He walked up and gave it to me, and I told him I would be giving his phone to an admin because he would not follow class rules. At this time, he got so mad that he got into my face and was screaming for his devices back. As he was in my face, I backed up and told him to calm down. At this time I saw a student slip out of my room and a few seconds later, there was an admin in the doorway calling for the student to leave with him. 

This was one of the scariest situations I have ever been in and have thought about it often. As a new teacher, I did not have many tools in my tool bag and did whatever I thought was right at the time. Taking away his device, and saying he would get it back, but then punishing him did not help. He was open enough to give them to me, and  by telling him his consequences in front of the class,  embarrassed him.  Both of these things escalated his behavior. If I was in this situation again, I would stop actively teaching and give the kids a break. During this break, I would quietly mention that I have noticed his heavy device use and ask him if the break time was long enough for him to do what he needed to do so we could get back to learning. I would them tell him that I do not want to have to take his devices, because I knew he was old enough to know the right times to use them. My thought behind doing it this way are to redirect his attention. Maybe he was having issues at home, which was common. If he was stressed out, he was not going to react in an appropriate manor. 

Week 5

Why Adults Strike Back: Learned Behavior or Genetic Code?

Do you agree or disagree with Dr. Long's discussion about counter aggression? Is this information applicable to the public school setting?

This article was a very interesting read. I found that some of the reasons teachers become counter aggressive to be familiar, sadly.  The author makes a great point that we are all too aggressive. For most of us, we were brought up this way and it is ingrained in our DNA. We are so quick to defend ourselves, even when we are not sure we are being attacked. When students are acting out, it could be for a number of reasons and getting upset about it does not help the issue. Teachers need to be able to see the speed bump on the road and be able to get over it without adding aggression.  When teachers handle things with aggression, it causes more harm than good and those students who have behavior issues will continue to behave poorly because they do not feel a connection to their teachers. This starts a bad cycle and the student will most likely decide to act poorly. Even still, teachers should not hold prejudices against bad behavioral students because sometimes, when caught in a nasty situation, they may not be the one causing the issue. 
A great example of this comes to mind. Over the weekend, there was man killed by police officers because they thought he was involved in a huge physical fight. He resisted the police's tackles because he was innocent and did not understand why they were beating him to the ground. Six or more officers ended up suffocating the man under their weight and force. This man, a large black man, was the courageous man who stepped in between two people fighting. He stopped them and in return, was killed. I seem to believe that these (white) police officers thought he was guilty because of the color of his skin (horrible). As teachers, we need to keep an open mind. Even if we do not "like" a kid, or he or she had been horrible in class, this child may not be the one responsible for causing the situation. If they are falsely accused, it stirs up more aggression towards school and in return, he or she could quit, or do something that they may regret.
All - in -all, I agree with the author and his views of how adults can aid in student aggression and it is very applicable to public education. 

Week 4

Response to video

This video was very interesting and I can see this happening on a day to day basis. My question is why is there real glass in that high school. In Boston, I would have thought they replaced all the glass with plexi -glass...

Three things the principal did well was that he took the time to go outside to gather a pissed off student from leaving school. He identified the student from looking at the cameras and was able to track him down. The second good thing he did was that he called for the teachers side of the story before he handled the situation. This allows for the teacher's voice to be heard and explain their side of the story. The last thing was that he had the teacher and student sit down together to talk about their issue. This was a great idea, but it did not work, and he owned up to this.
Three things the principal did poorly, was he did not provide enough time for the teacher to prepare his defense nor did he allow enough time for the student to calm down. When he approached the teacher, he spoke with his briefly and started to walk away as the teacher was getting into the details of the issue. If the principal left with out hearing the rest of the story, he would not have concrete evidence to bring back to the student. Once the principal sat the teacher and student down together, he left them alone to hash out their differences. This is not cool! He needed to stay to mediate between the two gentlemen. If he did that, he could have calmed them both down. Instead someone else ran into the room to break up them up and in return, the student ran out. All in all, this situation could have been de-escalated.

Week 3

Restorative Justice is a theory that students can  mend the wounds that occur in their schools themselves. This is meant to bring the students together in the form of a peer group or mediation group to talk about anything about the school that bugs them. This has shown success in a number of different realms. It has lowered bullying, suspension and expulsion rates, as well as, increasing the quality to the school environment. These groups can be broken down into two groups, large and small. Large groups may need to meet to talk about big issues at hand, where small groups may met to resolve conflict between small groups of students. These small mediation groups form other even small groups which sit with individual students who may have individual needs which need to be addressed. These groups hope to limit peer to peer conflicts through working through them themselves.
Sources:
Davis, Matt. (2013) Restorative Justice: Resources for Schools. Edutopia
< http://www.edutopia.org/blog/restorative-justice-resources-matt-davis > 

This will certainly have its advantages in the classroom as well as in the entire school community. It seems by allowing the students to work things out for themselves has positive affect on their school climate. By allow students to work things out, with the help of an adult, decreases the number of referrals to the principals office. It may be difficult to form these groups within one small classroom, but could work if you are given the right group of kids. Kids these days do not know how to be visually social. They live on their phone and computers that they are lacking the social skills to settle a dispute, which mind you, is a good professional characteristic.
Our school has a student leadership group who meets once a month to talk about things that are going on in the school, but I do not see them solving any peer to peer conflicts. So in a way, we have this mentality, but not totally. I think this would be a great club to start to go hand in hand with the leadership group. Our school also has a senate group which goes over all the rules and procedures our school has and debates them. They see which ones are useful and useless. Their voices are not always heard though. Adults still have the final say in all of the decisions. These adults are the building administration of course!

Week 2

Response to Video

As I mentioned in class, I thought that the information about the brain and its ability to have memory was very interesting. As a biology teacher and an advocate for science, I never thought about the brain and their independent sections having the ability to remember things. I always thought that memory was housed in the hypothalamus and not all the sections of the brain. I also found that student who are hypersensitive usually live a life of high stress so even though they look composed in class, they are easily rattled. 

SPED 540 week 1

 Form Post:

Troubles Student

This past Semester, I had a student that has been in and out of the juvenile detention center. He has been in and out of there for the past two years and due to this, has missed a lot of school. He does not have much of a home life due to a lack of a home. He sleeps on the couch at his grandmother’s house with a number of other family members. He is not allow to be around his mother, and his father, so I hear, is a big drug dealer in our city. The school computer system told me he has ADHD and this is apparent when he entered the classroom. When he did come to school, he came to class whenever he wanted to, even if it was twenty to forty minutes late. He would arrive with no pass and he would throw the class off kilter. When he arrived, he would tell me something that he did not like about me, on that given day. He then would take a while to settle down and to get his class material out. I would continue on with the day’s lesson, when we would disrupt me to ask for all of his missing work. I would tell him to wait until later and I would get it for him.

I would always get this missing work for him, but he would never do it. He would start it and tell me he would finish it at home, but would never do it. He had some really good days (2) where he would sit and finish the day’s activity and he would have really bad days where I just wanted him gone.

He did not have his own cellphone, but would borrow his girlfriend’s cellphone and would be on this more in class than he would do his work. I would tell him to put it away and he would say OK, but would have it out a few minutes later. This battle went on until I stopped caring. I was not going to take his phone away and have him blow up at me. He would already get mad at me for calling security to take him everywhere he wanted to go (this was his administrators idea). He needed constant supervision because he was a constant loiterer and would always spend time with his multiple girlfriends in the hall.

In class, he would sit there on his phone and try to tell the class about all the trouble he has gotten in and how it was fun. The class would look at him like he was completely nuts. One day, when we were waiting for security to arrive, he told me he was voice recording me and was going to use this in court to get him off many infractions. This made me very upset.

All in all, this student would come to class and do whatever he wanted. Most of the time he would opt to leave and go to his guidance counselor, or he would stay in class and disrupt everyone to the point that they would all roll their eyes when he arrived. He would rarely get his work done and would choose to sit on this cellphone. There was no controlling him.

One trick that worked for him, sometimes, was to allow him to leave when he got an assignment done. He was understanding of that and would sometimes try to finish his work before he left, but this was rare. I would ask him how his day was going after he would arrive late and tell me something he did not like about me; he would sweeten up and say a truthful answer, which was mostly negative. I felt really bad for this kid and he would soak in all the negative energy and feed off it. He had way too much on his plate outside of school to deal with life inside school. He is caught in the cycle of jail and most likely will be going back. I personally think that he needs a charter school that is formed around kids with intense behavior issues so that he can get the treatment he needs to have a successful school life.

I believe this kid is in need to PBIS. PBIS is a Positive Behavior Intervention Supports and is a system put in place to decrease the infractions of those students with behavior, and safety issues to keep the school environment and culture a safe one. This system gives students tools to keep safe and to not act out through a number of positive strategies. When the students can learn how to handle themselves, it makes everything much easier. For the case of my previous student, this would be great for him because I am certain that he is caught in a bad cycle and cannot learn his way out.

Sourse: http://rti.dpi.wi.gov/rti_pbis