Friday Reflections

Rebecca and Nicola have worked since the beginning of the year to manage the behavior of one of their more challenging students.   As is often the case, a co-taught classroom offers additional support and focus that is not available if a teacher is working solo. Rebecca and Nicola realized that because Rebecca had built a stronger rapport with the student, Rebecca would work on a protocol to address the student’s needed behavioral skills in order that he and all the students moved forward.  From my perspective, Rebecca’s early path with this particular student was rocky. Early on, she approached any misbehavior with positive reinforcement type comments - possibly because she was coached by colleagues that this approach had worked with Jayden in the past.  But she could see that misbehavior continued and this approach was communicating to Jayden that his behavior was ok - which it wasn’t; perhaps, he somehow viewed that she had low expectations of him - and so he didn’t need to imp

The district professional development on “Trauma-Informed Teaching Approaches” provided us some insight into a deeper understanding of our most challenging kids.  The first and most important take a-way from this approach is that the kid who’s pushing against you is probably the kid who needs you the most.  This is the kid who has somehow internalized “I’m bad”  “I’m not good enough” and often these kids come to us with a history of manipulation, coping mechanisms meant to cover up inadequacies, attention getters that aren’t socially appropriate, and on and on.  These are not bad kids – they are kids with serious needs.  The first big commandment of this trauma understanding reminds us:  Build a relationship with these students . They need to know the teacher likes and respects them, because many of them have not been able to trust authority figures and they need concrete proof we are on their side.  Relationship building activities can make a huge difference for traumatized students.