|
By: Sally Bowman Alden
Mother, and V.P. Legal.compage 2
|
Legal.com Links: Bookstore Resources for: Law Students Online Community: Legal Areas: Aviation Articles: |
As a school psychologist, I saw many children referred for behavior problems. When properly assessed, these children were found to have problems that interfered with learning and caused them to act out in frustration or to get attention – vision problems, hearing losses, learning disabilities, learning, emotional and/or social skills deficits. Children are not born “bad” or misbehaving. Children who misbehave in school also do not by definition have bad parents or emotional problems. Most children want to do well, but many children do not know how. We offer them punishment when they act out, but we certainly don’t punish a child who can’t learn to read. In more enlightened classrooms, we might offer them a carrot (a reward of some type) if they behave appropriately, but that misses the point, too. If we offer a child who has trouble reading a reward for reading better, but don’t teach them the skills they need to read better, they won’t get the reward either. We re-teach the basic skills when we find a gap in children’s academic learning. We assume a child is “bad” when they act out in class, not that they may have an underlying learning problem or a skill deficit in social skills or emotional regulation. If all we do is remove the child from learning in the classroom, we may make ourselves feel better as educators because we did something, but we did nothing to meet the child’s needs and to help the child succeed. Would educators feel good about removing a child from their classroom who couldn’t read? I certainly hope not. I believe most teachers also want to do well; however, they also lack the skills they need to be effective in managing their classrooms and children with issues. In the past 20 years, there has been plenty of research on using positive discipline techniques and the failures of suspensions and expulsions in solving discipline problems in our schools. Well-respected education authors such as Alfie Kohn continue to offer solutions. High school problems begin in elementary schools. We need to address these kids when they’re young, but we continue to use negative and ineffective methods in our elementary schools and these kids grow up to be the high school discipline problems and dropouts. We need to teach our teachers more effective ways to meet difficult children’s needs so they aren’t problems in the classroom. That way, everyone wins. Keep posted to find out what our school does when we don’t return the form. Would you sign away your child’s or a neighbor’s child’s rights to any part of their education? The author welcomes your comments, and invites you to share your experiences, about these issues at the Legal.com Education Forum. About the author: Sally Bowman Alden is a Vice President of Legal.com; a former school psychologist and executive director of an international nonprofit educational foundation; and a mother of two 8 year old children. |
©2008 Legal.com,
Inc. All rights
reserved The opinions expressed in the various articles collected here are the opinions of their authors and not necessarily the opinion of Legal Recourse or Legal.com. Trademarks are the property of their holders. |