I have been working with students with Emotional Behavioral Disability (EBD) since I graduated from college in 2006. I did not initially go to school for special education, but after spending five years working with students in this program, I decided to go back and get a special education license. I started out working as a one-on-one aide with a severe EBD student. After working with this student I realized that special education was where I wanted to continue working. I made a connection with that student (and almost every student I have worked with) that no other teacher was able to make, and because of that, I was able to help that student to improve in school with not only behavior, but also with academics. I have a brother who has a lot of disabilities and was also in the EBD program through school, and I believe that has helped me to become the teacher I am today, as I learned at a young age how to successfully interact with a child who was set off very easily. I have been able to use what I learned at a young age (and have continued learning while teaching) to help me be a successful teacher of students with EBD. I have learned that relationships are everything, and in my classroom, this is my very first priority. The students who do not open up as easily as others have proved to be a challenge for me, as I believe it is because we do not have the relationship I would like to build with them. However, I have found that when I continue working at it, I am
Currently, I am a Personal Care Instructional Aide for a nonverbal Down Syndrome student at West Hempfield Elementary. I work hand and hand with the special education teacher to devise lesson plans to suit the needs of my student. I am responsible for implementing the lesson plans one-on-one with my student in Language Arts, Mathematics, and social skills interactions daily. On a daily basis, I am also responsible for molding and shaping my student's behaviors and prompt when necessary. Working in the learning support room has taught me a variety of ways to incorporate differentiated instruction to suit the needs of all students. It has also shown me the type of teacher I should be, a teacher who adapts content to meet the needs of all learners and the importance of inclusion.
Special education teachers make a conscious decision to work on a daily basis with students who display various disabilities. Some of the disabilities include autism, negative social and emotional behaviors, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, mobility disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, as well as students who suffer from being blind and deaf. When these disabilities interfere with the daily educational activities of a child, the child is in need of the valuable opportunities provided in a self-contained classroom.
I have been a teacher of students with special needs for the last couple of years in alternative settings. The students I like best tend to be the most challenging both behaviorally and academically. Success can be more apparent, yet at times there is frustration. I feel I am good at it, but need to learn more. Most importantly I love teaching kids with special challenges. The key is to be creative and keep trying.
Some discipline issues that teachers and administrators face are; do we set the same rules for all students, and should the students with special needs have the same consequences as general education students. Students with emotional disabilities often have difficulties with behavior in the following areas: work refusal, outburst (real or perceived persecution). I believe each situation needs to evaluated to determine the consequence of each student. Discipline decisions and actions can vary, such as, if a special needs student is out of class due to discipline issues then the teacher should make sure it is documented for the time they are removed from the classroom, if they are out for more than ten days an ARD meeting needs to be scheduled to look at changes that need to be made and a plan of action needs to take place to help the student be more successful. Some techniques that can be used are, involve all of the students in the
My personal philosophy of special education drives not from teaching in the field, but from, observations, and personal experience, and the workshops I attended. I have had the opportunity to work with individuals with special needs in many different settings, all this help cultivate my knowledge in handling the needs of the special needed student. Special needs students have the ability to learn, to function, to grow, and most importantly to succeed. The difference comes into how they learn or how they need to be taught. There are as many beliefs about the "hows" as there are teachers and each of us forms our own philosophy through our experiences and research. As a student in a special education teachers’ program, learners with
My observation this semester is in a self-contained classroom for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The class is taught by one special education teacher who is assisted by a teaching aide. The desks are spaced out from one another, allowing each student a lot of room to move around. I believe the desks are arranged this way so that the students have limited contact with one another. There are books and games on a shelf that the students are allowed to use during break time. There are also two computers that they may use during breaks or after they have completed their work. In one corner of the room, there are two bean bags and a sign that says quiet zone. The students are taught reading, math, and language arts in this room. They go to an inclusion room for science and social studies. They eat lunch in the cafeteria with the rest of the fifth-grade students. They also leave this room every day to attend related arts with the rest of the student body.
In this paper you will find several strategies the classroom teachers can use and implement in the classroom with their students who suffer from emotional and behavioral disorders. Selected interventions will provide information with the activities and assessments that will be used to help the teacher implement these procedures to help the students to become stronger socially, with cognitive and behavioral and emotional needs for our EBD students.
Presently I am a Special Education teacher working with children who have a wide range of disabilities. My class setting is integrated, which mean half of the class is general and the other half is special. My primary goal is to modify general education lesson plans to meet each student’s needs and abilities. These needs may include, but not limited to emotional, physical or cognitive disabilities, teaching basic literacy and life skills. I have an interest in this field because I feel with the proper help and assistant; students make positive changes in their academic and social life. Providing early intervention is essential when teaching kids with disabilities. One of the main reasons why I have made the decision to pursue a PhD in education, specialization in Special educator, is because I enjoy what I do and would like to make a difference. My ultimate goal is to keep making a difference by helping those that needed it and provide them with the proper resources to enhance their ability. I want to be an example to my children and have them see the end result of what happens when one desire to strive for the best and what they can accomplish. I want my children to see that with hard work, motivation, dedication, concentration, and having no limits that they will attain any goals they may set forth.
I wanted to make a quick comment on your post. Although, I am not from the education field and have not been in the classroom except for my practicum studies your question did remind of an incident that I recently experienced with one of DD clients I had taken to his cousin’s school band concert. My client has been diagnosed with autism and has difficulty at times in the mainstream community as he has troubles with crowds. He struggles with emotional behaviors that include anger and hyperactivity. My team and I and I have been working with him on creating positive behavior supports to overcome these unwanted negative behaviors. We are able to calm him at times, but never able to truly control them always.
I am very passionate about working with kids with autism. They have such amazing personalities and I feel like people don’t see past the disability to the unique person they are. For several years I worked at a residential facility for kids on the spectrum. I was a direct care staff that worked one on one with them to work on their goals their treatment plan was focusing on. My passion to help kids with autism comes from my previous experience working with these kids and watching them grow and learn new skills. This transformation that I watched happen and helped be a part of with these kids made me want to help more kids with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). There are a lot of skills that need to be taught to these children. Socialization, communication, and positive behavior are just a few kids with autism need help improving. I believe that the earlier that you teach a child these skills the more successful they will be. Early intervention has had a positive outcome within many research experiments that professionals have done. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) also requires schools to teach kids with disabilities alongside typically developed kids as much as possible.
Effective instruction for students with EBD requires consistency in delivering, monitoring, and adapting instruction beyond what is often feasible in a regular classroom. Because of these challenges, it is understandable that when working with students with EBD in general education settings, teachers rarely modify their instruction (Gunter, Kenton- Denny, & Venn, 2000; Landrum et al., 2003; Levy & Chard, 2001). The purpose of the present article is to present teachers with a repertoire of evidence-based strategies that
Being a special educator, there are different roles and responsibilities separate from a general education teacher. As a special ed teacher, you need to be able to be more flexible and open-minded when it comes to teaching. These students, whether in a self-contained classroom or an ICT class, will have such differing needs than their counterparts. While they may still have some same needs, most of them will be different and individual. Even though we may have several students with the same disability in our class, that doesn’t mean that we can treat them the same; each student has differing abilities that we must figure out individually. This is one huge problem that I see prevailing in schools today. Teachers tend to think that if a child has autism, they have the same issues and needs as another child with autism but this is not the case. One child might need headphones for noise-canceling features while the other child might be ok with sound but need more social interactions skills. The ability to discern what a child needs based on their own performance is a crucial aspect to supporting every student equally. As a special educator, we need to not only look at their deficits but their capabilities as well. To define someone by what they can’t do is such a negative point of view. If we go into the classroom trying to find what is wrong with a child, we may never notice what exceptional skills they may have. For example, in class when Mark Sarabian came to talk about the
Students with emotional and behavioral disorder (EBD) exhibit various characteristics relevant to their identified diagnosis. The primary characteristic of students with EBD is problem behaviors are displayed at school, home, community, and other social settings. These problem behaviors are described professionally as externalizing and internalizing behaviors that students with EBD often engage in regularly. Externalizing behaviors are described as acting-out behaviors that are aggressive and/or disruptive that is observable as behaviors directed towards others. Internalizing behaviors are behaviors that are construed as acting-in behaviors such as anxiety, fearfulness, withdrawal, and other indications of an individual's mood or internal
While the presence of certain characteristics in children with behavioral disorders might sometimes seem discouraging but the bottom line is not to give up on any student in any case. Most of the times, children with behavioral and emotional problems might challenge a patience of teachers and cause temporary despair. In this situation, teachers require the support of others in supported students to succeed. The classroom is a learning community; therefore, it is very much significant to create a constructive atmosphere in the classroom. The successful behavior management in classroom can be improved by colleagues as well as by the family of the students. While considering the needs of students with behavioral and emotional problems, the paper aims to develop appropriate strategies for teaching students with behavioral disorders in the classroom.
An effective teacher of students with disabilities is one that actively utilizes the available resources to positively influence students’ educations. This includes anyone that may be on the IEP team or other school professionals that could be of assistance at that time. The most common person