I Just Don’t Know What to do With Him/Her… Now I do! Synthesis Essay By Ashley Mellor
The Beginning of a Journey: Questions to Answer
As an undergraduate student in the teaching program at MSU, I thought the most important and most rewarding job of a teacher was to inspire kids to love learning. I also thought that a good teacher could do this with every student they taught. I thought this because when I was in school the teachers that I considered “good teachers” were the ones that inspired me to love learning and to want to become a teacher. I thought that good teachers were those that came up with engaging interesting lessons, and that all students could learn easily if things were taught in the right way. I thought that the most important things to learn in my courses were how to teach and what to teach in what grade.
In a sense I was very naive. After gaining four years of first grade teaching experience, I still believe some of these things, however, my vision of a teacher has changed from the ideal view of what teachers do to the reality of what teachers do. I now realize that to inspire some students is easy, and to inspire others is a challenge. I still believe that the most important job of a teacher is to inspire students to love learning, however, I also have learned how hard this truly can be to do with all students. I know that engaging lessons are important, but they do not mean that every student will learn as you hoped they would. I learned that the most important thing to learn in my courses is not what to teach, but how to teach, how to manage students’ behaviors, and how to help all students learn. My new thought as a teacher with some experiences thus far in my career, is how to help those students that struggle to learn. The word “struggle” can refer to so many things. It can refer to struggling academically, behaviorally, emotionally, or struggling with motivation to learn. I now know that answering the questions “what else do I do with him/her” is the most important question that I can answer for these students to help them succeed. “I just don’t know what else to do”, is a statement that I have found myself making over the past three years and this is a the question that drove my course decisions and concentration in my journey through obtaining my masters degree.
I love learning and I know I am not ready to complete my learning journey. I forever have been and will always be a life long learner. But how do you inspire those who are not? How do you inspire those who struggle? How do you inspire those who seem to have everything against them? How do you reach all those students who struggle and show them as young children the value of education, the importance, and the love of life long learning? This is the true challenge of a teacher. This is my journey through learning to answer these questions.
How do I get him to learn to be a student? Now I have a new understanding.
The first course I took in my journey through the MAED program was CEP 843, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): Characteristics and Educational Implications. This course was taught by Dr. Ferreri. At the time I registered for this course I was in my second year of teaching and I had been working with a student diagnosed with ASD that was mainstreamed in my room for the morning. He would not sit at his desk or at the carpet with the class. To each direction given he would yell no and run around the room. He spent the morning walking around the room in a repetitive pattern and refusing to partake in class and lessons. He was not social with peers, and his peers were unsure of how to react to his behaviors and to interact with him. This student was communicating through echolalia, through his behaviors, and through the word no. Otherwise, there was a lack of communication between this student and myself. I had tried visuals, picture schedules, social stories, and with no positive impact on this student. On an hourly basis I asked myself what else can I do? How do I teach him to be a student? After four months of working with this student I finally said, “I just don’t know what else to do!”. This was my first experience with a student like this in the realm of my own classroom and I really was not receiving any support from my district as this was the first time they were fully mainstreaming students into their grade level classrooms.
Needless to say, I was very excited to sign up for this class. Not only to learn about how to help this particular student, but because working with children with ASD was always something of interest to me. I almost went into Special Education after working with a few students with ASD in a preschool program. I knew I could work with this student I just did not know how. I knew as a teacher I needed to know more. Since I was not offered any professional development opportunities through my district I knew I needed to learn more on my own. This class opened my eyes to the world of working with students with ASD. Not only was I able to learn about the characteristics of students with ASD, but I learned about how to find for myself effective interventions for working with these students. There is so much information out there, correct, and incorrect about ASD that knowing what to look for and how to research to find researched based interventions was vital to improving myself as a teacher working with this population of students. Although I had worked with students of this population before, I was now armed with information to do it well. Before, I was given information such as pictures, less words, and consistency. However, this course taught me so much more. It did not just give me a list of things to try, I was able to explore interventions through research of others and myself. I was able to discuss with others their experiences and things that worked and things that did not.
I also had the opportunity to take a journey through the eyes of a child with ASD as I read There’s a Boy in Here by Judy and Sean Barron. This is a book written by a mother and her son that has ASD. As the story tells of their life and Judy is the primary narrator of the book which depicts their life, and as Sean gets older in the story there are a lot of narrations from him and explanations of why he remembers doing the things he did. This enlightened me into the thought process of a student with ASD. Everything has a reason, it may seem unreasonable to you, but to the child it makes perfect sense. This book really went right to my heart. I will never look at a student with ASD in the same light again after reading it. It is inspiring, informative, and a true eye opener into the life experiences of living with ASD from a parent and a child. This is a book that I think all individuals who have any interaction with a student or a family with ASD should read. It evokes empathy, understanding, and awareness.
This course taught me a great deal about the student that I was immediately working with, but also about students I had worked with in the past. I know that it will also help me with students with ASD that I work with in the future. I was able to learn how to research interventions and to critique them. I was able to learn how to present this information to parents and places they could go for support. But most of all I learned to appreciate the struggles these families go through, the desires they have for their children, and the things students with ASD can do with the right supports!
They struggle to learn… I struggle to teach… Now we both succeed
Another course that taught me a great deal about struggling learners was very appropriately titled TE 846, Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners. This course was taught by Maria Selena Protacio. Why did I not learn this before now? This was the recurring thought that went through my mind throughout this class. Was it presented in my undergraduate courses, but the information was not relevant so it did not sink in? Was I not directly in charge of the reading improvement of students so what I learned didn’t stick? Or was it not as much of a focus in undergraduate courses while I was earning my bachelors? This course taught me about working with struggling literacy learners. It taught me information about phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading instruction that I knew, but now I know more about why these things are important. I knew bits and pieces of these things before this course through experiences in undergrad courses, my internship, and my first years of teaching. However, this course gave me the research behind it, filled in the holes of my knowledge that I did not know, and made me feel more confident teaching literacy to especially struggling readers.
I was able to do a case study with one student and I watched him grow day by day. Not just in skills, but in confidence, and a love of learning. I was armed with the information I needed to identify problems in learning, to teach the skills necessary, and the research to support those decisions and present them to others. This course taught me how to observe and assess a student to find where they were struggling in the fundamental reading skills. Then it taught me researched based strategies and lessons to teach these students. I was able to make an intervention plan for a student, and to implement it. While I was doing this I saw his skills increase in literacy. I learned that the first few year of reading are vital to successful reading achievement throughout life. I learned that as a first grade teacher what I do now to help a struggling reader, really will impact their educational success and in turn life success for the rest of their life.
After completing this course I feel confident of my knowledge in teaching reading skills to students. I felt armed with the information and research to support my literacy choices in my classroom and interventions I implement with my students. I completed this course and I felt that I would be more effective at determining why readers struggle in the future and what intervention to do to help them right away. Since first grade is a year where a lot of reading learning is done, and those who have basic skill deficits begin to struggle, this was an important course for my to take to help answer that question of how to help a struggling reader.
I just don’t know what else to do about this behavior… now I do!
In my second year of teaching 1st grade I had a student that was defiant, angry and aggressive. I had multiple students that were impulsive and distractible. I had a student that was immature and threw temper tantrums each time things did not go her way. I had four students with a label of CI who had behavioral concerns. I also had two students with a label of ASD. In a room of 26 students I had 10 students that I would classify as exhibiting challenging behaviors. I know it is a communication attempt BUT WHAT ARE THEY COMMUNICATING? I know that they are children that need something BUT WHAT DO I DO NOW? What do I do to help these students learn? What am I doing wrong? In my classroom, at my house, and in my sleep these were the questions that ran across my mind. The course CEP 832, Teaching Students with Challenging Behaviors, taught by Dr. Evelyn, Oka, helped me to answer these questions. This course helped me to learn how to get to the bottom of communication attempts and things to do that are researched based and can help. As a teacher having about 5 years of experience teaching preschool ages children I know that behaviors are truly and simply communication attempts by students to get a need met. However, figuring out what the need is and how to meet it were the challenges I was facing.
In this course I was able to take a deeper look into the behaviors that challenging students show in the classroom. These students are students you might say are defiant, hyperactive, shy, withdrawn, low achievers, hyperactive, distracted, or aggressive or angry. I learned about the reasons children might have these behaviors. It might be due to their family life, personality, or other areas that might cause students to express these types of behaviors in the classroom. I also learned about the basic characteristic behaviors of students in each category of a student with a challenging behavior. Not only did I learn about behaviors, but I spent time reflecting upon what type of a stance did I personally have when working with students with these behaviors. I learned the ways that we as teachers can help these students, and the ways we can make things worse. The most challenging part of a challenging behavior is not the behavior itself, it is keeping an effective stance as a teacher, remembering the behavior is not a personal attack on you, but a communication attempt, and then figuring out what is being communicated.
This course was designed to focus on students with challenging behaviors. With the previous year in my room I think I had every challenging behavior presented in this course all in one room of 1st graders. This course helped me to reflect upon my stance as a teacher, the approaches I take with these kids, and to learn what to do when I feel that I can’t get through. Not only was I able to learn what I did right and wrong with my past students, but I was able to effectively change things in my current classroom to work with students who exhibit these behaviors. I was able to do a project working with one particular student to change his challenging behavior. This student was hyperactive and distractible. I chose this behavior because it is one I see often in a first grade classroom. I spent time researching effective interventions for this student, ways that I can help as a teacher with having an effective teaching stance with this student, and how I can socialize him and teach him about his behaviors and how to fix them. With this one particular student the interventions I was able to implement took me from a position of frustration with giving constant redirections to this student to be on task all day long, to being able to teach this student to self monitor his own behavior and take responsibility of his on task behavior for himself. Does he still need support? Yes. However, after this course I was able to learn how to support him successfully and to help his challenging behavior be something that he can monitor and I can help teach him about. After this course I feel that I am prepared to work with students of all types of challenging behaviors and I am armed with the tools to help take these communication attempting behaviors, to understood needs, and to giving the child the help they need. Not only did it teach me what to do to help these students, but it showed me why these students act this way.
The End of a Journey: Questions answered, but still more questions to come
A reoccurring theme in my journey through my master's was to learn how to teach students that traditional teaching information, wisdom, and management does not work with. So many times I would say I just don’t know what else to do. Now, I have learned what else to do. Not only did I learn more about working with students that have challenges in school, but I also learned how to research effective interventions and methods, and how to identify the communication attempts of students. I have learned the power of observation and what to look for. I have learned the power of research and places to go. Most importantly, I have learned how to dig deeper into a child academically and behaviorally and find what each individual needs to succeed. I was able to learn to look at myself as a teacher and to evaluate my actions, teaching methods, and their effects on students both negative and positive. As I complete this part of my life long education I know there will be many more questions that I need answered. I know I will never stop looking for information to answer these questions. However, I feel that I have made enormous gains in preventing the statement I just don’t know what else to do, from being something I say regularly in my teaching career. Now if I just don’t know what else to do, I have recourses to look back to and I have the knowledge of how to dig deeper into the child, into the research out there, and how to teach myself just what to do next!
Referenced Material: Barron, J., & Barron, S. (1992). There’s a boy in here: A mother and her son tell the story of his emergence from autism. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.