CRITICAL CONDITIONS THAT HAVE OCCURRED BETWEEN THE STUDENTS AS WELL AS BETWEEN STUDENTS AND THE TEACHER
During lesson times, I was normally faced with issues that involve quarrels and fights among the students, which are normally caused by the non-performing students. My class consists of teenagers with special needs. These students are normally depressed and usually have a problem in organizing and focusing on education. Due to this, they often yell, quarrel and fight with other students as well as shouting at me.
These students normally undergo difficulties, stressful situations, and these results to obtaining of poor grades, as well as losing a friendship and a sense of belonging. Every time these students attempt to handle this situation, they feel overwhelmed and this results to hopelessness. Arguments, quarrels, difficulty in focusing on academic objective become the main obstacles towards academic performance. This is because the teenagers with low moods often become antisocial and have a negative feeling while dealing with their objectives. Feelings of wanting to run away from school dominates in their lives, since there is a strong feeling of not being accepted, understood and approved by their teachers, and even the other students. This causes the teenagers to stop paying proper attention in class and become emotional even to minor issues, and hence acquiring a high degree of sensitivity towards rejection in relationships. If this poor self-esteem is not properly taken care of by the teacher, it might even result to alcohol and drug abuse as well as sexual promiscuity.
At this stage, I become frustrated and confused when these teenagers begin to behave like this. This is because if I were to apply stern disciplinary actions, they will only act to put the students down, because they only serve to increase feelings of guilt and depressions. I sometimes wait thinking that these lowly behavior will end when this teenagers reach the adulthood stage since the anti depressants medication are not recommended for use with the children and teenagers (Smith, Pollaway Patton, 2007). Before implementing my improvement measures for these students, I decided first to understand the teenagers behavior.
Understanding Teenagers
A teenager like any other human being is a social being. Therefore, socializing is a need that comes immediately after the basic needs. In order to socialize with other students heshe needs to associate with them. In our school setting, we have an environment consisting of diversity in culture and social standing. These differences create a gap between the privileged and the under privileged students, and thus affects the relationships among the different students to an extent of bringing a separation between different sets of groups (Prinstein Dodge, 2008).
As a result, depression has occurred to some of the students leading to a challenging in preventing them from fighting and yelling at me, as well as organizing and letting them focus on their educational goal.
According to Prinstein Dodge (2008), teens who have special needs normally think of themselves in a negatively distorted manner. This makes their thinking to slant towards the negative rather the positive side of an event. They have unrealistic thoughts about education, negative thoughts towards themselves, and unrealistic thoughts towards the future. Since their emotions are based on a distorted way of thinking, they tend to have negative emotional thinking. By understanding these teenagers, I gained a substantial knowledge of managing similar situations in future.
Lessons learned for managing similar situations
Nevertheless, I later learnt that proper communication with these special education students. Not only that but I also realized that I should be flexible enough in order to identify the kind of approach I need to focus on in order to improve the performance of these students
To communicate properly with them I needed to
Give the teenagers full attention, as listening to them in a careful manner, the will make them realize that I care about them since I take time to listen them. In turn, this will increase the chances of listening to me and hence, more concentration in classroom.
Get every detail of the teenager by the using tactics that will enable the teenager to open up even to the important details of their lives. This I learned to do by getting the students in an open conversation with me (Smith, Pollaway Patton, 2007). I also learned how to acknowledge the teenagers feeling without necessarily agreeing with them, as this helps them to feel that their feelings are validated. Hence, they acquire a higher sense of belonging in the school environment.
Ask open-ended questions since asking questions is a critical issue while gathering details from teenagers, it is of utmost importance to ask open-ended questions that do not require only a yes or no for a response (Smith, Pollaway Patton, 2007). By this I came to learn of deeper details of these students with special needs as well as the various methods that I can use while teaching in class, in order for them to achieve the educational goal .
Never criticize the teen but rather the behavior I learned to do this by normally using the wording I as this does not attack the teens personality it usually talks about the action and not the teen himself. Such sentence could include, when you did not complete your assignment before going out, I felt really bird. This statement does not criticize the teenager, but rather talks about the faulty action of the child. (Smith, Pollaway Patton, 2007). Because these teenagers normally feel criticized, the act of criticizing them would only aggravate the situation by increasing negative thoughts towards themselves, hence, resulting to the low interest in the academic achievement. Therefore, criticizing the action will prevent them from having negative thoughts towards themselves.
Letting the consequences fit the action by letting, the teens know the consequences of their actions they take will help the improvement of their actions. Connecting consequences with actions lets the teenagers choose their choose their actions correctly, as this portrays to them that they are accountable for their actions, and show them that with every step of growth goes along with an increased responsibility for actions (Smith, Pollaway, Patton,2007). This also helps them to realistic thoughts towards the future.
Using descriptive praise By describing, the actions in detail and giving evidence that support our claims so that the teenagers can evaluate their actions and help the teenagers to credit themselves (Smith, Pollaway Patton, 2007). This can work best in order to make their thinking to slant more on the positive side rather the side of side of an event.
I also learnt to that by helping to the students in planning class work management would improve his level of concentration. This I did by divided the big tasks into small achievable units with duration of time of completion specified. I also learned to help can help the needy students in making priorities as well identifying the best goals among alternatives for them (Smith, Pollaway, Patton,2007).For example, by deciding for them a topic, deciding for them the information to gather, and planning together. I did this by enquiring from them how the methods that help them concentrate best with their education, as well as enquiring, the environment that would make them perform best. This can be done for certain duration of time, and withdrawn gradually as the students learn how to concentrate on their educational goal, since teachers should never endeavor to make more support than the students requires.
Giving a positive feedback to the needy child by praising him in front of the other children whenever he does a positive action as this enables the child to have sense of control (Smith, Pollaway Patton, 2007).
CONCLUSION
Giving the teenagers emotional nourishment will help them become independent, creative thinkers who will not always be looking for approval from others in class all the time. With genuine praise, these teenagers will learn to create trust in themselves without any teenager looking for anybodys opinion .The biggest challenge while nourishing is trying to tell the teenagers what is wrong with their action. First, you are supposed to tell the student what is right then you tell him what needs to be fixed. With these guidelines, all teenagers will be able to achieve their educational goal in school successfully.
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