Blog #6

Giving Visibility to Students with Emotional-Behavior Challenges

By Maurice Elias

10/14/09
http://www.edutopia.org/students-behavior-emotional-challenges-visibility

This article was about letting children be a part of the school society. Some children feel left out and they feel lost when they are in school. Some children feel as if the school doesn't care about them, that the school only cares about the grades that the children score on standardized tests. This goes especially with the students that have emotional-behavior disorder, but also for the students that don't have this disorder. Mentioned are some tips that teachers can do to eliminate this sense of feeling for the students. For example, the school can organize a problem solving team, when something goes wrong in the school, the students can discuss what the problem was and then find ways to fix the problem. the school can create a survey asking the students what the reasons are that they have good behavior and bad behavior. This will help improve the discipline in the school. The students can be tour guides to new visitors to the school, for example, a new student and his/her parents. The school can create idea/suggestion boxes so that the students can share their concerns and ideas about the school. And, allow the students to share their comments on the way their teacher teaches. And last, but not least, if the students were given a survey, like the one we at UTPA fill out at the end of the semester, the children would probably feel important and part of the school.
I think that allowing these tips into the school environment, the children, not only the ones that suffer emotionally, but all of the students would feel like they are a part of the school, not just any student and the school environment would probably improve. I wonder if this or part of this is done in any school here locally?