Читать книгу The "Why" Behind Classroom Behaviors, PreK-5 - Jamie Chaves - Страница 9

“When we begin to know ourselves in an open and self-supportive way, we take the first steps to encourage our children to know themselves.”

—Dr. Dan Siegel, M.D.

Most teachers and early childhood educators enter the field because they love children and are passionate about providing them with a learning experience that will benefit each child throughout his or her life. Many educators beautifully orchestrate the 25+ students in their classrooms while operating within the curriculum standards provided by each state. Teachers not only instruct children about how to write their name and execute multiplication tables but also are there for students in many different ways. They make a child smile who is having a bad day, put a Band-Aid on a child’s knee after she’s fallen down, give up their snack when a child forgets to pack one, and spend their nights tailoring lesson plans to motivate children to learn. They foster curiosity, empathy, friendships, and help students to learn who they are and who they one day hope to become. Parents entrust their children to a teacher’s care for the majority of each day. Parents “expect” that teachers are “doing their job” to help prepare their children for the next stage of education and the next stage of life. Teachers have an enormous job of preparing the next generation for success; however, many may feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities and experience the frustration of being underpaid and not supported.

Nowadays, teachers are tasked with increasingly more responsibility for fostering development within the school environment. The burden often falls on them to establish foundational skills that children previously had when entering school: things such as postural stability (i.e., the ability to sustain an upright position in a chair), shoulder and hand strength, the ability to identify and express how they are feeling, as well as the ability to enter play with peers appropriately. Moreover, according to the Center for Disease Control, the rates of neurodevelopmental diagnoses, such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and sensory processing disorder (SPD), continue to increase, resulting in a more diverse population in every classroom.¹ In fact, the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) estimates one in five children have a learning difference.² With the lack of training and educational opportunities around how best to teach to a wide variety of learning needs and develop a foundation of emotional and relational safety, teachers often feel overwhelmed and underequipped. They may occasionally feel at a loss about how to best support the children they so clearly want to help. Oftentimes the strategies they use to manage challenging behaviors may seem ineffective, short-lived, or perhaps even detrimental to the student’s progress.

At times, children with unique learning needs engage in behaviors that look oppositional, defiant, lazy, or disengaged. In fact, a 2017 NCLD report revealed “that children with learning and attention issues are as smart as their peers and can achieve at high levels but too often are misunderstood as lazy or unintelligent.”² They are assigned a behavior plan that may have good intentions but does not actually address the underlying cause of the negative behaviors. In order to optimize a learning environment that accommodates all children, it is necessary for teachers to explore “why” a child is displaying certain behaviors. As the “why” begins to be uncovered, better supports and systems can be put in place to address the underlying cause rather than put a Band-Aid on the behavioral symptoms. It’s not that teachers don’t want to discover “why,” because most teachers do want to understand the underlying cause when a child is having a difficult time. It’s that many teachers don’t feel equipped to ask the right questions, don’t know there’s a different way of addressing behaviors, don’t have the resources with over 20 children in the class, or do not know how to work against a system that has been doing the same thing for decades.

There is hope! With the advancements of brain research, we now know more than ever before that the nervous system can be changed over time. We also know more about the interconnectedness of the brain and interconnectedness of people than ever before. This is good news not only for children with learning differences and social-emotional difficulties but also for adults who are learning new ways of interacting with and responding to the needs of all children. Our brains and relationships can change, too. This is due to exciting research about the brain’s neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change over time with certain repeated experiences. This concept underlies the statement “neurons that fire together wire together,” which we use frequently throughout this book. This means that the more frequently you practice a certain skill set, the more likely those neuronal connections in the brain will be created and solidified, making it easier for us to do new things over time. We all have certain strengths as well as areas where we struggle. This is likely tied to certain areas in the brain that aren’t fully developed, or integrated, which we will discuss more in Chapter 6.

Neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change over time with certain repeated experiences.

Our students do too, and as we will explore throughout this book, children’s disruptive behaviors are what we see on the surface. Underneath those behaviors are likely certain vulnerabilities, possible skill sets that are lagging, or certain areas of the brain that aren’t fully integrated that we need to uncover and better understand. It all starts with slowing down, and asking, “Why?”