School Opens

"we cannot give up on our children because we do not know what the child's been through" (Freeman Hrabowski III; President of University of Maryland-Baltimore County in speech to Gary Indiana teachers). So many times teachers and administrators give up on children with severe behaviors. First they are evaluated for Special Education, and often even after placement they are suspended for acting up, eventually moved to a more restrictive setting in the school and then our of the school. So "what"...you may ask "do they need?" They need you, as teacher, to understand that at any given time they are doing the best that they can. They are reacting from a place of stress...stress at what they left at home that morning or stress of living with an alcoholic or abusive parent...perhaps the stress of a friend being murdered the night before or even the year before. Meet them in that place and you will get much less resistance than if you try to control their behavior. Step back from your fear that this chid, or these children, are going to cause you to lose control of your own classroom. Meet the child in a place of love...not fear!