CI5523 - Interventions for Students with Challenging Behaviors

More than anything this module has shed a lot of light on how I was treated as a student. Being someone with an ADHD background I saw many of these behaviors exhibited either by myself or the students around me. This module has also taught me that empathy seems to be the name of the game so to speak. Being able to put ourselves in our students shoes is crucial to understanding the behaviors they might be exhibiting. One of the reasons I have been so eager to work in special education is because I feel very strongly that I can do better than my teachers did for me. It's not quite a vendetta, but it is certainly personal. This module has only underscored that notion because it seems so obvious in retrospect that the causes for challenging behavior are not simply because the student has a disability. To brush a student off simply because of their disability is cruel and callous but having completed this module I can see how some of my teachers may have felt overconfident or perhaps in...

 Challenging behaviors in an academic setting have a variety of causes and contributors. The key to this weeks module was understanding what those behaviors are, what their root causes might be, and which strategies can be used to prevent them. Our module assignment was to create and interview protocol to analyze a school of our choosing in an effort to understand whether or not that school was using RtI in a way that effective prevents negative behaviors. I chose the school I work in for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was it being the easiest. However, I did learn quite a bit about functions of the school that I may have otherwise been unfamiliar with. According to our class lectures "Teachers can develop methods for helping students learn how to self-check their inappropriate behaviors. According to Dodd (1994), having a guidance approach to challenging behaviors will help nurture positive relationships and will enhance the students' learning experiences."...