It’s important to teach behavior

To the editor:
Imagine yourself as a young child, you walk into school on your first day of kindergarten.
One of the most exciting days as a young child. You meet your teacher, peers, and make new friends. Everything is great. You as a kindergartener, love school. Your teacher is great, and you have lots of friends.
As the weeks of school go on, your teacher, who you thought was great, starts yelling at you.
You as a kindergartener think, “What did I do? I do not know why you are yelling at me!”
Your friends all of a sudden start to ignore you. Not wanting to play with you at recess. To you, a kindergartener, the end of the world is happening.
Your schoolwork also becomes challenging to you. You have a hard time finishing your guided reading book that is only seven pages long and you just can not focus on your math addition and subtraction facts long enough to fully understand.
These problems occur every day in children who are suffering from Emotional Behavioral Disorder (EBD); not only in kindergarten students but also in students ranging from preschool to the fifth grade. Each one of these problems can also be solved.
Three researchers who wrote “The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities” said that emotional and behavioral disorder (EBD) is a behavioral or emotional reaction of a student that interferes with everyday life. This includes social relationships, personal adjustment, academic progress, everyday behavior and work adjustment.
EBD is one of the many disabilities children can have. Unlike other disabilities, EBD seems to be pushed off to the side by teachers, parents and care givers.
Why is this?
Well, there are few studies about EBD. Therefore, we as everyday caregivers do not understand what is going on with the children and students we are dealing with.
EBD could be caused by many different factors. With more research, professionals will be able to identify and treat EBD with more effective testing and strategies. Right now, with so little research, schools have a hard time understanding and knowing what to do with children with EBD. Schools also have a hard time knowing what is causing the misbehaviors.
More research could clear up misunderstanding between the school and student with EBD. More research could also lead to better behavior overall in the student with EBD and later on in life keep that student out of trouble after they graduate form high school.
A group of researchers, who wrote the article “School-Wide Positive Behavior Support and Students with Emotional/ Behavioral Disorders: Implications for Prevention, Identification and Intervention” in 2010 said, “school-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) make in working toward a process to prevent chronic patterns of problem behavior.”
SWPBS is designed to teach students correct behavior in different settings. SWPBS also has different strategies teachers and school personnel should use when dealing with misbehavior in students. SWPBS can help students work toward positive behavior, identify students for special education and also support children who are at risk or have EBD.
Students with EBD get punished for their behavior without an explanation about why they are getting punished. The teacher, or whoever is punishing the student, just assumes the student knows what he or she did. This adds more stress and anger for the student and leads to more misbehaviors.
When a school puts an SWPBS into place, handling students who have misbehaved becomes easier. This will eventually lead to positive behaviors because students are taught how to act in situations and know how to deal with their emotions. They should not be punished for something they did not know was wrong.
Teachers teach students to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, divide. So teachers should also teach students how to behave as well. Right?
Olivia Acheson
Fort Recovery