As an early childhood teacher, I am required to complete a certain amount of training hours each year. The district kindergarten centers in my state provide three nights of training: one in the fall, one in the winter, and one in the spring. The trainings are free, easy access from work and home, and they provide a light dinner. It is very easy to rack up training hours through our district. Generally, they are good training sessions and I come away with good information and helpful hints and tips to take back to my classroom.
Last night I attended the winter training session. Last fall the kindergarten center staff took a survey on what kinds of trainings some of the early childhood teachers would like to have. The result: what to do with children with behavior challenges.
All teachers need help with behavior-challenged students. It was a good session last night … except I received the help and tips last spring from these same district professionals.
I had a student in my class who was very intelligent and educationally above the line, way ahead in the ballgame. Emotionally and socially he was not even in the dugout. This downfall had a great affect on him. He struggled with what do with himself when he didn’t get his way or another student got to a game or toy before he did. He became very aggressive to the point of hurting others. At this time he was 3 years old. He would knock over an entire shelf about 4 feet long full of wooden blocks. He would throw the blocks across the room. When removed from the situation to calm down, he would kick and hit and pinch teachers trying to work with him.
My director and school owner had helped me and worked with me with this student till we had exhausted our ideas and knowledge. We called in help from the school district. One professional came to my class to observe his behavior then we had a meeting with his parents. This was not the first parent meeting. Of course, we met with them before calling in reinforcements.
The district behavioral expert set up some testing sessions for this student –emotionally, psychologically, and academically. The results: he’s a genius. Oh, we knew that. Academically he’s ok. It’s when he is in a group that he loses control and doesn’t understand how to interact with others or wait his turn or control his emotions.
This student has since moved up to the pre-kindergarten class and continues to have emotional and social challenges. There are many days when he has difficulty controlling his aggressive behavior and hits others, sometimes even to the point of putting his hands around their necks.
Now back to the training session last night. The information they gave was good but not good enough for a large group session. It is too difficult to know how to handle children with challenging behavior issues in a large group training session. We must work those things out and brainstorm ideas and techniques on an individual basis. Each child is different. Each child learns differently. My studies of learning styles tell me to investigate how each child learns and go from there to help them with their behavior challenges.
The block-thrower student I mentioned in the above paragraphs learns best on a individual basis and likes the attention of teachers. He can work in a small group of students but large circle time groups are sometimes too much and overwhelming to him.
Other students that I have this current school year learn best in large circle time groups. One boy loves reading words from the word wall and doing letter identification during a large group time but is not much into individual center time and will resort to his all-time favorite activity of playing with blocks and making roads for cars. That’s a good activity for learning social play and constructing, measuring, and building, but not good to do day after day. He’s on track for kindergarten though based on multiple ways and styles he learns.
By the way, I must have made an impact on the block-thrower student and his parents. Even though he isn’t in my class this year, they still gave me a gift card at Christmas and wrote a nice note about how special I was to their son.
Bottom line: It’s all about learning styles and meeting students’ needs where they are and where they learn best.
Tags: Educational by Brenna Phillips
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