The gist of this blog entry on guardian.co.uk is "Everything needs to be cleansed, anything that can not be cleansed should be removed from the schools." This relates perfectly, even though the article has rather odd writing to it, to students with EBD and why, from what I have learned, EBD is the most underfunded field in Special Education.
A person with schizophrenia will have schizophrenia forever, there are medications that can help stop the delusions, but they only work sometimes. Basically, there is no medication, like antibiotics, that can cure schizophrenia. And we, as the western world really don't like that. We don't like things that can't be fixed with the snap of a finger. And I believe that that is why teachers who teach students with EBD quit so much, because they realize that they can't fix the student.
We want the light to be turned on, and we get excited when a student exhibits that they finally understand something that they have never understood before. We want to cure students with EBD, but they don't need to be cured or fixed, they are who they are and a good teacher will accept and embrace them for who they are.
This is the primary reason that I am going into the field of EBD, because they cannot be cured, they can only be helped. So the question is, what do I mean by helped. Well, first of all, not giving up on them just because I can't fix them. The second thing is to show them that no matter what they do, I am not giving up on them. They can stab me in in the foot or side, and I will come back and show them again that I am not giving up on them.
We like clean, easy students. Students with EBD are typically the complete opposite, but only because we expect them to be something that they are not. We expect them to be clean and easy to deal with, so they cannot feel their own emotions or allow themselves to have anxiety, and this adds a giant problem to their already tough lives.
I really believe that students with EBD are the lepers of our society. What I mean by this is that not many people want to deal with them, and when they realize that they cannot cure them, they give up. These are human beings who need someone who will not give up on them, because I believe that society has already given up on them. The trick is to help help them not give up on themselves because their parents have given up on them, society has given up on them. And I don't know how I will teach that, how I will teach a student how not to give up on themselves. One of the many questions of this blog, how can I teach a student to believe in themselves when everyone else has stopped believing in them?
No comments:
Post a Comment