Student Teaching

Next semester, I am going to be student teaching.  That, to tell you the truth, is awesome and exciting, but also terrifying and mortifying.  In one year from today, I will be teaching and having to master a process that I have just learned about this semester.  I just learned about how to write an individual education program (IEP) this semester, and while it is sort of easy, because it the very paramount and pinnacle of the individuals with disabilities education act (IDEA), it is scary.  If I miswrite one thing, it is possible that I could sued.  The thought of that scares me, because there are a lot of amazing parents out there.

However, from what I understand about emotional behavioral disorders (EBD), which is limited, so recognize that before you accept this without thinking, their parents are burned out.  Parents can only deal with so much behaviors until they get to a point of a burnout.  I feel that our society is so desirous of quick fixes that we get burned out easily, whether that be from teaching or parenting.  The thing about EBD is that you can definitely spend all of your time focusing on punishing the student or child in order to make them stop the behavior that they are doing.  However, in the long-run, you are more likely to burnout.

A question that I hope is being asked as you read this is "Well, what are we supposed to do if not punish the child for hitting another child?"  And that is a great question.  Positive reinforcement trumps punishment.  Now, I would advise you to be careful with regards to positive reinforcement because I know someone who thinks that positive reinforcement is the same for every single person.  Therefore, if Johnny has a social phobia, he will find attention in front of the whole class a positive reinforcer and he is going to want to do that behavior again.  No, that is not true, Johnny will look at that attention as a punishment and will then act accordingly to do the opposite of what he did to get "rewarded."  Therefore, if he did homework and got attention, he probably won't do his homework again because he doesn't want to get attention.

Now, here is the key, we need to find out why the student is doing what they are doing.  If they are punching a kid, why?  Why are they punching a kid?  The flaw here is that it is very possible that someone will just say that all students do behaviors to get attention.  Let's look back at Johnny with the social phobia.  Is he likely to not do his homework because he wants attention?  That is the opposite of what the function of his behavior is, he wants to avoid attention.  Now, behavior is not just about attention.  Let's say that Chuck hates math class, he starts making animal noises in math class and he gets kicked out.  Well, that becomes a reinforcer, the getting kicked out.  If he hates and he gets to avoid it if he makes animal noises, guess what!? He is going to do the behavior more.

Therefore, what positive reinforcement is is that we need to find what is reinforcing for a student and we need to figure out what the function of the behavior is.  Why are they doing what they are doing?  We can prevent burnout by showing that behavior always serves a function and it is our job to figure it out.  And that is the part that I am so excited about.