My Educational Journey

Be there.  A lot of working with students with trauma history is just showing up, every day, and accepting the student no matter what behaviors emerge. Be an adult in that student’s life who is going to accept him and believe in him, no matter what - children can never have too many supportive adults in their lives.  -Alex Shevrin Venet

 

 Remember that comfort doesn't always mean healthy. Just because we've settled into a way of doing things doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. -Kristin Van Marter Souers

 Change is a prerequisite for improvement. -Pete Hall

I am trying to learn different strategies to help me help students. One thing I struggle with is when they straight up refuse to work. I found this article helpful.  What To Do When a Student Refuses to Work October 15, 2018  by  pathway2success Throughout my years teaching middle school, I have had the experience of seeing many “work refusals”. These are the situations when kids, for a variety of reasons, just refuse to start the work you give them. They might shut down and rest their head on their desk or lash out in anger, shouting about how they just will not complete your assignment. This can be extremely frustrating for educators, especially when teaching a well-designed lesson that you thought would go so well! Let me say that sometimes our lessons themselves can have little or no impact on whether or not a student refuses to work. There are quite often bigger challenges at play that we’ll delve into. Quite honestly, even with a special education background, my col...

  This is something I am experiencing right now. The old me wants to be able to say "Do this, this way, now.", "You will not argue with me.", or "I'm not telling you again.". The new me is trying to learn a better way to interact with a student that will not cooperate with what is expected of them at the moment. This is one of my biggest challenges. I am a controlling person. I always have been. It is an fundamental part of my personality.  Having been in some pivotal situations in my life that I did not have control of I developed a need for control. Which has lead to some OCD tendencies as well. Here is an article I found that has some helpful information: Here are some strategies for avoiding power struggles that you can use right away: 1. Develop a relationship early on.  This is by far the most important element to reducing power struggles with kids and young adults. Talk to kids about what they’re interested in and spend time learning about those...