Comments on: Stop Pathologizing Children and Start Helping Them

By: mneloa

mneloa — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:22:46 +0000

On the subject of ‘behavior rooms’, I wonder If Buckman has one. It certainly never was mentioned, but about 5 years ago a kid did something in that room that caused the police to taser him and the school to go into a brief lockdown. It was hushed up like you wouldn’t believe.

By: Rose

Rose — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:24:00 +0000

Ohme, thank you for your comments and expertise.

By: Stephanie Hunter

Stephanie Hunter — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:42:22 +0000

Oh me – This is great information from your firsthand experience. One thing I want to add from my years of working in family homes through disability services and child welfare is that there is a responsibility the county and state have to these families. I have seen families begging for help that receive none. I have gone to bat for parents that are doing a great job but their kid still has mental health issues that cause problems and the poor parents are blamed for bad parenting and DHS steps in because the school calls in abuse simply based on the child’s school behavior. Seemingly affluent parents have to deal with stereotyping as well when it comes to mental health and disabilities. I know parents that have mortgaged themselves into serious debt and they “look like” they can afford the sun and moon and the county worker will berate them for asking for help purchasing medical equipment. So much more to say but have to get back to work. How can we get all of this information into more of a structure to look at this stuff more closely and be solution-oriented?

By: ohme

ohme — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:18:08 +0000

I would love to give my perspective.
Working in a low income high needs school has given me a first hand view of things. First, I would agree that a teacher with strong management skills and a well organized classroom can lower the impact of behavior problems in the classroom. Overall, I do see a high percentage of children for whom behavior interferes with learning. Children who have parents in crisis, have lived with multiple relatives, are more likely to be left in the care of older cousins or siblings are more likely to be the victims of or have witnessed inappropriate actions. These children tend to be children in poverty, as you have mentioned.
The difficulty lies in that one very disturbed child (through no fault of their own) can completely disrupt the learning in the classroom. Children with this level of need tend to be in high poverty schools. When one child can disrupt learning, when do the needs of the other 25 students outweigh the needs of the one disturbed child? It takes years of documentation to get them the help they need, while the children around them and the teachers who have little to no training to help them, are left frustrated and not learning.
Another component of this is language use. A more affluent child is more likely to have appropriate coping strategies when they are upset, like using words, like their parents have taught them. I see at least 25% of children who have none of these strategies to deal with stress and anger, and so are more likely to act inappropriately. Children learn from their parents, so when I see a 5-6 year old cursing, yelling, hitting, and blaming everyone else for their actions, I know where that behavior is coming from. It takes time to reteach behavior when the expected behavior is so far removed from what is expected and seen at home. For example, I had a student once who stole from me. The item stolen was valued under $20. The parent said “Why is he in so much trouble? That costs less than $20!” There was no support from the home.
There is a medical/financial component as well. If a parent with resources notices their infant is not making appropriate milestones, they are more likely to check up with a physician. If the doctor says the child has a problem, they are more likely to find interventions, medication, etc.
One year, we had 5 undiagnosed autistic children come to the first day of kindergarten. No interventions, no help. Needless to say, those first few days of kindergarten were quite an experience in those rooms.
Another difficulty is newcomer ELL students. We have gotten children from refugee camps who speak languages that nobody speaks in the building. They become (through no fault of their own) a huge management/behavior issue.
Add to all that the reality that district behavior rooms are more likely to be housed in poverty schools, which means more children will witness “breakdowns” in the halls or cafeteria.
It is quite the “perfect storm” of factors contributing to behavior issues in a low SES…all of which I have experienced and/or witnessed. I wonder if these factors are experienced as much in higher SES or charter, or focus option schools?

I hope this helps the understanding of the impact behavior has on learning and school climate.

By: Peter Campbell

Peter Campbell — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:02:56 +0000

ohme - would you offer your perspective on the issue of behavior and low-income schools? PPS_Expatriate, Rose, and Stephanie have presented one side of the argument, while Steve Buel has offered another side in a different thread on this blog.

By: ohme

ohme — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:49:04 +0000

I would like the district to acknowledge that lower SES schools are helping a higher percentage of children with these needs on a daily basis. The one way to help with is to keep class sizes quite low. It is easier to give children the nurturing they do not get at home when there are fewer children in the room. Teachers at these schools have the double duty of teaching content while teaching behavior. Low class size it critical to success in both areas with high needs population.

By: Peter Campbell

Peter Campbell — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:09:02 +0000

This whole “behavior classroom” phenomenon is extremely disturbing to me. I would also like to confirm their existence throughout PPS. This all goes back to the thread I started recently, “Is Poverty Just An Excuse?”

As a middle-class white parent, I find parenting to be unbelievably difficult and incredibly draining. But I have a stable income, a house, I can pay my bills, and I have someone to share household duties with — my wife. My life — and esp. my experience as a parent — would be exponentially more difficult if these conditions were not in place. As it is now, I have to exercise an enormous amount of self-control when my kids are misbehaving. How would I act if I was unemployed, couldn’t pay my bills, and was single? Quite honestly, I don’t know how low-income people do it. Really. What surprises me — and this might sound really awful — is that there aren’t more incidents of domestic violence.

For those low-income families that experience domestic violence, it’s not terribly difficult for me to see the relationship between having the shit beat out of you at home and them coming to school and acting out in class.

It’s also not hard for me to understand that if you get the shit beaten out of you as a kid, then you’re more likely to do the same to your own kids. Lots of studies have been done that show precisely this.

It’s also not hard for me to understand that if you’re beaten as a kid, you are more likely to be violent and engage in crime.

And this goes on and on for generations. How do you break the cycle of violence and poverty and deprivation? There are many ways we can approach it, but the one way we MUST NOT approach it is to blame low-income people and low-income minorities for acting this way and blame them for their own fates. Doing so is immoral.

Of course everyone has the capacity to make better choices in life. But we have to increase the likelihood that more kids in low-income schools and neighborhoods can make good choices. We can’t just leave them to rot in squalid conditions, get angry with them for making bad decisions, and then say “I told you so” when so many are not able to turn things around.

By: Wacky Mommy

Wacky Mommy — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:00:35 +0000

Peninsula has two behavior classrooms (up to second-third grade only); King has two, I believe?, Alameda??

By: Rose

Rose — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:56:45 +0000

How about we compile a list of schools with behavior rooms?

In North I am aware of Ockley and Jeff.

I am not aware of any in charters. I have never heard of one in a wealthier school, either, but I think a list would be helpful.

I am aware some advocates want to do away with all behavior and academic rooms. The problem I see is the effect is much like when we deinstitutionalized mental health: these children will not simply be sent into regular classrooms.

Chief Jo, for instance, got rid of their behavior classroom years ago. To my knowledge kids that would go there are now simply referred elsewhere, even if it is a long bus ride. This is what happened to the foster child I mentioned.

If we get rid of enough of these rooms then some students will never be in a regular school at all, they will be at Christie or Morrison or Perry.

Stephanie, you are right that unless you have worked with this population it is easy to dismiss how violent or inappropriate a child can be. A child who rages, bites, self-harms or attempts to act out prior episodes of molestation needs a great deal of help.

On the other hand, as you say, children in these rooms can learn even worse behaviors from their peers. It really is a difficult issue.

To bring it back to the equity issue, these children exist and will continue to exist. It seems wrong to me that it falls to the burden of poor schools to take these children while wealthier and charter schools don’t seem to be under any pressure at all.

In fact, I have never seen this population addressed in any charter proposals or debates.

Poor schools then have the double whammy of a significant number of students who might represent poorly in the cafeteria or in the halls, and then parents will use this as a reason to abandon their school.

By: Stephanie Hunter

Stephanie Hunter — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 05:48:40 +0000

Rose – I do need some balance on this issue so respectfully disagree anytime

I think both of us have seen the dark side of what adults will do to children that causes an automatic disadvantage and it adds insult to injury when we expect them to be more behaved than the kids that have not been abused and neglected.

I really struggle with the necessity of excluding children sometimes and as a disability advocate I have to respectfully disagree with my colleagues who have never seen how violent these abused children can be. It makes me crazy what people will do to children.