Teaching Ebd Students

Teaching children with Emotional Behavioral Disorder (EBD) can be extremely difficult but very rewarding too. EBD students are often seen as the most demanding and complex students. EBD teachers are detectives, counselors, mental health professionals, and much more in order to determine the cause of a student’s behavior. Many teachers feel that their college courses did not prepare them properly for dealing with EBD students. Therefore, there is a high turn-over rate and shortage of “highly qualified” EBD teachers at least where I live in Washington State. I believe, teachers that teach in EBD programs require more patience, understanding, support, and training than other teachers. Some strategies that are necessary for teaching EBD students
can benefit all students. However, the intensity and repetition needed is more than what other students require. The first strategy is having clear and concise rules and expectations that are visual. By having rules posted at or around the student’s work space helps them remember the rules and expectations of the classroom. The second is providing mini breaks to students. Research has shown that EBD students lack the emotional balance and maturity to remain focused for long periods of time. The third is using positive motivational strategies. Positive motivational strategies may include consistent praise for good effort, incentives for academic success, and rewards for positive behavior. The most important strategy is the fair treatment of all. Fair treatment of all is being consistent and not bending established rules. By having the same expectations and consequences for all students, can help reduce challenging behaviors in EBD students because they know what will happen if the rules are broken, have the feeling of control, and help remove the feeling that they are being singled out.
The strategies stated above can benefit all students.
However, EBD students require more direct, intensive, and structured training in behavior and social skill. All teachers and specialists that work with EBD students need to have the same rules, expectations, and consequences. Teachers can help prevent challenging behaviors by having proactive interaction and by using positive support strategies. Being proactive will help reduce challenging behaviors in EBD students but requires teaching of specific behaviors or social skills with direct instructions and hands on activities. Teaching specific behaviors and socials skills are not necessary in typically developing students. Many students can be taught and remember the rules and expectations over a couple of days or within the first week with few reminders. EBD students require repetitive and direct instruction in a variety of natural settings order to learn and transfer positive behaviors to different areas. Positive Support Strategies address the underlying physical or mental health concerns and using the behavioral and educational supports to teach replacement skills and self-regulation. Positive Support Strategies focuses on replacement behavior rather than punishment. Teachers need to remember that no one strategy will work for all students and may work one time but not work the next time. Along with the fact, behaviors that have worked for the student in the past will get worse before they get better. Research has
proven that Positive Support Strategies are effective for EBD students.
I strongly believe that the only difference between teaching EBD students and typical developing students is the teaching of specific behaviors, social skills, and having a safe place for the students to go when they are melting down or upset.
I struggled with this questions because I work with preschool age students and believe that all students benefit from positive interactions and support systems. Teachers are so busy teaching reading, math, science, social studies, and more that we forget that students need to be taught or reminded what a good listener is, what a good friend is, the rules, and expectations of their classroom. Preschool, Head Start, and Kindergarten teachers, tend to assume that children come into their classes already knowing what is expected of them and how to behave in school. However, many students transition between home, day care, and school where each setting has a different set of rules and expectation. What may be okay in one setting is not okay in another setting. Some students will need more reminders, more time to finish activities, spoken to in a soft voice, or in close proximately. Also, the teacher’s attitude plays an important role in how student response and an act in the classroom. While observing in a behavioral program, a lot of the difficult behaviors that were displayed were caused by the teacher herself. I learned and believe that a teacher needs to follow through with what they say or promise. If they don’t, they are setting
themselves and their students up for failure.