Classroom Placement Reflections (Chicora #2)

The one thing I have read repeatedly when dealing with "difficult" children is for you, as the teacher, to find out what the difficult child wants to learn, then teach them that. Honestly when I first read this I was more than a little skeptical. A troubled child wouldn’t be interested in school at all, let alone have anything in particular that they would want to learn, right? If I were to approach a child and ask, "What do you want to learn today?" wouldn't the difficult child answer "nothing", "I don't want to" or "I want to go home"? You try your best to reach out to these children and they don't give you anything to work with, or do they?

It was writing time in the first grade classroom that I have been interning in and one student was being particularly difficult, while every other student in the class was busy writing in their notebooks (about their pets) the difficult student would not only refuse to do his own work, but would persist in disrupting other students by wanting to play and talk with them while they were busy working. While the classroom teacher was busy assisting other students with their spelling and composition, I went to the disruptive student and tried to encourage him to participate in the assignment. When I asked him "why don't you want to write about your pet (or you can make up a pet if you don't have one)" he unsurprisingly answered, "I want to go home with my dad". Thinking back to all that I have learned this semester, I decided to try out "teaching him what he wants" by applying it to the writing assignment at hand "how about we write a letter to your father asking him to take you home" to which he replied "ok, do you have any paper". It actually worked. He sat and wrote a letter to his Dad alongside with his classmates who were also busy with their own writing.

I was glad I was able to assist this student in overcoming his frustration with writing and his abrasive attitude towards education. I learned that by just taking a few extra steps of guidance and insight a teacher can make a student with a difficult child. Not all children approach learning the same way and on that note a teacher can not assume that the same lesson can be taught to all students the same way. Managing an entire classroom is a daunting task with a room full of learners who each approach learning a different way, but finding a way for each of them to get a fair education can be very rewarding, for both the student and teacher.