Module 2 

Challenging Behavior Investigating:

As an educator and a mother, I try to understand the behavior and why the child is exhibiting that behavior. During the pandemic, many of us as adults lost our way socially and then wonder why our children are behaving the way they are. What I mean is the way we interact with people on a daily bases. Watch TikTok, Instagram, and other social media videos about disruptive, argumentative, and aggressive behaviors and then look at our students?   Challenging behaviors in the classroom are defined as behaviors that interfere with instructional time and student learning, not those that constitute a threat to the safety of the classroom. Society as a whole has lost its way when it comes to social-emotional and behavioral developments.  Many who try to answer the question of why behavior occurs may answer with explanations that are based on their beliefs about a student’s personality, disability, home life, parents' ability to parent, or past trauma (Alberto and Troutman, 2009; Chandler and Dahlquist, 2010).  For example, the authors often hear from in-service teachers who are students in their classes that challenging behavior occurs in their classroom because of how the parents are parenting their child, because the student has a disability, or the student is lazy. (Young, A., & Martinez, R., 2016, p.1) Educators are quick to call a student a “problem child” and look no further. Educators need to investigate the problem that the student is projecting in the classroom. It is also essential for them to include a team to help evaluate that student: school counselors, parents, other educators, psychologists, and administration. For educators to do this they need to assess the student’s behavior through Functional Behavioral Assessments with a questionnaire that eliminates all other reasons for that behavior. It should be created as a before, during, and after the process. The conducting of a functional behavior assessment is the first step when starting to create a behavior support plan, and it helps the team understand what factors in the environment influence the behavior. An educator isn’t just responsible to educate a student on a certain subject area but also for social skills, independent life skills, and appropriate interactions with others.   Here are statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

  • The following student behaviors were most frequently reported as having increased during the 2021–22 school year (compared to a typical school year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic) in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its lingering effects:
    • Classroom disruptions from student misconduct (56 percent)
    • Acts of disrespect towards teachers and staff (48 percent)
    • Rowdiness outside of the classroom (49 percent)
    • The prohibited use of electronic devices (42 percent)

  • Public schools reported needing more support for student and/or staff mental health (79 percent), training on supporting students’ socio-emotional development (70 percent), hiring more staff (60 percent), and training on classroom management strategies (51 percent). (Nces.ed.gov.) 
Reference

Press Release - More than 80 Percent of U.S. Public Schools Report Pandemic Has Negatively Impacted Student Behavior and Socio-Emotional Development - July 6, 2022. (n.d.). Nces.ed.gov. https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/07_06_2022.asp#:~:text=misconduct%20(56%20percent)-


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