Have your children ever had an extremely disruptive child in elementary class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He was disruptive today. But not for long. He was verbally aggressive as soon as he walked into class in the afternoon and when I gave a warning he had a meltdown and crashed on a beanbag by the book corner. I gave him a few minutes then left my other students to do independent work at a table while I went to talk to him and he vented about how he was feeling frustrated. I told him I understood and I talked to him about how his behavior affected his friends. Then I kept going with class and less then 5 minutes later he joined and was back to normal. No big deal, honestly.

so the whole thing took what, 10 minutes? Out of a 45 minute class? Who cares, really, it's only 22% of the class time.

It affected him for about 10-15 minutes. It affected the rest of the class for the less then 5.

So you say 5 minutes? That's 10%. 10% of the class time multiple times a week adds up to a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He was disruptive today. But not for long. He was verbally aggressive as soon as he walked into class in the afternoon and when I gave a warning he had a meltdown and crashed on a beanbag by the book corner. I gave him a few minutes then left my other students to do independent work at a table while I went to talk to him and he vented about how he was feeling frustrated. I told him I understood and I talked to him about how his behavior affected his friends. Then I kept going with class and less then 5 minutes later he joined and was back to normal. No big deal, honestly.

so the whole thing took what, 10 minutes? Out of a 45 minute class? Who cares, really, it's only 22% of the class time.

It affected him for about 10-15 minutes. It affected the rest of the class for the less then 5.

So you say 5 minutes? That's 10%. 10% of the class time multiple times a week adds up to a lot.

That's 10% due to just one kid. But what if there are others? You start with exceptions, and you end with no rules and little learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher out of the DC area who has a student who can be disruptive. There's a lot of possible causes of why he disrupts, none of which makes me want to remove him from my classroom permanently.

When my student begins to be disruptive he gets a warning. Often I will send him on an errand, because that helps him reset. If it continues and starts to escalate, I give a signal to the class which tells them to leave the room. The students walk to a common area and sit down. That leaves me and the student alone in the room. There is a button that I can push which will send help if needed. Once he is calm, I get the rest of the students and we move on.

I have a behavior system (marble bucket) in the classroom for all students which helps. If he escalates to the point of hurting someone he has to sit in the office during electives, PE, or lunch.

He is showing a lot of growth compared to previous years, and is a great kid. He just can't handle himself sometimes. He's only gotten physical with me once, and that was because I went to hit the button to call the principal and he was trying to prevent me from doing so because he didn't want to go to the office.

Part of being employed at the school I work at (this is my first year) was receiving non violent intervention training (including how to escape holds/grabs) and PBIS training. I've quickly realized that DC/MD/VA's idea of PBIS is very different then here.

This is what I find utterly ridiculous. Hurting someone?? Hurting the teacher?? Yeah, but otherwise he is a great kid who LOVES school?

OP, with all due respect, do you have children? How would you feel if that 'great kid' hurt your child?

I don't know a single child who has never not once in their entire life hit, pushed, or bit someone.

He is a great kid. That's my job as a teacher - to look past the issues and all of the negative things in all of the kids (and even look past the spoiled brat in some of them) and see who they are underneath and foster that part of them. My job is not to give up on them and assume they'll never get it and focus only on the ones who do.

We're talking about an elementary aged kid. Think under the age of 8. When he's an adult, he will not have the chances that he has now. So, we need to try our best to educate him and give him the chance and skills and the ability to control himself. Giving up on him or isolating him will not give him that chance.

I'm involved, other teachers are involved, the school counselor is involved, the principal is involved. He goes to counseling outside of school. He has supervised visits with his biological mom (which may or may not be a good thing). It takes a village to raise a child.

This sounds beautiful, but potentially harmful for the public good. It takes a village to raise ALL the children in your class and school, not just that one. Ask yourself, why do the other kids deserve less attention and support? Wouldn't they benefit too from more personalized attention from all those adults you mention?

[Anonymous]

Sending a whole class out to a safe place unsupervised? Doesn't sound right to me.

[Anonymous]

ED, I imagine

That's not behavior w/in "normal" limits.

I work with kids who have been kicked out of their home schools (middle and high). While the majority of them are not coded, when you look at their records - however skeletal they may be - you can see trends. So the documentation needs to start as soon as possible, as many of these kids could have received mental health services to help them cope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The real problem is there is no alternative appropriate classroom for a lot of these children. Very few elementary schools have separate "special needs" classrooms any more-and if they did, it wouldn't be an improvement to be disrupting that class vs. disrupting the general ed class. It just relocates the problem. And it is way too expensive to assign a separate classroom just for this one child, with his own personal teacher.

Lots of naysayers on the teacher's approach but I haven't seen any posters offering a decent solution.

All schools need wrap around services, but it's too costly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The real problem is there is no alternative appropriate classroom for a lot of these children. Very few elementary schools have separate "special needs" classrooms any more-and if they did, it wouldn't be an improvement to be disrupting that class vs. disrupting the general ed class. It just relocates the problem. And it is way too expensive to assign a separate classroom just for this one child, with his own personal teacher.

Lots of naysayers on the teacher's approach but I haven't seen any posters offering a decent solution.

All schools need wrap around services, but it's too costly.

wraparound, I meant

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher out of the DC area who has a student who can be disruptive. There's a lot of possible causes of why he disrupts, none of which makes me want to remove him from my classroom permanently.

When my student begins to be disruptive he gets a warning. Often I will send him on an errand, because that helps him reset. If it continues and starts to escalate, I give a signal to the class which tells them to leave the room. The students walk to a common area and sit down. That leaves me and the student alone in the room. There is a button that I can push which will send help if needed. Once he is calm, I get the rest of the students and we move on.

I have a behavior system (marble bucket) in the classroom for all students which helps. If he escalates to the point of hurting someone he has to sit in the office during electives, PE, or lunch.

He is showing a lot of growth compared to previous years, and is a great kid. He just can't handle himself sometimes. He's only gotten physical with me once, and that was because I went to hit the button to call the principal and he was trying to prevent me from doing so because he didn't want to go to the office.

Part of being employed at the school I work at (this is my first year) was receiving non violent intervention training (including how to escape holds/grabs) and PBIS training. I've quickly realized that DC/MD/VA's idea of PBIS is very different then here.

This is what I find utterly ridiculous. Hurting someone?? Hurting the teacher?? Yeah, but otherwise he is a great kid who LOVES school?

OP, with all due respect, do you have children? How would you feel if that 'great kid' hurt your child?

I don't know a single child who has never not once in their entire life hit, pushed, or bit someone.

He is a great kid. That's my job as a teacher - to look past the issues and all of the negative things in all of the kids (and even look past the spoiled brat in some of them) and see who they are underneath and foster that part of them. My job is not to give up on them and assume they'll never get it and focus only on the ones who do.

We're talking about an elementary aged kid. Think under the age of 8. When he's an adult, he will not have the chances that he has now. So, we need to try our best to educate him and give him the chance and skills and the ability to control himself. Giving up on him or isolating him will not give him that chance.

I'm involved, other teachers are involved, the school counselor is involved, the principal is involved. He goes to counseling outside of school. He has supervised visits with his biological mom (which may or may not be a good thing). It takes a village to raise a child.

This sounds beautiful, but potentially harmful for the public good. It takes a village to raise ALL the children in your class and school, not just that one. Ask yourself, why do the other kids deserve less attention and support? Wouldn't they benefit too from more personalized attention from all those adults you mention?

Support is provided to any student that needs it. What makes you think it isn't?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He was disruptive today. But not for long. He was verbally aggressive as soon as he walked into class in the afternoon and when I gave a warning he had a meltdown and crashed on a beanbag by the book corner. I gave him a few minutes then left my other students to do independent work at a table while I went to talk to him and he vented about how he was feeling frustrated. I told him I understood and I talked to him about how his behavior affected his friends. Then I kept going with class and less then 5 minutes later he joined and was back to normal. No big deal, honestly.

so the whole thing took what, 10 minutes? Out of a 45 minute class? Who cares, really, it's only 22% of the class time.

It affected him for about 10-15 minutes. It affected the rest of the class for the less then 5.

So you say 5 minutes? That's 10%. 10% of the class time multiple times a week adds up to a lot.

Next thing you'll be arguing is that bathroom breaks should be banned. And fire drills. Anything that detracts from even 3-5 minutes of instructional time...

[Anonymous]

We had this problem once. After a while we went to see the vice principal--and he told us we were the 4th or 5th family to come in to complain about this particular child's disruptive behavior.

We were told that from the school's POV, moving a child to another class doesn't solve the problem, instead it just creates problems for the new class. The only time they would consider moving the child was to get the child away from a bad peer group -- he called this an "antiseptic bounce." (!!) Instead the school wanted to work with the child and parents.

So we left for private. That was a mistake too, educationally and because there was just as much bad behavior, only it was less physical and more subtle. But that's another story....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Signed, mom of a highly gifted child who wants him to grow up kind, considerate and compassionate above all!

I think you people send the WRONG message to the kids. You're teaching them that you have to put up with others' emotional problems, violent behavior and you're responsible for helping them work them out.

In adult life no one actually tolerates this. No one is going to put up with your emotional outbursts at work. If a spouse is violent with you you don't go sit in the other room.

Normal kids get punished for this kind of behavior from early on - timeouts, etc. In our preschool if a child is regularly violent after an incident or two his parents will be asked to take him somewhere else.

So you're sending a mixed message about this - for other kids it's not acceptable and they get punished, but for YOU, because you're SPECIAL we'll kick the class out and sit and talk about it.

Actually, no. That's not the message I send at all. I never agree that violent or disrespectful behavior should be tolerated. You are assuming that I think my son is somehow better than the others. Everyone has their difficulties in life. The problems are unfortunately more obvious for some than for others. It's actually reciprocal psychologically in my opinion. What I think you get out of being patient with others is the belief that others will also be patient with you. I want him to know is that there are also some people (maybe not you or your child apparently) who will be there to help or wait for him when he is in a difficult situation. These are important social skills in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher out of the DC area who has a student who can be disruptive. There's a lot of possible causes of why he disrupts, none of which makes me want to remove him from my classroom permanently.

When my student begins to be disruptive he gets a warning. Often I will send him on an errand, because that helps him reset. If it continues and starts to escalate, I give a signal to the class which tells them to leave the room. The students walk to a common area and sit down. That leaves me and the student alone in the room. There is a button that I can push which will send help if needed. Once he is calm, I get the rest of the students and we move on.

I have a behavior system (marble bucket) in the classroom for all students which helps. If he escalates to the point of hurting someone he has to sit in the office during electives, PE, or lunch.

He is showing a lot of growth compared to previous years, and is a great kid. He just can't handle himself sometimes. He's only gotten physical with me once, and that was because I went to hit the button to call the principal and he was trying to prevent me from doing so because he didn't want to go to the office.

Part of being employed at the school I work at (this is my first year) was receiving non violent intervention training (including how to escape holds/grabs) and PBIS training. I've quickly realized that DC/MD/VA's idea of PBIS is very different then here.

This is what I find utterly ridiculous. Hurting someone?? Hurting the teacher?? Yeah, but otherwise he is a great kid who LOVES school?

OP, with all due respect, do you have children? How would you feel if that 'great kid' hurt your child?

I don't know a single child who has never not once in their entire life hit, pushed, or bit someone.

He is a great kid. That's my job as a teacher - to look past the issues and all of the negative things in all of the kids (and even look past the spoiled brat in some of them) and see who they are underneath and foster that part of them. My job is not to give up on them and assume they'll never get it and focus only on the ones who do.

We're talking about an elementary aged kid. Think under the age of 8. When he's an adult, he will not have the chances that he has now. So, we need to try our best to educate him and give him the chance and skills and the ability to control himself. Giving up on him or isolating him will not give him that chance.

I'm involved, other teachers are involved, the school counselor is involved, the principal is involved. He goes to counseling outside of school. He has supervised visits with his biological mom (which may or may not be a good thing). It takes a village to raise a child.

This sounds beautiful, but potentially harmful for the public good. It takes a village to raise ALL the children in your class and school, not just that one. Ask yourself, why do the other kids deserve less attention and support? Wouldn't they benefit too from more personalized attention from all those adults you mention?

Support is provided to any student that needs it. What makes you think it isn't?

Like a good magician, you are trying to distract attention. Sorry, EVERY kid needs attention and support, and the squeaky kid that in the comment above is getting all that extra attention is getting support and learning away from all other kids.

[Anonymous]

Like a good magician, you are trying to distract attention. Sorry, EVERY kid needs attention and support, and the squeaky kid that in the comment above is getting all that extra attention is getting support and learning away from all other kids.

Good comment. At some point, common sense must reign.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
What I think you get out of being patient with others is the belief that others will also be patient with you.

How's that a two way street? He's not patient, but the class has to be.
What is he contributing to the class other than being a nuisance that helps others build patience?

[Anonymous]

As a former teacher, I understand the need of every child to a good education. I believe in inclusion--but not when it works against the education of the rest of the children in the class.