I have come against what I feel are like brick walls with my case study. I don’t think I have shared with you yet about my case study, so before I go further I need to do that. My case study is an excellent student, especially in math. He really wants to do nothing but please his teachers. His issue is that he is very, very annoyed by little things in the classroom. His classmates cause great distress for him. “So and so is coughing too much and is making me mad!” “They just bumped my desk!” “I think they are making a face at me!” These are just some of the comments I hear from my case study during the day. The problem is that he feels the need to come tell me these things that worry him in the middle of a lesson. If I cannot come to him immediately to listen to him and try to help him, he gets extremely angry. I mean cussing, hitting, and he can’t breath angry.
With all of that said, I decided that what my case study and I need to work on his self-coping skills and his immediate need to talk to me about things. What we put in place is a ticket system. I have given my case study a list of things to do to try to help himself calm down before he comes to talk to me. He gets 3 tickets to tell me something that is bothering him throughout the day. His goal is to only use the 3 tickets and not have to ask for more. The hope is that he will be able to decide on his own what is important enough to tell me and what he can handle on his own with self-coping strategies.
It took a while for my case study to get use to it and he didn’t like me for a while, but eventually we began to see progress. I would say things were better for about 2 weeks. Unfortunately, my student is becoming frustrated with this system so I beginning to see regression. I am now in the process of trying to think of something new to implement, so if you have any suggestions please let me know! Thanks!
I think that the three ticket idea was a really great one, but unfortunately even the greatest ideas don’t always work : ( I have done a lot of talking with people who work with students with different pschyological and emotional problems by having them write. What if he is allowed to tell you only three things, but he can write down EVERYTHING he is feeling. It may help him to know that someone will hear everything he is feeling at some point. I was having problems with a student forgeting things so I laminated a piece of paper and gave him a dry erase marker, so he could keep a to do list and could erase it each day. You could try something similar.
He would have to ask himself, is this SO important that I need to say it right now, or can this wait until later. If you read them all at first and take time to talk to him at the end of the day, you could probably start getting by with not reading all of it every time, and it’s likely what he is angry about will pass.
Just some ideas… use as you like
Good Luck!
Amanda –
I am interested to hear more about your student developing “self-coping” skills. Within our PLC we use the term “self-monitoring” abundantly. We have a couple of students within the grade (including my Case Study student), who we are continually promoting these self-monitoring types of skills.
I have seen my own student improve in the area of self-monitoring with his emotions. He tends to become easily enraged if situations are not how he would like them to be or if he is not comfortable doing his work. Previously, we would lash out, even becoming violent – now, he has developed breathing patterns and references “taking a break” in the hall for a couple of minutes. All of these things seem to be working and especially allow him independence in improving his reactions.
Great post –
Melissa