Instructor: Welcome to an Introduction to Emotional
and Behavioral Disorders.
Before we begin, there's a few foundations
of behavior management
that I'd love to share with all of you.
First of all, when we talk about behavior management
or classroom management,
really, it's important for us
to understand that behavior is communication.
Some of us are more skilled at communicating.
Others of us need
a little bit more social skills development in that.
But essentially, as we embark on this course together,
it's important for us to understand
that behavior is essentially communication.
The other foundation here is that we cannot change behavior,
but we can certainly change the learning environment.
And last but not least, relationships matter.
That is the strongest foundation
for classroom management,
is building those relationships
with our students, with our families,
and that will lead to much more success
in our educational learning experience together.
Person-first language is also incredibly important
as we embark on this course together.
Person-first language is a way of speaking about people
that emphasizes the person
and not their disability or condition.
In a way, this helps us to avoid dehumanizing
or stigmatizing people.
For example,
a student who is displaying bullying-like behavior
versus a student who is a bully,
or that student is a bully.
It's really that student
is engaged in bullying-like behavior.
Bullying doesn't define who that student is as a whole child
or a whole person,
and so it's important for us
to be thoughtful how we communicate,
even with each other throughout this course.
So remember, person-first language.
Emotional disturbance.
IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
defines emotional disturbance as a condition exhibiting one
or more of the following characteristics
over a long period of time to a marked degree
that adversely affects a child's educational performance,
an inability to learn that cannot be explained
by intellectual, sensory, or health factors,
an inability to build
or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships
with peers and teachers,
inappropriate types of behavior
or feelings under normal circumstances,
a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression,
and a tendency to develop physical symptoms
or fears associated with personal or school problems.
The term does include schizophrenia.
The term does not apply to children
who are socially maladjusted unless it is determined
that they have an emotional disturbance.
One thing you'll notice
when we talk about behavioral challenges in children,
typically it's not usually seen as severe
in younger children since social and emotional development
is still relatively immature.
So all children at some point, even adults,
can develop behavioral challenges.
It doesn't necessarily make it
or rise to the level of the term emotional disturbance
unless it is pervasive
and based on the characteristics that I just shared.
Additional characteristics for children
who may be identified as emotionally and behaviorally,
have an emotional/behavioral disorder,
often things look like hyperactivity, right?
Short attention span, impulsiveness,
you may see aggression
or self-injurious behavior, withdrawal,
inappropriate crying, temper tantrums.
So things that may not be
totally developmentally appropriate
and that are pervasive over time.
And oftentimes,
students who exhibit emotional/behavioral disorders
have a connection with learning difficulties as well.
This often manifests itself as two,
variety of ways.
So you've heard of internalizing behaviors, right?
So internalizing behaviors
often are those internal behaviors
that we may not necessarily see immediately
on the surface.
So that can look like depression, anxiety, withdrawal.
Externalizing behaviors, however,
are often the behaviors that get the most attention,
and so it's incredibly important for us to think
as we're working with our students to also not only see
and identify the externalizing behaviors,
but it's important for us to look
and investigate any internalizing behaviors that may happen.
The externalizing ones are often visual signs
of aggression, disruption, destruction of property,
and oftentimes there's a co-occurrence of behaviors
that really lead to the diagnosis of emotional disturbance,
which could be a combination
of depression and anxiety as well.
There's also low-incidence disorders.
As I mentioned previously, schizophrenia,
characterized by psychotic periods
resulting in hallucinations,
auditory delusions, inability to experience pleasure,
loss of contact with reality.
This is gonna give you a very high-level overview
of the various types of behavioral disabilities.
Oppositional defiant disorder.
This is really a pattern of hostile, disobedient,
and defiant behaviors over time.
There's also conduct disorders.
So this is consistent of a persistent pattern
of antisocial behavior
that significantly interferes with others' rights
and/or school community agreements or expectations.
This is a higher level of disorder,
and unfortunately, many students who have been diagnosed
with conduct disorder are frequently placed
in juvenile correction programs,
and 50% of those
in juvenile correction programs have been diagnosed
with some sort of emotional/behavioral disorder.
Anxiety disorders as well are very common.
Again, not short-term anxiety.
We all exhibit and have the tendency
to feel anxious at time,
but when we're talking at this level of disorder,
it's really that pervasive, overwhelming fear, worry,
and uneasiness.
There's separation anxiety.
There's phobias that can be part of this as well.
Obsessive compulsive disorder is another disorder
that stems from the anxiety family.
It often manifests itself into repetitive, persistent,
and intrusive impulses.
You may see hand-washing, counting steps.
And then post-traumatic stress disorder
is really about having those experiences,
potentially traumatic experiences,
and a student may experience flashbacks
or recurring symptoms related to exposure to distressing
or dangerous events.
You also have mood disorders.
So mood disorders are a category of illnesses
that describe a serious change in mood.
So there's major depressive disorder,
there's bipolar,
SAD, seasonal affective disorder as well,
and again, these are often those internalizing disorders
or behaviors,
and so it's important for us to also be mindful
that many of our students may be exhibiting this,
and so, but they may not tell us, right?
Because it's an internalizing behavior.
Depression.
So students may feel sad, worthless, hopeless, and isolated.
What we see often is that students often cope
by drinking heavily or abusing drugs.
And unfortunately, more than 20% of teens
have seriously considered suicide.
And when you look at the research as well,
there's higher rates more recently
for students who identify as LGBTQ,
as well as our Black and brown students.
So that trend is extremely worrisome,
so we wanna be very thoughtful
and mindful of that.
Identification for students at this level
for an emotional disturbance
or emotional and behavioral disorder.
As you may remember from previous coursework,
there's a process through IDEA that identifies...
There's several gates.
So a student has to, one, have a disability,
and then that disability has to show an adverse effect
on your educational performance.
And so, typically, this isn't identified for this category
until third grade,
when the student is referred to
or reevaluated under disability category requirements
of Part B IDEA.
And partly this is usually diagnosed later
because much of the developmental-appropriate behavior
is appropriate,
when kiddos are growing and learning
and developing who they are.
So it's often identified later on in school,
and most often identified in eighth grade.
How do we identify students with emotional disturbance?
There is a whole host of psychological assessments
that schools embark on.
They typically include some sort of rating scale
that's completed by the school, the family,
and the students,
and the prevalence is very unique and differentiated
and different across the United States typically.
The percentage of students with disabilities identified
with emotional disturbance is 5.45%.
However, as I just mentioned, there are states
that report a wide range,
from 1.65% to about 17.36% of students
with disabilities identified with emotional disturbance.
So while that is a range,
many states have different ways of identifying,
and may categorize students differently under IDEA
for their disability.
Vermont is unique in that we have one of the highest rates
of students identified
as emotional disturbed under IDEA, about 17% currently.
That does not necessarily mean
that Vermont has a higher rate
of students necessarily exhibiting challenging behaviors.
It means that we may be,
through our IDEA process of eligibility,
are identifying,
are using that category potentially more frequently
than other states are.
Other states may be using a different category,
such as OHI, Other Health Impaired.
The academic impacts of a student
who has an emotional disturbance or struggles
with emotional/behavioral disorders are pretty significant,
and what we often see
is that students may fail classes in schools.
They may be retained more frequently than other students.
They're more likely to be absent.
What we also find is that they're less likely
to be included in general education classrooms as well.
What's significant
is that due to some of these high-level challenges
with students is that we do tend
to see high dropout rates,
52% compared to 20% of students without disabilities.
So that's really significant.
And what we also know,
there's a lot of research around literacy,
and the connection with significant behavioral challenges,
and what we know is about 85% of all juveniles who interface
with the juvenile court system
have significant struggles with literacy.
Just more information about drop out.
More than half drop out of high school,
and statistics also show that two years
after dropping out of high school,
there's a low employment rate for students
that have been diagnosed
with this level of emotional disturbance.
And again, the reasons are quite varied,
but often students at this level,
because they have poor academic outcomes
or are having difficulty in school,
they may not earn enough credits.
They may also not have enough familial support.
Many of them, when they do drop out,
you know, they're also working.
Some students are working.
They may engage in substance abuse, childcare needs,
peer pressure to leave school as well,
and frequent moves are often the reasons
for many of our students who are dropping out.
This then leads to post-secondary outcomes for these kiddos.
So high rates of unemployment,
low rates of college enrollment,
really difficulty adjusting to their community,
participation potentially in violence-related activities,
contact with police, arrests, incarceration.
And so because we know
there's such a significant dropout rate
in post-secondary outcomes that are negative,
it's so incredibly important for us to think proactively
and preventatively earlier on when we're involved in working
with kiddos who have emotional/behavioral challenges
or disorders,
so that we can really get ahead of this,
so we are preventing them
and working together collectively
as an educational community
to prevent some of these potential post-secondary outcomes.
When we think about students with disabilities in general,
whether it's a student with a learning disability,
a student who has OHI, a cognitive disability,
it's important for us to approach this
with an ecological perspective.
So you may have heard
about Bronfenbrenner's ecological model,
but essentially this is a perspective and a theory
that considers how the environment has an impact
on the individual's perception,
and that impacts how all of us behave, right?
What we know about behavior is it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
It's certainly what I like to refer to
as an integrated experience.
The way that I present myself in a room or a classroom
or a lecture hall will have an impact
on how my students perceive me, and vice versa.
And so this ecological perspective
as we approach the work in this course is critical
for understanding that the environment,
whether it's our immediate family, our informal networks,
our wider social-economic development of our country,
all of that has an impact on how we are and how we behave.
It's also important as we embark on this course
in our educational careers,
whether you go into education,
but really thinking about considering the whole child.
What we know is only 25% of students
with disabilities believed adults
held positive views of them.
Researchers concluded these youth believe
that adults do not value or trust them,
and not treat them with respect.
This belief then increases as youths grow older.
So if you think about our self-image,
many students who have behavioral, social,
emotional challenges have this negative self-image
of themselves,
and this lack of trusting
and positive relationships with adults lead
to significant poor long-term outcomes.
And so, as mentioned earlier, relationships are the key
and foundation.
Effective behavior management begins
with building strong relationships.
So just a couple of closing thoughts.
I love this statistic here
from the National Research Council.
A youth's emotional connection
with adults is perhaps the single most important factor
for fostering positive development,
including high levels of engagement,
motivation, and academic performance.
So as we embark on this work together in this course,
I'd like you to start reflecting
on how do you build relationships with your students?
And when I say your students,
I'm talking about all students, right?
I'd also like you to think a little bit
about identifying a student that you struggle with the most
and commit to spending two to three minutes daily
just focused on building relationships,
and see how that works for you.
We know it's incredibly important.
Relationships matter,
and so let's focus on building relationships.
I look forward to working with all of you.
Feel free to reach out with any questions you may have,
and enjoy the rest of your day.