Teachers: Are You Still Using Yesterday's Teacher Training to Manage Today's Difficult Student

By: Ruth Wells
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:26:34
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Teachers, when you received your training to teach, the world probably looked much different. Guns meant water pistols and gangs meant West Side Story.

Here is a test to see if your skills have kept up with the changes in our kids. If you discover that you are more prepared to work with Beaver Cleaver than Beavis and Butthead, then consider coming to our Problem Student Problem-Solver professional development training workshop or ordering some of our books and tapes. Our resources can turbo-charge your skills to fit contemporary kids.

The answers are shown below and at the bottom, you can also rate your skills for working with today's youth and children.

** 1. Who is the hardest-to-manage, most potentially violent kid, and how must you work with them differently than everybody else?

**** Bonus Question: If you work with this hardest- to-manage child using the same approaches you use with everyone else, what is likely to happen?

** 2. There may be just 3 major ways that kids can respond to adult directions. Name the 3 ways.

**** Bonus Question: What is the only effective way to get children to comply with adult directions?

** 3. Name the student most likely to drop out.

**** Bonus Question: What other problems will this child quite likely face?

** 4. Who are the kids at highest risk of extreme violence?

**** Bonus Question: Why do you work differently with each of these kids?

** 5. Other than violence prevention, name the single most important school readiness skill to teach to students. (Hint: Most schools don't have a formal plan to teach it, but they all require it)

**** Bonus Question: When is the time to teach this skill?

ANSWERS!!

1. CONDUCT DISORDERS. Conduct disorder is a mental health term that essentially means that the child is sociopathic. While you can continue to successfully use relationship-based approaches with any other child, these methods almost inevitably flop with conduct disorders who, by definition, can't relate normally to others.

Bonus Question: If you use conventional relationship-based approaches with conduct disorders, it conveys to them that you do not understand them. It may be close to painting a target on your chest. Actions that are normally appropriate under some circumstances, such as giving one more chance, can be dangerous even disastrous with conduct disorders. If you do not know this child backwards and forwards, you may lack key tools to ensure your safety and the safety of other children.

2. The child can become OPPOSITIONAL. The child can CAPTIULATE if coerced to do so. The child can comply: ACCEPTANCE.

Bonus Question: Acceptance is really the only way to gain compliance. Power- struggling with oppositional kids means everyone loses especially you as no adult ever wins a power struggle with a kid. If you must hassle and harass a kid into capitulating, that is not a positive way of interacting with others that you want the child to emulate as it will normally not work in the world. Plus, imagine the harm you might do hassling a troubled child by coercing compliance from them. Acceptance is the standard that works everywhere and won't damage even a very vulnerable child while gaining their compliance.

3. TEEN MOMS

Bonus Question: Teen moms also have the highest risk of poverty, going on welfare and never getting off of welfare when compared to anyone else. Shouldn't everyone know who is the one child at highest risk of dropping out and be aware of the potential additional litany of woes?

4. CONDUCT DISORDERS, THOUGHT DISORDERS, EXTREMELY DEPRESSED KIDS

Bonus Question: Each of these 3 children needs a very different kind of help. For example, the thought-disordered child might be able to benefit tremendously from medication, while there is no medicine for conduct disorders. This means that to best prevent extreme violence, you must understand how to work with different kids very differently.

5. ATTENDANCE If the student isn't in your classroom, you can't work your magic on them Bonus Question: Day 1 of school. It's that important.

SCORING: (Score 1 point for each question or bonus question)
8-10 You're READY for even the "South Park" kids!
5-8 You're DUE for a Training Update!
0-4 You're OVERDUE for a Training Update!

If this article has made you realize that you are using yesterday's methods with today's students, you may want to see what updated teacher training looks like. Take a look at http://www.youthchg.com, and discover how you can fill in the gaps in your training so working with difficult, conduct disordered, angry, truant and agitated students doesn't have to be so difficult.

Get much more information on this topic at http://www.youthchg.com. Author Ruth Herman Wells MS is the director of Youth Change, (http://www.youthchg.com). Sign up for her free Problem-Kid Problem-Solver magazine at the site and see hundreds more of her innovative methods. Ruth is the author of dozens of books and provides workshops and training. For re-print permission for this article, contact the author by

email (dwells@youthchg.com.)

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