When I first started this blog, I was trying to tell regular classroom teachers what was different about special education. I wanted to explain what special education teachers had to do differently and why. What I have figured out since I started many years ago, is that it was all much more complicated than I thought it would be and that I don’t have all of the answers. I now realize that I need to share my questions and my failures in addition to my answers. I did my best while actively teaching, but I sometimes shudder at the “obvious” things that I missed.
One of my classroom failures was Susanna[1], although at the time I thought I was successful with her. Susannah really tried, but she was easily frustrated. When she didn’t understand by the 4th try at an explanation, she would rage in frustration. “You’re not explaining! Why don’t you explain!?” The explosions happened several times per month. After an explosion, she was totally unable to focus on learning. (The other students in the class tended to sigh, keep working, and ignore her.)
Susannah was normally a polite and conscientious child who did her best, but succeeding at understanding mathematics was really important to her. When she had trouble, she became anxious and, when anxious, she sometimes exploded. Anger or punishment from me would just stoke her anxiety. In fact, she had been moved between classes in another subject because her parents had expressed a concern that Susanna’s original teacher made Susannah feel too anxious to be able to learn.
Susannah also needed every minute of class time to move forward. She learned at her own pace, and every time she blew up, we lost productive class time to allow her to cool down.
In the end, I learned to anticipate the situation. If I was explaining something to Susannah and she did not understand what I was telling her after 3 tries, I would say, “Susanna, I have tried all of the explanations I can think of right now. They didn’t work for you. I need time to think up some new explanations. Do you mind practicing something else and I will come up with some new explanations for tomorrow?” It worked like a charm. We did not lose more class time for temper tantrums.
Susannah would agree to work on something else and I would have alternative work available for her. The next day, Susannah was much calmer, and my explanations (often the same ones as I made the day before) would take.
I had resolved my classroom dilemmas. I was not losing 10 or 15 minutes of class time to temper tantrums from Susannah, I was not increasing her anxiety and interfering with her ability to learn mathematics. Even so, when I reflect on the situation many years later, my short cut did not really provide the most important help for Susannah.
Someday, Susannah was going out into the world of work. Someday, she would be working for someone and get frustrated. If she lashed out at her boss and criticized her boss for not explaining, Susannah was unlikely to keep her future job. I had solved my immediate classroom problem, but for Susannah, the longer term problem was more important. She needed to be able to explain what she needed respectfully.
Behavioral interventions in the special education classroom are often more important than course content. I could have taught her to recognize her feelings before the explosion and then to ask for a break to calm down. I could have shared my feelings and suggested more respectful ways to let me know hers or I could have shared the problem with her counselor and her counselor could have provided more intensive interventions. Either way, Susannah would have had a chance to learn how to share her frustrations without alienating other people.
By keeping my eye on the narrow goal of teaching mathematics, I missed the opportunity to make a major difference in Susannah’s life.
[1] The students I describe are composites of the students I taught. The incidents described did all happen in my classrooms.