Students with emotional disturbance
Students with emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD) are engaged in the social community of other learners. Thus, such children face specific learning problems, which requires an educator to focus on mastering the skills needed to be actively involved in this community. Considering the challenging concept of teaching students with emotional disturbance (ED), it is crucial to provide proactive and collaborative teaching strategies to promote successful learning experiences for students with ED. When examining students’ behavioral patterns, it is of the utmost importance to respond to them positively and avoid limiting the focus explicitly on the inappropriate conduct. The strategies that I find the most influential and beneficial for my future practice as an educator include positive reinforcement, time-out, and token economies.
Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is a teaching method based on increasing the appropriate behaviors, which involves point systems, stickers, smiles, and general recognition for the well-completed task. The core principle of this strategy implies facilitating the desired behavior by implementing the rewarding associations with such behavior and, therefore, increasing the occurrence of the desired conduct. Educators believe that creating positive outcomes for students with ED helps them learn to use new behaviors. Positive reinforcement can be followed by the time-out strategy, which refers to removing the reinforcement that ceases as an effective approach to address the behaviors that are used to draw attention. Another strategy I consider adopting in my teaching practice is token economies (point systems). Within token economies, students receive tokens for performing the appropriate behaviors, which can be later exchanged for the desired reinforcements. The points system should decrease about the increased demonstration of acceptable behavior. To conclude, I believe that identifying the proper individual approach to assist students with ED in achieving positive academic results is a fundamental strategy for my practice as a special education teacher.