It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.Audre Lorde
When I first started teaching, I was hired to teach fifth grade in a small, low-income, diverse Title I school. I excitedly set up my classroom, organized my materials, and rearranged my desks about ten times before I had them just the way I wanted them. I wanted to change the world and be a great teacher, but I have to admit I had butterflies in my stomach as I anticipated standing in front of my first students.
As I was double-checking my preparations, thinking I was all set to go, I saw the principal walking a mother and daughter my way down the hall. Meeting me at the door to the classroom, the child smiled and said, “Hola.”
Whoa.
I replied, “Uh . . . hola,” as I realized that neither the little girl nor her mother spoke any English. I knew practically no Spanish and had little more than a smile to offer her in that moment. My butterflies turned into a near panic attack as I realized how unprepared I was for my students coming into class that day.
Then the school bell rang. The day was just getting started, and I was already overwhelmed.
Welcome to teaching.
I knew my students would bring all sorts of personalities, backgrounds, and experiences to the class. But I had given no thought whatsoever to needing to be prepared in this way. But let me be clear: it was my fault, not the student’s. She had done absolutely nothing wrong. She had simply come to school ready to learn and be accepted. She was assuming that her teacher would be prepared to work with her.
I should have been more prepared.
Past “Typical” Students and “Typical” Schools
We teach over fifty-five million students in our American public and private schools today. What’s more impressive is that our schools are now more inclusive than ever. More students with disabilities, students of color, students for whom English is not a first language, and students with trauma are taught alongside their peers than before. A few generations ago, many of these students would not be in our public schools. They would be home, in institutions, or otherwise shut out of the school system altogether for so many different reasons.
Because of the increased inclusion of all students, we need to rethink what typically is needed in schools. It’s not always effective to simply deal with an urgent situation so that you can move on with your class to get back to “normal,” whatever that is. Ideas of what is “normal” in schools based on older systems that would have excluded many of the students we have the privilege of working with today simply don’t apply. It’s critical to know your students, what makes each one special, and the needs they have in and out of school
Understanding and Accepting
Over the years, I have spent so much time hand in hand with families that had children with disabilities. Many of you may have a child or a loved one with a disability yourself. I do in my family. These experiences have changed me, as they should, especially regarding inclusion.
Inclusion is not just about “awareness.” That’s too easy and too simplistic. Your students don’t need to just be seen, as if that will fix everything. Awareness alone implies that other students and staff have more power or more value and that they have the power to grant those rights and feelings to others. All our kids already have those rights, whether they realize it or not.
Our entire school culture should revolve around welcoming and wanting every student, no matter what they look like, their abilities, or how much money their family makes. But before we start working on students’ social skills, let’s first talk about the adults in the room. It starts with us. Our words, actions, and reactions all demonstrate how we value, accept, and support our students. And like in most things, actions are the real evidence of your intent. Kids can always tell if you really do accept them for who they are or not, and your positive words of kindness won’t mean a thing if your actions and emotions show something different.
The first step is to understand who the students are that you serve and what they may need. Instead of blaming them or their parents for their shortcomings, we need to understand and accept them for who they are, not who we expected them to be. I think in many ways teachers are set up from the beginning. We are given this idealistic version of school that is just not reality. It becomes a shock to the system when things get real and get real fast. We need to help new teachers especially by preparing them with the skills to be as prepared for the outliers as the teacher’s pet.
So let’s look at two large groups of students that are typically on the low end of the behavioral bell curve: students with disabilities and students who are dealing with trauma.
Students with Disabilities
Students with disabilities include school-age students who are serviced under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA guarantees these students specific rights, such as a Free Appropriate Public Education and an individualized education program (IEP).
In the educational landscape, we are continuing to see an increase over time regarding the amount and percentage of students that are serviced through special education. It will help to know what disabilities to expect in the classroom.
Students with disabilities are not just a few students in the corner of the room. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, now 14 percent of all students are considered disabled, almost double from when IDEA was implemented in 1976. Of these students, nearly two-thirds of them are male.
Specific learning disability (SLD) is by far the most common disability among disabled students, with 33 percent of disabled students having SLD.1 Students with SLD have disorders in processing and understanding language, reading, and/mathematical calculations. Students with processing disorders, such as dyslexia, may struggle with behavior due to lack of academic progress or feelings of low self-esteem.
Autism spectrum disorder now accounts for 11 percent of all disabled students, up from less than 2 percent in the early 2000s. As with so many other disorders we are discussing here, this is not something easily figured out through a blood test. Doctors use behavioral assessments to look for trends in behaviors that are typical to this disability. Autistic students exhibit a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, and executive functioning.
These disabilities and disorders do not mean that these kids will necessarily be unintelligent or misbehave or both. Students with autism for example, can have very high IQs but behaviorally struggle due to sensory issues or disconnects in executive functioning.
According to the Centers for Disease and Control, almost 10 percent of all students are identified as having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).2 ADHD presents in many ways in our students, such as difficulty paying attention, problems controlling impulsive behaviors, or being overly active. Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than girls.
Six percent of students are diagnosed with a behavior disorder, which includes oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). That means that we should expect at least 6 percent of our students to exhibit frequent and persistent patterns of anger, irritability, arguing, defiance, or vindictiveness toward authority. Severity, duration, and the effect on school and family identify this as a disorder rather than common misbehavior.
A growing percentage of students are being diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression. Typically it has been adults that have been diagnosed with anxiety, but for a variety of reasons, we are now seeing it more in our school-age children. Especially in higher income schools, this increasing number of students with anxiety is being seen as a new norm in our classrooms.
Consider even students identified as gifted. This is an area often overlooked because of how “successful” many of these students are academically. Gifted students display many strengths in performance and learning, but they also have certain tendencies that sometimes interfere with their own or other’s learning, such as rigidity in expectations, need for control of their environment, cynical predictions, social difficulties, and perfectionism.
Finally, the conversation about students with disabilities must include the significant and disproportional number of students of color being labeled as disabled. Students of color, particularly Black students, are identified for special education at a much higher rate than their white peers. For instance, Black students are 40 percent more likely to be identified as disabled than all other students. Many other books and articles do a great job of breaking this down, with reasons why these rates occur and the harm it causes our students.
The answer to support for students with disabilities is typically an individualized education program, but be careful how much we advocate for this plan and then feel like the plan alone will fix everything. Knowing kids have different abilities is one thing, but as we will discuss more, the real trick is doing something about it with fidelity and follow-through over a long time.
Students Who Have Experienced Trauma
The highest percentage of students with a behavioral disorder that we see in our schools are those dealing with some type of trauma. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, two-thirds of our students will have experienced a traumatic event by age sixteen.3 With schools dealing with the effect of a pandemic, the idea of our students having trauma is not a new concept to many of you.
Trauma, or adverse childhood experiences (ACES) occurs in many ways but can cause behavior outwardly...