Teachers and Schools

Carolyn McNamara Barry, and Lauren M. Alvis (2020) find that students from affluent families exhibit higher levels of risky behavior than low- and middle-SES youths do. These students engage in risky behavior to navigate the pressures they face while trying to measure up to their parents’ exceedingly high expectations for achievement. The study also shows maternal and paternal psychological control has a positive correlation with increased risk-taking behaviors for higher-SES, yet not lower-SES, emerging adults. Research consistently supports that socioeconomic status has a pervasive influence on parents’ behavioral and psychological control as well as their helicopter parenting of their children’s behaviors. Theories about why this occurs relate to family dynamics, pressure at school, and peer norms. Specifically, the cause may be the immense emphasis that modern culture places on maximizing personal status among youth who live in financially privileged communities. Another theory supports that youth in affluent neighborhoods may engage in more sensation-seeking behavior, such as substance abuse, than youth from middle-class and low-SES neighborhoods do (Jensen, Chassin, & Gonzales, 2017).

School experiences are very influential to students. A cycle of negative interactions can emerge between students with challenging behaviors and their teachers. Specifically, mutual frustration can perpetuate the negative interactions. Additional factors that can impact students’ behavior, including authoritarian discipline and zero-tolerance policies, can lead to power struggles with students who already display challenging behaviors. In this chapter’s scenario, George struggles with authority figures at school, which often triggers his challenging behaviors.

The range of behaviors school personnel consider acceptable for students is narrow and often unknowingly biased. For example, some educators do not understand how important it might be for students with ADD to take breaks and perhaps stand rather than sit in their designated area in the classroom. If these students are forced to sit at their desks for the majority of their school day, they may unintentionally begin to exhibit disruptive behaviors so they release some built-up energy. Students deserve an honest assessment of how their teachers approach academic instruction, student expectations, and behavior management, and they deserve teachers’ willingness to find and communicate flexibility within these approaches when it is possible.

Disproportionality in education, which is defined as the presence of more or fewer students from a specific group in an education program than one would expect based on their representation in the general student population, is a serious issue. It is difficult to determine the specific demographic data of students with challenging

behaviors because schools informally identify these students. However, research shows that Black male students are more likely to be referred to the school administration for disciplinary issues than their White counterparts are to be referred to the office for the same incidences (Gregory & Roberts, 2017). There are strategies you can implement to create more successful outcomes for these students. In later chapters, we provide various culturally responsive teaching practices for you to utilize when working with students who have challenging behaviors. Teachers who engage in culturally responsive practices “use what they know, come to understand, and are able to learn in their particular locales with their particular students at particular times” (Milner, Cunningham, Delale-O’Connor, & Kestenberg, 2019, p. 14). That is to say there is no one-size-fits-all approach to working with students who have similar demographics, socioeconomic statuses, or other characteristics. Teachers must develop skills and strategies for interacting with their students based on knowledge about the community in which they teach and the people who live there.

Educators understand that they need to create a nurturing, safe environment to maximize student success within the classroom. But why? The fact is, when students feel respected and valued, they are often more successful academically and exhibit positive behavioral outcomes (Scheuermann & Hall, 2016). At times, teachers may overlook students with challenging behaviors as an asset in the classroom environment, and these students may utilize their teachers as emotional crutches to help navigate their insecurities at school (Hallahan et al., 2019). For example, even though George exhibits challenging behaviors in his classroom and struggles in reading, he is a mathematics wizard. George’s classroom teacher, Mr. Riley, often ignores him as a peer mentor in mathematics because of his disruptive behaviors during language arts and reading class periods. In addition, George asks his classroom teacher multiple questions per hour in order to gain the teacher’s attention. He also exhibits some learned helplessness during these core subject periods.

Let’s see how the pattern George and his teacher have developed perpetuates a negative cycle for both of them.

Mr. Riley reads his third-grade class a story about Oregon Trail pioneers starting out on their big adventure. He asks his students some critical-thinking questions based on the content. George, in a way that Mr. Riley has come to see as typical, begins to interrupt the questionand-answer session with off-topic remarks and attention-seeking questions: “I bet smoked meat tastes icky! How fast can a horse run? I don’t like walking!”