SED, Serious Emotional Disturbance

 

Did you experience any barriers to your education? 

I learnt today that there is something called as SED, Serious Emotional Disturbance, (Kent Intermediate School District, n.d.), and I can finally name what ailed (and still in some areas ails) me. 

My father died when I was 10 years old. We were dependent on others charity for some time and became soft targets. The home as well as the school were insensitive spaces and my emotional disturbances worsened due to it. There was abuse that went largely ignored, for in my social set up, women had the disadvantage of being stereotyped as the one who has to bear. There was “a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs”. (Steele, 1997, p.4)

There was also Socio-Economic Stress, SES, which “is strongly related to school success and cognitive performance”. (Steele, 1997, p.4)

In what way was your educational experience influenced by this barrier?

From someone who loved to learn and was among the top few, I crashed and turned into a rebel who went against everything I was asked to do. 

I had a “general pervasive mood of unhappiness” (Kent Intermediate School District, n.d.) among a host of other issues. 

These still persist and I often make choices that go against my best judgment. I developed “physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems” (Kent Intermediate School District, n.d.) and instead of reaching out to learn what I was good at, I shrank into my smallness and did not express my potential fully. Most of my energies have gone into overcoming the phobias I developed and instead of working towards learning, I worked (and still do) towards avoiding. The amygdala, which “controls harmfulness of sensory inputs” (Schunk, 2012, p.38) would not function properly even today at times. The “fear-on” (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2017) cells are very active. Anyone in authority is a threat and hence there is a difficulty in adjusting with peers and superiors.

Include details about whether or not accommodations were made or if there were efforts to redress the barrier?

The one accommodation that I would have responded to was “private rather than public forum for management, correction, or discussion” (Kent Intermediate School District, n.d.). however, it never happened. I was ridiculed publicly both at home and school for my behaviour which only fuelled it more.

How might this experience better inform your empathy for different student experiences?

 This question is a life changer! I feel more healed while writing this part. 

Because I was emotionally broken, I developed a keen sense of empathy towards students of Maths. Maths elicits a lot of fear. I became known as the teacher who could alleviate it for anyone. 

I also worked a lot with special needs students and developed strategies for them to bring their best forth. I suppose I would not have been able to do that if I hadn’t gone through the experiences I went through. I am often called “a teacher who is a healer”. I finally collated my experiences in the form of a book (Kochar, n.d.) and a blog (kochar, 2015).

How did I do that? I just focused on one thing – Perceiving and removing all barriers to learning that I perceived.

Looking back, I did this in 3 steps.

Changing myself

a.       “Performance in any situation is affected by the threat of being negatively stereotyped.” (Casper, 2009). I worked on my way of thinking to remove all negative stereotypes of ‘you can’t learn for so and so reason’. I did this through practicing meditation.  I experienced practically the positive effects of meditation (Bayes-Fleming, 2018) in the form of better relationships with the students.

b.      I changed the “meaning of achievement” (Steele, 1997, p.1) for the students from ‘scores’ to ‘bringing your best forward’. Instead of the “good self-feelings depend in some part on good achievement” (Steele, 1997, p.1) approach, I changed to “How to ensure that all students have the opportunity to succeed in school and beyond?” (Light, 2012, p.4) which led to integration of life skills in my curriculum.

Changing the curriculum

Over the years, I practiced with many variations, all of it leading to differentiation of “Content, Process and Product” (Teachings in Education, 2017). As I could not deal much with content, I decided to “keep the content but change the delivery” (Kent Intermediate School District, n.d.).

I did this by bring in “Variety and Novelty” as a central design principle to my classes. This comes from my reading about “whole brain” (Jensen, n.d.)

I also used “Affinity Leverage” by Dr. Mel Levine (Levine, n.d.). I alternated between teaching, peer learning and self-learning using the web-based modules.

Differentiation was the game changer for me. For each child who feared Maths, I created a strategy. Over the years I used every possible way of integration into Maths classes that could be done. I aim was one ‘No child left behind’. A lot of my strategies are on my blog (Kochar, 2015)

Changing the structure of my classes

“The goal of classroom adaptations has always been student success.” (Kent Intermediate School District n.d.) Keeping success in mind, I changed a lot of things:

a.        They could work anywhere and with anyone so long as learning happened. Physical structure of the class was flexible.

b.       I brought in portfolios and gave a class a month free for students to check the portfolio against my list of assignments that hung on the wall.

c.        I organized extra textbooks, pencils and papers for those who could not manage to bring all material to class.

And many more strategies to help scaffold the learners.

Overall, this has resulted in creation of a program a student called “humanemaths” (Kochar, 2015) for she said, “You don’t just teach maths, you also teach how to be human”.

My experiences have made me a better human being to my students.

References:

1.      Bayes-Fleming, N. (2018, September 18). The Remarkable Brains of Long-Term Meditators. Retrieved from https://www.mindful.org/the-remarkable-brains-of-high-level-meditators/

2.      Casper H. (2009). Stereotype threat: Social psychology in action. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGEUVM6QuMg  (3:07)

3.      Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. (2017, October 23). How the brain learns to fear: New understanding. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 26, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171023123523.htm

4.      Jensen, E. (n.d.). Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104013.aspx

5.      Kent Intermediate School District (n.d.). Classroom adaptations: Creating a climate of success. Retrieved from https://www.hillsdale-isd.org/cms/lib07/MI01001046/centricity/ domain/ 25/ Transition-Services/Teachers/classroom_adaptations.pdf

6.      Kochar, M. (2015). HumaneMaths. Retrieved from https://humanemaths.blogspot.com/search/label/About HumaneMaths

7.      Kochar, M. (n.d.). Math Magic = Mathemagician by Monica Kochar. Retrieved from https://auropublications.org/index.php/books/math-magic-mathemagician.html

8.      Levine, M. (n.d.). A Mind at a Time. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Time-M-D-Mel-Levine/dp/B0012FBA38

9.      Light, D. (2012). Rebuilding for learning: Assessing barriers to learning and teaching, and re-engaging students. Retrieved from https://www.isbe.net/Documents/rebuilding-case-study.pdf

10.  Schunk, D. H. (2012). Learning theories: An educational perspective (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.  

11.  Steele, C. M. (1997, June). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. Retrieved from http://users.nber.org/~sewp/events/2005.01.14/Bios+Links/Krieger-rec5-Steele_Threat-in-the-Air.pdf

12.  Teachings in Education. (2017). Differentiated instruction: Why, how, and examples. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BVvImZcnkw (5:30)