Addressing
Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Barriers to Learning
Schools’
needs to meet NCLB’s requirements to close the achievement
gap and ensure that EVERY child makes AYP have compelled them
to look critically at identifying essential academic standards
and strengthening both curriculum and instructional pedagogy.
While this focus is essential, for many students, barriers
to learning exist in other than the academic domain.
Social,
emotional, and behavioral challenges are significant barriers
to learning, as well as to teaching. Educators who teach as
though academic achievement and social/emotional/behavioral
competence were discrete, independent aspects of students’
growth and development will ultimately not succeed in their
mission to close the achievement gap and ensure AYP. Therefore,
in order to ensure that ALL students attain academic proficiency,
it is essential that schools adopt practices that promote
engagement and achievement while simultaneously preventing,
as well as addressing social, emotional, and behavioral barriers
to learning and to teaching.
Schools
may struggle with the idea that, in addition to all of the
academic and management responsibilities that educators have,
meeting students’ basic social/emotional/behavioral
needs is essential. They may understandably pose the question,
“how many of society’s responsibilities must schools
undertake?” The Carnegie Council on Education Task Force
has anticipated that question; their response: “School
systems are not responsible for meeting every need of their
students. But when the need directly affects learning, the
schools must meet the challenge,”
The
Circle of Courage
Source: Reclaiming Youth at Risk, 2002
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The basic
social-emotional needs that drive behavior do, in fact, affect
learning, since many children have not yet acquired the capacity
to compartmentalize their needs and delay efforts to get them
met. In fact, L. Brendtro, M. Brokenleg, and S. Van Bockern,
in their book, Reclaiming
Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future (2002), have identified
concrete student behaviors that evidence both the healthy
acquisition of basic needs as well as those whose function
is to communicate that such needs are, in fact, unmet. Their
research has served as the basis for the construction of age-specific
assessment tools that can,
within a Response
to Intervention (RtI) framework, be used for universal
screening of social/emotional/behavioral challenges that interfere
with learning. A planning matrix
on which to develop targeted, developmentally appropriate
interventions that directly address the behaviors of concern
is also available. A classroom-wide
data collection form can help monitor change over time
as a result of repeating the screening three times a year.
Finally, the State of Illinois Department of Education has
developed social-emotional
learning standards, k-12, that can help guide instruction
in this domain.
Social-Emotional-Behavioral
Barriers to Learning and Teaching Support Services
EASTCONN can help you determine strategies and interventions
to address your students' social, emotional and behavioral
challenges in ways that allow you to improve student learning.
Consultation, training and technical assistance is available.
To learn
more, contact: Vivian Batterson
Voice Mail: 860-455-0029, box 3039
vbatterson@eastconn.org
Primary
Prevention Screening and Planning Tools
PreK-3
(pdf)
(word)
4-10 (pdf)
(word)
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