1. Create a belief in a meaningful future. As I mentioned on the page on Tobacco Use prevention, students with severe behavior disorders who I taught had a bleak past and saw only a worse future for themselves. Smoking was something they could see themselves doing in prison. If you are just going to end up an alcoholic and in prison, why should you bother to study, not swear at the teacher, not get drunk and skip school?
What you can do
Talk to students about their future at every opportunity. In a literature class, there was a discussion question about careers. One of my students said he was going to be a truckdriver like his stepfather. I asked him, “Why? Why not be a doctor? “
He said, like I was crazy, “People like me don’t go to college.””
I stood right in front of him and said, “Look at me. I was in the exact same kind of school as you when I was your age and I graduated from college. If I can do it, you can, too. Or do you want to admit that I am so great and amazing that you could never hope to do the things I did?”
He laughed and said, “No, teach, you’re all right but you’re not that great.”
I encouraged my students to enter art contests, writing contests. They originally thought I was insane. I told them, “Why not? You might win.” A couple of them did get prizes – not first place, but second or third.
We started a class newspaper, which I created on my computer and made copies for the entire school. This eventually became a school newspaper with one of my students as the editor. I told the student who edited it, “Did you ever think about being a journalist when you grow up?”
|
10 minute assignment: Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, has said, "I have never known a hopeful kid to join a gang." Write down one or two ideas for developing in students the hope for a meaningful future. What would YOU do? |
|
More strategies that work for students with behavioral and emotional disorders |