(organization, hygiene, manners, self control, respect, responsibility)

As a new teacher, this one was particularly hard for me. My own frame of reference came from a middle class family that valued education and taught me respect and responsibility. I don’t remember learning to take care of my hygiene, brush my teeth, wear clean clothes but obviously those lessons preceded my memory of learning new things. Children are products of the environments from which they come. When I was a young teacher, I had a child in my class who was homeless. I never met her parents or guardian. She wore the same thing daily (without the ability to wash it) and she was perpetually unclean. I brought her a dress to change into which I washed at night and I gave her soap and warm water to take into the girls’ restroom to freshen up each morning when she changed her clothes. I gave her a purse containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, powder and lotion. She was so happy to get those things. The first day I gave them to her, she went into the girl’s restroom and when she returned, she had poured the entire canister of powder on her body. I checked the purse and all of the toothpaste had been squeezed out of the tube. That was when I realized that nobody had ever taught her how to apply body products. At that time, I was frustrated because I didn’t understand.  When you have a child who does something way out of the “ordinary,” employ a little more compassion and recognize that nobody had taught that to them yet.  In another instance, I had a very young boy who called out for me while he was in the restroom. I entered to find him attempting to wash his hands in the urinal. At first, I was horrified but it didn’t take much for me to realize that there were no men in his home to show him how to use that foreign fixture (and I was not about to show him!)

If you have a child whose desk is a perpetual mess, chances are his home is the same way. If you have a child who can never find forms that he knows are in his book bag, he likely can’t find his shoes at home. If you have a child who disrespects adults, children, authority figures and himself, someone is modeling that behavior for him. Nobody is teaching their children disrespect, they are just modeling how they deal with frustration and anger and that is how the child learns to behave. Children like these need a little extra dose of nurturing so they can see how you handle frustration and anger, which is a natural human emotion. In every class there is a squeaky clean little girl with a helicopter hair bow, a perfect desk, and an organized binder who will probably grow up to be a teacher, but there are many more who need some help learning to organize, take responsibility for their actions, and how to exhibit self control. Teach those skills regularly. 

Many of our PEC students need that extra dose of nurturing, home training and social skills training, just to name a few. As their classroom teacher, you don’t have to do this all by yourself. You have great resources in your school and your community. Look around and ask for help. Bring in community helpers. Your job is to identify the needs and recognize that your students come from a variety of backgrounds. Meet them where they are and move forward from there.

Pamela Webster, M.Ed., SPED