2.2 Help students meet their potential and expectations

“Everyone does their best to meet their needs”

Rationale

Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists do an excellent job in working with the extremely disturbed members of our population. They seldom believe in or support the various needs theories. Needs theories are seldom appropriate for use with serious mental disorders. Despite this fact, we believe that most people, including your students, are motivated to act in ways to meet their natural wants and needs. Whether supported by all (and no theories are) or not, we find significant improvements in students when teachers use the following basic wants or needs.

First is the want for recognition . This was presented previously and described as magical. It is important to understand that it is not awards, trophies, or gold stars, but a personal recognition . It is the recognition of one’s natural gifts, talents, unique personality, or individual accomplishment. Most schools have numerous awards and methods of giving what they believe to be recognition . Quite often, 20% of the students receive 80% of these awards. Very few of our 20% of the students who are labeled disruptive receive any traditional school awards.

We are not recommending stopping traditional school awards, but adding to them. Add what means much more to students – personalized recognition . An example it to tell a lady she has a beautiful dress. She probably says thank you and quickly forgets. But, if the lady were told how beautiful she looked in that dress or how it brought out her eyes or skin color, she would most likely remember and it would mean much more. If the recognition program is individualized and personalized , not only is it more meaningful and memorable, but everyone is eligible for recognition . Every student is gifted in something!

We often tell faculties that no child wants attention. After looks of disbelief, we go on to say that attention is not their ultimate goal. Attention is only a means or opportunity to be recognized. Once the student receives the recognition (that you know their gifts and how special they are), the desire for attention. Most teachers begin with finding what to recognize in their disruptive students and often continue until they have recognized the whole class.

Elementary schools typically find numerous methods to recognize students. One teacher called each parent and asked for one word that would best describe how special their child was—but not to not tell the child yet. The teacher put each word given by the parents on a paper star and taped them on the wall. The activity was to see how many students could identify their classmates by the words on the wall. Most of the students were able to identify the correct students. Another teacher chose one student per week to stand in the middle of the room and the other students had to say one good thing about him or her. These and many other similar activities can have a lasting positive effect on each student.

The second is the need for belonging . All of your students are trying to find where they belong and with whom. The task is to find a way for all the students to feel that they belong. This can be accomplished in numerous ways. Principals and teachers can greet students as they enter the school or class, use our school and our class instead of my school or my class, form learning teams or work groups, assign school and class responsibilities for a period of time, and an endless list of others. Finding what will work for every student sometimes takes some creative thought. The easiest way to find answers to what or how students want to belong is to ask the students.