This year my class is made up of students with different disabilities. The class includes twelve students with multiple handicaps including autism, Asperger’s syndrome, mentally retardation and emotionally and/or behaviorally disturbed. Although the differences could be a good thing, in our class the differences have contributed to difficult situations. For example, the emotionally disturbed students think the autistic children are making fun of them when they repeat their words. To try to build some cohesion we have a weekly class meeting. I noticed the students often want to talk about the problems in the class. I decided to try to teach my students the problem solving process devised by Thomas Gordon.
 
Every Friday the class conducts a class meeting, which seemed to be an appropriate setting for utilizing problem solving skills. The students arrange the desks in a circle, which allows every student to be seen. There are three adults (1 teacher and 2 paraprofessionals), who sit in chairs in between the students. The teacher runs the meeting with the intention of modeling a leadership role. The students are gradually given more control over the course of the meeting. Eventually, the students will take turns running the meeting.

 During the first problem-solving class meeting, the teacher introduced Gordon’s problem solving process. The six steps were written on the board. Step one “Identify and define the problem or situation” involved several parts. The teacher asked each student what they thought was the most important problem and some students explained why he/she believed it was the most important. The class overwhelmingly agreed on the problem of several students throwing spit-balls at other students. Several students were upset because the problem they thought of was not chosen. After it was suggested the problem would be addressed another week, these students decided to join in the discussion.

Step two “generate alternatives” resulted in a lively discussion. The students thought of many solutions. I wrote down the responses on a pad of paper. The most difficult part was convincing some of the students to accept the other student’s responses without voicing objectives. It was important for me to write down all suggestions because it validated those students. Some of the students repeated the same suggestions over and over again. In the future, I would ask a couple students to help write the responses on the board. Some of the suggestions were extreme. For example, the students suggested expelling the students who throw spit-balls, beating them or switch them to another class.

During step three “evaluate the alternative suggestions”, the students discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each one. The students recognized some of the suggestions were impossible such as throwing the student out the window and expelling the student from the school. Through the discussion the students were able to come to a decision, which is step four. They decided to use a combination of the suggestions. There would be several verbal reminders about the rules, written warnings and if the student continued he/she would be asked to go to the “think desk”, which is a carousel in the back of the room or a time away from the class for five minutes. The class decided if the student continued then all of the paper would be taken out of his/her desk.

Step five was the week in between class meetings. At one point, we had to take the paper out of all of the students’ desks. I thought there would be a lot of problems like cursing and refusing to give the paper to a teacher but the students were compliant. It almost makes me think most of the students don’t want to throw spit-balls but they do because of peer pressure. During the second problem-solving class meeting, the class finished the final step, which is to evaluate the decision. Overall, the students agreed there was definitely less spit-ball throwing but it was difficult for the class to understand the problem was replaced with other negative-attention seeking behavior. I think as time goes on they will notice there is a pattern. At that time, we can problem solve for the underlying reason.

Thanks Jennifer !