Proactive Problem Solving

Proactive Problem-Solving

ESE 634 Education-Based Collaborative Relationships

Proactive Problem-Solving

Effective collaboration is a group of people coming together from different departments to solve a situation. In the video, we saw that the student’s success team or SST has come together to collaborate about Jonah and his current situation. Martin, Jonah’s father, has also been brought and so that he can also collaborate with the other SST members. An SST is a group formed within the school to further examine a student’s academic, behavioral and social-emotional progress (Understanding Special Education. (2009). 

Effective Collaboration

All of the members are giving feedback to Jonah’s positive and negative behavior that each member has seen over the weeks that bring the SST members to me on behalf of Jonah. Kristen Harke, administrator, began the meeting off by the introductions of all of the members that were present and what their goals and responsibilities are to help Jonah be successful in his education factors (Rauscher.2014). Laura Wetmore is a special education teacher, but was not currently teaching Jonah, brought the technique of brainstorming to the group for strategies that would help Jonah to be more successful in his time at school. She offered strategies and also asked Martin Zschoche, Jonah’s father, if there were any strategies, he felt they could be use at school as well. Brainstorming is a problem-solving technique that involves generating as many ideas as possible to resolve a problem (Cohen. (2009).      

All of the members seem to have a positive attitude during the meeting. Justin Hannahs, Jonah’s history teacher, also the teacher that referred Jonah mentioned several times that it may be his fault that Jonah was not as engaged as he should have been. Mr. Hannahs’ took the strategies that were given, such as giving Jonah a leadership role in the class, to hopefully help Jonah become more engaged (Rauscher.2014).  All of the strategies that the SST members have done so far, all help for an effective way to collaborate on Jonah’s behave.

Challenges and Solutions

No matter what kind of problem you are trying to resolve you will always run into some challenges, but with challenges you will always find solutions. One potential challenge that you may run into would be lack of communication skills between the SST members, parents, and/or the student. Making sure that everything that is happening is being communicated correctly and documented just in case you need to look back at the communication log again.

Another challenge that you may encounter is low engagement to the student’s needs. A member may not display valuable information because he or she does not want to engage with the student or parents. Sometimes people can be selfish, and their motives are not in the right place. This can cause a student to struggle more than they already are. A possible solution for this type of situation is to find out what the team has already done to help with the situation before it is brought to the parents. If there is no form of engagement from the staff member the problem may not lie solely on the student. Coming up with strategies for both the teacher and the student’s engagement could be helpful to both parties.

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Problem-Solving Strategies

There are many proactive problem-solving strategies that a special educator can employ.  When holding a meeting, an agenda should be in place for every person within the SST. The agenda should be given to each person and state their role on the team clearly and the reason for the meeting. Being able to clearly recognize the problem will allow for the problem to be easier to solve because you can identify what the purpose of the meeting is.

 Another proactive strategy is proposing that the parent stay involved throughout the entire process. (Cohen. (2009). Making sure that the parents are always informed with the communication between the SST and themselves. The parents are the SST’s biggest form of support when it comes to their student. They know who their student is and why they do a lot of things that their student does. The parents can be very beneficial to keep down stressful situations in the classroom and out.

Another problem-solving strategy is to be able to use nonconfrontational solution to solve al problem. A lot of times the people involved in the solution do not agree with each other and it creates for tension and misunderstanding (Cohen. (2009).  A nonconfrontational solution means that you are working around the problem trying to model the correct behavior for the sake of the situation. It does not mean that you agree with how things are done (Cohen. (2009).          

References

Cohen, L. G., & Spenciner, L. J. (2009). Teaching students with mild and moderate disabilities: Research-based practices. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.

Rauscher, M. (Publisher). (2014, October 27). SST meeting role-playing simulation (Links to an external site.) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZEo4yDMnk8

Understanding Special Education. (2009). Understanding the Student Study Team (Links to an external site.) (SST). Retrieved from http://www.understandingspecialeducation.com/student-study-team.html

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