Monday, June 6, 2011

Treatment and Educational Strategies For School Refusal Behavior in Special Education!

Is your child with autism or another disability showing signs of school refusal behavior? Are you at your wits end and do not know what to do? Would you like to learn about treatment and educational strategies for school refusal behavior that could benefit your child in special education? This article will be discussing school refusal behavior, treatments and educational services and strategies that could help your child in this area.

Successful treatment in this area depends on why the child is experiencing this difficulty. Could be due to many reasons but I will discuss a few:

1. Inappropriate treatment by special education personnel. This could be due to the staffs attitudes or perceived negative behavior of your child. This occurs quite often when school personnel do not receive the proper training, in how to positively deal with negative behavior.

2. Inappropriate amount and type of special education services to help your child make progress in their education. When children are not being taught they tend to either develop negative behavior, anxiety, or depression, which could be contributing to school refusal behavior.

3. Anxiety or depression could be a reason that your child is having this difficulty; though it would be important to figure out why your child has developed these. Was their a particular incident that occurred at school that affected your child? Were they restrained or secluded by special education staff? These are just a few possibilities that you can consider.

4. Difficulty with other children due to your child's difficulty with social skills and social cues.

Below are several things that you should consider that may help your child;

1. Consider a few observations over a several day period at different times of the day. See how your child interacts with school staff, and how they interact with other children. Notice any particular problems-make an appointment to discuss these issues with school personnel. If your child's teacher cannot deal with your child's behavior ask for specific training in the area of Positive Behavioral Supports (PBS).

2. Talk to other students or parents that are in the building and see if they have noticed any difficulty. I find this to be a wonderful way to truly find the truth about what is going on in your child's school!

3. Check and make sure that your child is learning by asking for progress monitoring, check your child's district and state standardized testing, and look at your state standards for the grade your child is in. If your child is not making appropriate progress they may be developing anxiety which can contribute to this disorder.

4. Check your child's IEP and make sure that staff is following the IEP and that your child is receiving all the services that are listed. I have heard from many parents who just assumed that their child was getting the services until something happened, and they found out their child was not getting the special education services listed on their IEP.

5. Ask for psychological counseling with a trained psychologist, if your child needs it. If your school does not have a trained psychologist who can do counseling, the school district is required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to pay for an outside person, if your child needs it! You will probably have to fight for an outside person, but your child is worth it!

6. If all of these strategies do not work consider taking your child to a trained Psychiatrist to see if your child could benefit from medication to help them. Also they could recommend a trained psychologist that could provide counseling for your child. The school needs to pay for this though, since it is related to educational difficulties.

7. Your child may need another teacher or a different placement that can meet their educational and emotional needs.

By trying all of these strategies you will well be on your way to helping your child with their school refusal behavior!




Thursday, May 5, 2011

Some of the Best Schools to Consider for Quality Education for Your Kids

Hyderabad is the capital city of Andhra Pradesh in India. It is famously known as the "city of pearls." In 2011, Hyderabad was also named as the largest metropolitan city of India, is spread over an area of 650 square kilometers, and has a population of around 6,809,970. This makes Hyderabad, the fourth most densely populated cities of India. Hyderabad is famous for several different reasons. One of the main reasons is its rich history and all the great historical monuments. This makes it a very hot tourist city, where people from all around the world come especially to see the Chowmahalla Palace. Hyderabad is also famous for its unique architecture, art, and culture. It also used to be the hot spot for trading pearls and diamonds globally. Apart from all these reasons which make Hyderabad so famous, one other reason behind its popularity is the quality education, it offers. Hyderabad is home to many great schools, colleges, and universities. Some of the oldest universities can be found in this city, and schools, here are constantly working hard to improve their standard of education, while giving their citizen's quality international education. Here in this article, we will highlight the top ten schools in Hyderabad that you can consider for your children if you are planning on moving to this city or already living.

Harvard/Howard public school:
The school that comes in first place in the list of top ten schools in Hyderabad is Harvard public school, also called as Howard public school. This school has an affiliation with the best educational boards of India which is the CBSE board. It is almost two decades old and offers co-education. This school is located in the heart of Hyderabad i.e., Himayatnagar. This school thrives on its sole aim of providing the children of Hyderabad with quality education in a very friendly environment. It offers great facilities to the students by providing them with games, arts and craft, dance and music, library, computer labs, science labs, field trips, sports, and transport facilities.

Oakridge International School:
This school was recently opened at the end of the year 2001, but within a few short years, it has been able to expand itself from nursery till class XII, with over 2500 student enrollment. Because of their commitment to quality education and hard work, they have succeeded in scoring second position in our list of top ten schools in Hyderabad. This school also provides accommodation to its students coming from abroad.

Praganya Montessori School:
This school is a Montessori level school, still managed to gain third position in our list of top ten schools in Hyderabad, because of its unique methods of providing education and learning for toddlers. This school is great for children between the ages of 30 months till twelve years. The school classes are organized into primary and elementary school, primary for students between the ages of 2 ½ till 6 years and elementary for students from age 6 till 12 years.

The remaining list of schools that are included in the top ten schools in Hyderabad include:
Holy Mother High School
Euro Kids
Oyster Play School and Montessori
Kendriya Vidyalaya
Eton Temple Convent School
Millat Model School
Johnson Grammar School

Other than these ten, there are lots of other great schools, that are affiliated with international boards and Indian boards. This makes Hyderabad one of the best choices for parents to give their kids, the quality education they wish for.




Monday, April 4, 2011

A Trade School Will Provide You With Specific Education For Your Trade

If you are getting ready to graduate from high school and are looking to go to work as quickly as possible, then a trade school will give you the education and training required by your industry of choice. Trade schools are designed to make you career-ready in less time than a degree program. So if your desire is to have a career in a specific industry, and you know that you need a post high school education, you will be able to choose from a variety of schools for your training.

Trade schools offer programs in a multitude of industries, and they provide a well-rounded curriculum with a mixture of classroom work and hands-on training of real life experience. It was in the 1990s that these schools changed to provide a broader approach to developing the academic and technical skills of students. So no matter what your career goal, whether you want to work in health care, carpentry, or the automotive field, a trade school can be your gateway.

Actually, there are roughly between 50 and 60 schools nationally for the most sought after trades like plumbing, HVAC, and carpentry. You can enroll in one of these schools and work toward a certificate or continue your education toward an Associate's degree. These programs can help jump-start your career or advance you in your existing job within your current company.

One of the most significant advantages to trade schools, aside from the fact that the curriculum is concentrated and focused on the trade itself, is the hands-on training, which is taught by instructors with current industry knowledge and experience. This kind of education gives students an advantage in the job market. Since many trade schools offer internships, you can gain the experience most employers require.

Another benefit to attending a trade school is that many of them offer job placement services and employer seminars. In fact, the best career education schools, those with the best reputations, offer employment assistance. Some even offer these services to graduates.

Trade schools offering placement services offer classes designed to work on improving job interviewing skills. They will help you prepare and develop a resume to best represent your skills and experiences. Rounding out your job education will be post interview follow-up and everything you need to know to ease the anxiety of a job search.

Trade schools offer you the opportunity to train in a particular industry with real life experiences. The time you spend will be an investment in your career and will take less time than a degree program. If you already know what you want to do with your life, choose from the many trade schools offering programs in your field.




Thursday, March 3, 2011

Education for Sustainable Development for Child Education and Schools

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a rather new field of education. We can see it as an innovative kind of future education for schools linking the child's development with the future challenges of society.

I don't think that education for sustainable development is just another buzzword forgotten in a few years. From a global perspective as well as a local perspective we have to direct education toward what will be truly useful for each child and for each society in the future.

To have a fulfilling life should be within reach for all children wherever they are born. In too many parts of society and of the world children grow up in hazardous environments with very poor conditions for basic requirements and bleak prospects for their future.

Education for Sustainable Development is derived from the Brundtland report's focus on Sustainable Development (SD). The Brundtland report requires fundamental changes in the society and its institutions, in politics and in our individual family life styles. Economic development cannot be separated from social development and a concern for the environment.

ESD for child development Educational research can tell us a lot of how to make use of education for sustainable development for child development.

The most important fact might be that ESD is an excellent frame for the empowerment of children. When we respect each individual child for its ideas and opinion, and at the same time bring the child into challenging learning situations we facilitate empowerment of the child.

Developing self esteem and empowerment goes hand in hand in education for sustainable development. A proper self esteem is such an important part of successful child development.

Another important fact is that ESD is a productive frame for meaningful learning. Opposite to rote learning and the acquisition of facts without much understanding meaningful learning situations help the child to engage fully in the teaching. By working with real problems the child can develop much better understanding of concepts and skills from the schools core curriculum in a meaningful context. The key to that is the opportunity to use and reflect on these 'traditional' ingredients of classic schooling in the meaningful contexts derived from the focus on sustainable development.

Education for sustainable development and schools Some schools have focused on the beautification of their school environment. This might help the school's prestige in the local society but it isn't helpful for education for sustainable development unless it happens as the students' project.

Similarly some schools have put a lot of emphasis in making the school buildings more 'green' with solar power panels, recycling systems, water conservation measures and tree planting around the school. Again, such initiatives are only valuable for the learning of the students if they are planned as student projects. You cannot evaluate the quality of a school's work with education for sustainable development from a picture of the school.

Concerning a better approach to ESD, headmaster and teachers should ask questions like: - How can we challenge students' thinking on the future and how to make use of parts of the core curriculum in a meaningful way in combination? - How can we teachers cooperate to create stimulating activities and plan the teaching in such a way that the self-esteem of the students will benefit from it? - How can we help students to investigate local people's concern for the future and how to make sense of such results? - How can we help students to try to make a difference according to their wishes and visions?

Education for sustainable development will gain increasing publicity as the picture of environmental degradation, energy shortage, climate change, increasing poverty mixed with increasing wealth and the overall picture of globalization becomes more evident.

We cannot blame our children for these issues but it is our duty to educate them to be able to cope with such complex and controversial issues and to live a decent life with a belief that it is possible for everybody to make a difference to the better.




Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Vocational School - An Important Alternative for College

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Financial Education for School Children

Habits die hard. So, if we are going to be slaves of our habits, lets at least have good habits. If we stretch this point, it is easy to see the case for money and financial education for school children. Children are inherently curious about the things happening around them. However, in our day to day life, we take much of what we see for granted. Often times, children ask very interesting questions like "Where does money come from?", "Why do prices of some goods keep going up while the prices of other goods keep coming down?", etc. However, many adults are not able to answer these questions in a satisfactory manner. The climax of much of modern education is a job, which is something people have to endure to earn money. However, managing money and growing it, which are life skills are not taught to students at all. The parents don't teach it, the schools don't teach and in the end, we bring up yet another generation of clueless adults who fall prey to financial intermediaries. In order to break this vicious cycle, it is really important for parents to ensure that their children get right financial and money education.

Are there examples of financial education at an early age making a difference in anyone's life? The answer is a resounding "Yes"! In fact, we don't have to look beyond Mr. Warren Buffet. Buffet started saving and investing very early in his life. We all know that the key to unlock the power of compound interest is to start early. By the time an average adult is aware of all these facts, he is already in his mid thirties. As Malcolm Glad well mentions in his "Outliers", it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become very good in any endeavor. Thus, it is abundantly clear that children are exposed to the concept of money and compounding at an early age. This will ensure that by the time they reach adulthood, they would have spent a few hundred hours, if not a few thousand hours pondering about making and managing money. The head start will help them lifelong as the early birds get the benefit of the compounding effect of their wealth.

Another advantage of teaching school students about finance is that they become confident of taking their own decisions. This means that they can do away with middle men like financial planners, brokers, insurance agents, etc. This leads to substantial savings in terms of money over a 20 year period. The savings are likely to be approximately 2% - 3% every year. This is not an insignificant amount and the end result is that the retirement nest egg of the adult who had the benefit of early financial education is way larger than that of a person who has to learn the lessons the hard way, if at all.

Real money education is based on a curriculum that is a synthesis of several disciplines - History, business, banking, economics, etc. The key is to integrate these concepts so that the children are confident of taking decisions in the real world. Traditional education stresses more on analysis than synthesis, but in real world most problems are solved by synthesis of ideas from several disciplines rather than through analysis.

To summarise, it is important for the parents and the school teachers to equip the children with money and financial knowledge to survive and prosper in today's complex world. As financial products grow ever complex, a basic understanding of the fundamentals are the least that is required of any future adult to compete in the highly challenging world of tomorrow. So let us sow the seeds of financial knowledge in the minds of young children, so that they may reap the benefits in their adulthood.