Students eligible for special education services for learning disabilities and emotional and behavior disorders often display characteristics that create obstacles to their learning. Mindful breathing, a mindfulness technique, can help students with these disabilities regulate their attention, thoughts, and emotions during academic instruction.…

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) sometimes experience anger, which can negatively affect their academic performance and social relationships if not managed properly. Prevention and intervention programs are beneficial in addressing this issue. Bibliotherapy is an effective method for anger management and is categorized into…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) can exhibit severely challenging behaviors that lead to events of crisis in an inclusive classroom. This article provides practitioners with an overview of the cycle of dysregulation experienced by some students with EBD. The article includes descriptions of stages in the dysregulation cycle,…

This brief provides an overview of how to identify and determine why a student may be avoiding or refusing to attend school, and ways that schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) teams can help to assess and address school refusal. We will introduce a research-based framework to engage in problem-solving to better support…

Research in school discipline suggests that punitive and exclusionary sanctions have adverse effects on students and are disproportionately administered to students of color and low-income students. School-based restorative justice practices have recently gained attention as an alternative disciplinary approach that emphasizes the reparation of…

Raising or caring for young children is a demanding job. Parents and other caregivers often struggle when children demonstrate challenging behavior. This article provides guiding principles and specific strategies that professionals and parents can use to gain insight into children's behavior and make positive changes in their daily interactions.

Feelings of shame may contribute to music teachers and music teacher educators being unwilling to discuss needs and concerns for fear of being judged or seen as inadequate. Shame or fear of feeling shame can also lead individuals to withdraw or perpetuate negative behaviors. Although shame is often a natural part of the human experience, the…

Trauma is pervasive in schools and can threaten students, affecting their academic performance and opportunities for lifelong success. Educators must be careful they don't add to a student's trauma. School policies, including academic (e.g., tracking) and behavior (e.g., discipline), can carry implicit bias that can retraumatize a student. A…

Charts that keep (public) track of whether a student's behavior is in some equivalent of a red (problem), yellow, or green ("well-behaved") zone are ubiquitous in elementary schools. This strategy based on shaming students is due to be retired because (1) it promotes only compliance, not social-emotional learning; (2) charts don't teach…

This paper is an explication of the conceptual underpinnings of a new, narrative career counselling method: fluttering-hope. The method presents a new approach to addressing repetition compulsion, a condition characterised by repeated career-destructive behaviour and experiences of failure. Fluttering-hope is formulated on the basis of the chaos…

Drawing on both extensive professional and deeply personal experience, Sarah Werner Andrews' vision of working with children carries profound respect and love throughout her guiding insight. She shares an understanding of those children who are the most challenging and provides a framework that allows us to embrace these and all children.…

Anhedonia refers to the inability of experiencing pleasure in positive life events. It has been conceptualized as a stable yet malleable characteristic and is associated with hypoactivity in the mesolimbic and mesocortical dopaminergic systems. Very recently, it has been posited as an etiologic factor associated with drug addiction onset,…

When teachers wonder "What should I do?" in response to challenging student behaviors, the answers are not as simple as they might seem. What teachers can do also depends, at least in part, on external demands (e.g., discipline codes, principal expectations, time pressures on teaching content and testing) that can either facilitate or…

Ever since the first schools opened their doors, teachers have struggled to find ways to successfully deal with misbehaving students. Many have found nothing but stress and frustration in their attempts to bring order to their classrooms. Unfortunately, this problem is not going away. As times and students change, teachers are finding that old…

A teacher serves many important roles within a classroom, including an educator and a manager of child behavior. Inattention, overactivity, and noncompliance have long been cited as some of the most common areas of reported difficulty for schools (Axelrod & Zank, 2012; Goldstein, 1995). The evidence-based practice of positive attending (i.e.,…