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Effective Teaching Approaches to Create a Secure Space for Severe Emotional Disturbances (SED) in Your Classrooms

4th December 2020

Coloured walls with visuals are just a few creative modifications that special needs teachers usually take to safeguard students with different kinds of behavioural and severe emotional disturbances (SED). Well, however, these are not enough - a learning space that stimulates creative expression is also significant. The special needs teaching courses online therefore play an important role here by developing the 21^st century special education teachers effectively. Quite generally, the children detected with SED have issues in regulating their emotions, sometimes they are prone to unexpected violent outbursts too. Emotional disturbance is also known as emotional behavioral disability (EBD).

The federal law - Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s (IDEA) definition stipulates emotional disturbance as one of the 13 categories of entitlement for special education services. As per the IDEA definition, an emotional disturbance is a condition in which a child exhibits one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

Characteristics of Severe Emotional Disturbance (SED) –
 

 

1. Children detected with SED may have a prevalent mood of unhappiness or hopelessness.
    
2. Sometimes, they may incline to grow negative corporeal symptoms or fears connected to personal or school problems.
    
3. SED children have an incapability to learn something that cannot be explained by knowledgeable, sensory, or health aspects.
    
4. These children may be inept to progress and retain suitable and acceptable social associations with family and peers in the school system.
    
5. Children with SED may have an inclination to show unfitting behaviour or feelings in response to standard situations.

Well, learners with SED are at menace for school let-down and frequently necessitate both specially designed instruction along with psychotherapy and counselling services. These children may have been unrestrained by their parents or sexually, physically, or emotionally mistreated. They may even have been identified with a mental health condition like as a personality disorder that will follow them throughout their life. This is making it problematic for them to keep friendships, any other social relationships, or professional career.

Students with SED can be included in general education classrooms with support from a trained special educator with special needs teaching courses online. Also, please keep in mind the term includes schizophrenia, this does not apply to children of SED, unless it is identified that they have an emotional disturbance.

(Ref: https://bit.ly/39HvZRe)

To accommodate SED students, here are some of the measures while teaching the children with different Severe Emotional Disturbance (SED):
 

• As a special needs educator, you can incorporate behavioral reward system to persuade children with SED.
   
• You can also include a wall in which your learners can draw or paint on or maybe, you can include a space where they can listen to music as effective ways to support SED children.
   
• Also, you can integrate a personal library for the SED children to keep their schoolwork. By this way, they can easily access schoolwork that was left behind in class for any emergency withdrawal.
   
• As a special needs’ educator, you can include different secured furniture, including desks and bookcases or even interesting high-quality beanbag chairs or balance balls as an alternative of standard chairs.
   
• Use Smart Boards or chalkboards for class activities to persuade the SED children.
   
• Protective mats should be included in your special education classrooms.

Well, different kinds of preventive measures and awareness are often the best solution for SED children. We would recommend both parents and teachers to collaborate with other professionals trained with special needs teaching courses online. These may include psychotherapist, behavioural therapist, etc. to fix specific ways to effectively educate children with Severe Emotional Disturbance.

Written By: Gargi Sen