Kristin Vesely

Decision Making and Problem Solving Reflection

10-24-14
This school year I decided to take on a new position at my middle school. I
decided to help out on the volunteer Student Assistance Team, also known as SAT.
This is a committee comprised of a student counselor, the assistant principal, a
special education teacher and the school nurse. The purpose of this team is to
examine and come up with possible interventions to individual students that
classroom teachers have concerns with. To bring a student in front of the SAT team,
the regular, core team of teachers, and hopefully the parents, have filled out the
required paperwork. This paperwork will identify the student, background on the
student (i.e. past grades, home life and if applicable, legal issues, etc.) and all
successful and unsuccessful interventions the teachers have already tried.
To date, we have had six kids brought before the team all with vastly
different academic and behavior needs. Some of the kids are already on
Individualized Education Plans while others are not. While many kids are brought
in for academic reasons alone others are brought in for behavior concerns or
sometimes both. It is the job of the team to assess what has or has not worked and
try to formulate a new plan. Sometimes that plan can be as simple as a vision test
with the school nurse (which was the case for one young lady) and other times it
might require more rigorous interventions.
One particular student we have been working with is a seventh grade male
who is already served in special education under the category of 0555, Other Health
Impaired. This student is very bright. He is able to catch on quickly in class when

engaged and needs little intervention. However, he is also off task most times and
seeks negative attention from his teachers. He struggles behaviorally in math the
most and has admitted to acting out because he doesnt like this class. He was
brought before the team where we examined his file, looked for patterns in the
behavior and spoke to the teachers from previous years.
In this particular case, we as a team took a heuristic approach to problem
solving also known as the rule-of-thumb approach. This type of approach means
that there is no one simple answer. This student has been brought to the SAT team
before for the same types of behavior concerns. His core class team has tried many
interventions both is seventh and sixth grade. After looking at all the data and all
the information before us, we have to try and differentiate between what is
successfully working and what was not. We have to take all the information that is
before us and decide what is the next best step in the benefit of the student and the
teachers.
As a team we decided that the problems are not specifically curricular. His
behavior is causing a curricular problem so we need to figure out the behavior first.
We decided to bring in the district behavior specialists to do random observations
of the student. We took a look at his current Behavior Intervention Plan that is
located within the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) paperwork and decided the
current plan was not working and needed revision. In addition, we decided to look
closer at who he is as a person. It has always been a personal belief of mine that if
you simply take the time to get to know a student for who they are personally
instead of academically, you may be able to form a bond with them that helps. In an

article I read by Caltha Crowe, she states that, Forming meaningful relationships
with students requires teachers to know something of their interests and lives
outside of school (Crowe, 2010, p. 67). In doing this I have personally found that
the student then begins to look at you as a person too and not just an authoritative
figure at the front of the room.
This particular activity integrated nicely into standard 6.1 of the ELCC
Building Level Standards. As a teacher and a member of the SAT team, I did
advocate for this particular student. I co-teach in his math class and have found him
to become increasingly interesting simply by talking to him about his day. I let him
know he has choices and he knows the consequence for the choices, good and bad,
that he makes. By advocating for him in this manner, the decision to act out or not
has become his own decision.
According to the USF Conceptual Framework Model, I also find this
situation to be an example of a cognitive mediator. Our duty as a SAT team is to
take all the information that is given to us by parents, students and teachers a come
up with a successful plan. In this particular example, by simply giving the student
the power to make his own decisions he has become more of an independent
learner. He still had behavior concerns, but he has started to own those concerns
whereas before it was never his fault. He knows what his triggers are and he uses
the information given to him to construct a class period that works for
himsometimes. But we are still working on that.

References
Cherry, K. (n.d.). Problem solving. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/a/problem-solving.htm
Crowe, C. (2010, February). Teaching children with challenging behavior. Educational
Leadership, 67, 65-67.