Curtis Pooghkay

EDPB 503

December 10th, 2019

Case Study- Matt

Matt is based on a real-life example of a student in a class that I have been a student

teacher in. Matt is a child in a class that I have worked in that is very defiant. Matt currently

lives with his grandmother and sees his mom when he has “sleepovers” at her house. There is

definitely a disconnect between his mother and him. His brother refuses to go and see his mom

due to things he has seen when he was under her care. Matt has no father figure in the picture

and has no grandfather figure either. He has no male role models except for his older brother

who is really mean and has been seen to bully Matt and school and at home. Matt is defiant

and has low self-esteem and confidence. He often refuses to do work in class because he

figures he can’t do it, so he does not try. Instead he will put himself in a corner of a room and

refuse to come back unless he is convinced with one on one instruction. Matt is very sensitive

and if he feels like he is wronged he shuts down and gets very angry and emotional. He also has

a keen sense of what is right, wrong and even fair and will let you know if he feels he has been

wronged at all. Matt also has a lack of male role models in class, so he tends to act out in an

attempt to get male attention. In which case being the only male adult in the classroom this

ends up being me which has set a power struggle that seems to be a reoccurring theme. This a

challenging issue to deal with is you sometimes need to pick your battles, and these can
escalate to things such as calling the principal or sending the student out which is a traumatic

experience for the child.

Matt is an example of a child that has been through various traumas which has led to

behaviours that he is displaying in class. Matt and his mother have a shaky relationship to say

the least which has led him to have a lack of consistency in his life. Matt’s mom has substance

abuse problems which have led to neglect and in-sufficient parenting for Matt to thrive. Matt’s

dad has never been in the picture. There has been a lot of literature to show a lack of male role

models especially in males can leads to various behavioural issues and has a profound effect on

their development. My intervention tactic with Matt will be to continue making connections

with him. I know he loves basketball and loves playing it more than anything else. It may be

required to go out and shoot hoops with him at recess just to continue building that connection

with him. Some of this lack of male role model behaviour has manifested in a negative attention

seeking loop that I see Matt demonstrating. He has attempted to get my attention through

negative means and through non-desired behaviour, so my attention can be on him. This I

believe is partially due to that lack of a father figure in his life. My goal to try and handle this

behaviour is to try and make this a positive feedback loop in contrast to a negative one. This will

be done by sometimes if not too disruptive ignoring negative behaviours and using positive

reinforcement to give for the behaviours I want to see. This may be a long process, but I may be

able to start to see some progress or shifts from negative attention seeking behaviours to some

positive attention seeking behaviours. Another behaviour that I am seeing with Matt

consistently in his behaviours is a lack of confidence with his abilities.

 Matt is a student which thrives with one on one intervention tactics. However, in a

classroom with so many needs this is not always possible. Matt can be heard saying things such

as “I can’t do it” when faced with a challenging assignment or new level of reading or writing.

This is very problematic as it can lead to lack of development and further progress gaps

between his peers and him. This also leads to the objectives and benchmarks made for grade

reading and writing levels to not be reached. This is an ongoing challenge with Matt as it is very

difficult for him to do any class work without one on one interaction. You cannot count on Matt

to do any independent work. The other challenging aspect of this is Matt tends to distract

others when he is not on task with his work which leads to more of his peers not getting their

work done. This manifestation of lack of confidence starting to look like a low self-esteem issue

which is leading to Matt not being able to work independently on work. This can also be seen

with any small public speaking assignments. Matt gets very conscious and tends to not be able

to give answers when called upon to speak in class. Rarely do we get an answer to a question.

Through with comfortability this is something that has been slowly improving. This is something

that has to be a major objective for me next semester as this behaviour can lead to a

derailment of my classroom management and lessons. Again, the key here is to attempt to

build up confidence levels with the student through positive reinforcement. Matt is not having

his confidence built up at home so there is a need for this to be done in the classroom. Writing

skills have been an area that Matt has been improving in. However, he often needs things to be

written out for him, so he can copy it. This is due to his fear of doing things wrong which is a

manifestation of his low confidence. The biggest struggles we have seen with Matt is reading

where he refuses to read other than the simplest of books which is not progressing his reading
level. My goal for the next semester is to try and get collecting and a connection in place where

I can start pushing Matt to try new things and using positive reinforcement to create a new

norm of expectations. I want to push Matt’s comfort zone further, so I can start creating a new

norm of expectations that he is comfortable with. I’ve seen some successes with the framing of

how I present the assignment to Matt. If I can frame it as being really easy and something that

he can do without any sort of difficulty if he agrees I am often met with very little resistance.

However, if I present something more difficult in nature to Matt this is often met with

resistance. Which can sometimes lead to direct defiance which can escalate. With Matt, picking

your battles is important because sometimes you do need to let him go into the corner of the

class. He goes there when he is frustrated. There he is not being disruptive and not derailing

your lesson.

Another challenge with Matt is his apparent emotional vulnerability when he is

interacting with his peers. This is the idea of being able to dish it out but not take it mentality.

Often Matt is coming in angry and emotional after recess. Matt can be somewhat a bully

sometimes but when he gets negative behaviour towards him, he shuts down and gets really

upset. When he comes to class like this getting him to turn it around is quite difficult. When this

happens, it feels like you are fighting a battle on two fronts. Usually you need to give him some

time by himself to resolve the emotional side of this before any reasoning can take place. The

way I plan on attempting to deal with this is trying to sort this out by working on trying to build

resiliency through talking it out and getting to share his feelings which is often a challenge. But

at the end of the fall practicum there has been some progress made with taking responsibility

for actions. I plan to work on this with Matt to ensure this progress continues to be made.
 Matt is going to be a child that I need to really try and get to figure out what works for

him in the fall practicum. This is a child that needs support and who has got the short straw

with his support in his home environment. This environment has manifested in some really

challenging behaviours that Matt has expressed. That said, I would like to acknowledge some

really good things Matt does. Matt is very thoughtful often telling the teachers about

compassionate actions of his peers. When he comes in to the class in the morning, he often

puts out chairs for his classmates. He is a really good friend and cares about those classmates

he deems as his best friends. He really wants to succeed but he often gets stuck and can’t go

any further. As a male role model in the classroom I want to take it upon myself to help Matt

succeed and work with him and get there. He needs stable adults in his life when so many

before have failed him.