The instructional challenge I chose to illuminate is student behavior.

Specifically, paying attention and following rules. According to the

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, (2018),
Instructional

“impaired executive functioning is a feature of several conditions that may

Challenge

negatively affect learning, including learning disabilities.” Most of my

students have disabilities, so executive functioning issues is common. They
lack the 5 skills needed to succeed (Self-management, self-awareness,
social awareness, responsible decision making, and relationship skills).

Application Evaluation

According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018),
“Many of the processes [of executive functioning] are involved in socioemotional
development...interventions that target social and emotional learning may be beneficial
in part because they improve executive function” The application I will use to help
students with a lack of paying attention and following rules is embedding social and
emotional (SEL) into the math curriculum. My plan is to begin by increasing self-
awareness skills with a daily check in. We will work on self-management skills with
agreements or student created norms, I will also provide time for students to reflect and
set goals. Students will help co-construct rules and expectations to help with their
responsible decision making skills. I will purposefully group students in using
strategies such as write-pair-share to help them work on relationship skills. Finally, I
will help students build their social awareness by demonstrating the value of multiple
perspectives or approaches to solving problems. Improving student SEL skills should
give me the opportunity unwanted behaviors.
The greatest challenge will be incorporating SEL into
the math curriculum, most often I find myself
scrambling for time. Needing to cover too many topics
in a short amount of time. This leads to the “mile long
inch deep” kind of teaching, the surface level
approach. I need to make the effort to focus on the
topics I know are important, teach deeply with
understanding and embed opportunities for SEL skills
to flourish. Since I know it is important and beneficial
to include these skills I have to carve out time to make
it happen on a daily or weekly basis. Convincing my
department team to allow this to happen will be tough.