The disadvantage of having challenging/exceeding siblings in the same school

The disadvantage of having challenging/exceeding siblings in the same school
Lately I have been thinking about an issue that seems to be very difficult for me to handle and I have not found a lot of information on. In the school that I work at we have a lot of families who bring more than one children to our school. It is great for students to have their siblings attending the same school but sometimes if one or two of the siblings is acting up severely and one of them is not it is hard for me and other teachers to not associate the “good” student with their “nutty” siblings. In the opposite case when one of the siblings is extremely talented in one area, it is hard for me to not expect the rest of his/hers brothers and sisters to be talented as well.
I have a student who comes from a big family of 4 boys and 2 girls. All of the boys attend our school and 3 out of the 4 boys ( the older once) are having major behavior problems to the extend of being suspended on a regular basis. This year I have the youngest of the brothers in my 1st grade classroom. He was in our school last year as a kindergartener and he showed perfect behavior with a few exceptions. His 1st grade year started off great, he was tying his best and behavior seemed not to be an issues. I started the year with high expectations for him and his behavior, I still have the same high expectations but something started to change in him. I noticed that he started doing more and more silly things that get him in trouble and he has a very hard time connecting his actions to consequences. I have tried my hardest not to think that he has started to copy his brother’s behaviors and tries to be just like them and that the older he gets the harder his behavior is going to get.
The same goes for students who have exceeding siblings attending the same school. Teachers subconsciously expect them to match up to the achievement of their siblings or to exceed in the same areas that their siblings are and that is not always the case, every child is unique and they have their own strengths and weaknesses.
As a teacher I am struggling with this issue and I am still learning how to overcome it, knowing that every student is unique.

Gifted and Talented Students Posted October 20th

Gifted and Talented Students posted on October 20th

I would like to talk about another disadvantaged group within my 1st grade class that not many teachers necessarily know how to work with. The group I am talking about is Gifted and Talented students.
I have always tried to meet my student’s individual learning needs but my number one priority has always been to bring my students to grade level reading and math. Within my classroom of 23 students, there has always been at least 2 or 3 students who were able to achieve on a higher level than the rest. My gifted and talented students, the once who are already functioning on a grade level; the once who are already reading chapter books in 1st grade and doing three digit addition and subtraction math in 1st grade. How can I really meet their needs of advance learning and success?
There are many different ways to challenge the gifted and talented students within a classroom. What I do is I always make sure I am prepared with additional challenge math work and advanced books for students who are in 1st grade but functioning on a higher grade level. I have also try to use my gifted and talented students as helpers to others who might be still struggling with the concept being taught. Student love to have the opportunity to go and pretend to be the teachers and help out classmates who need the help.
I always encourage my gifted and talented students to reach higher, to try harder. I talk to their parents and recommend Gifted and Talented Programs that the students might benefit from.
These are some of the things I have done to accommodate Gifted and Talented students within my classroom. I hope to be able to learn more on the topic so that I could be even more effective teachers.

Disadvantage groups

Homeless Students

Urban Academy is located in the heart of downtown St. Paul, MN and it is surrounded by a few homeless shelters. Because of the location our school is an elementary school that welcomes a lot of students who are disadvantaged by not having a home, children that are homeless.

In my 1st grade classroom I have had a hand full of homeless students throughout the years. I have always thought about how a 1st grader can understand the concept of being homeless. Then I thought about the fact that most of my homeless students don’t know better, that they have a different definition of a home. For them a home is a place where you sleep, not necessarily a safe place; a place where you stay for a while and then you have to leave behind. Based on that I have changed my way of thinking about what the meaning of a “home” is.

I have always tried to encourage my homeless students and help them as much as I can. Openly communicating with the parents is the best way to reach the child and really get to know them and their needs. Some homeless families are just in a temporally situation and are in the process of finding their own place. I had a family that was staying in a close by apartment shelter because of a recent divorce; the mom was trying to get a way from the dad and was in the process of finding a stable job after moving to St.Paul MN from Chicago. The homeless apartment shelter they were staying in was just a temporary situation for them. The children were taking the move hard but were very optimistic about the future.

In the same time I have had families that are staying in a different shelter every night not knowing where they will sleep the following nights. In a situation like that it is most likely to see behavior problems related to their life conditions; students like that simply need stability in school that they don’t get from home; they need a steady schedule and a follow through discipline.