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.
1 comment:
This is an important issue. True, many siblings model the behavior of their older siblings. Some rebel against being labeled as similar to their siblings. How can we (as teachers) know their family history but still treat them as individuals?
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