Discreet Reasons as to Why

¶ … discreet reasons as to why some students are not adversely affected -- either in their behavior or in their academics -- by situations involving penury, divorce, and dysfunctional families. One of the most eminent of these has to do with the students themselves, and their personality types. People have many different ways of encountering and (ideally) overcoming adversity. Students who are impoverished yet come from families with strong backgrounds for overcoming adversity (many immigrants may fit into this category, especially those from disadvantaged parts of the world) may view their temporary circumstances as simply another obstacle to overcome. Thus, these students may be the best behaved and the most academically focused for the simple fact that they view scholastic prowess as a means of overcoming poverty.

The main thing that pedagogues must consider when dealing with children who come from indigent or broken homes is that the family values that these children are raised around will be reflected in their classroom behavior. Thus, there may be some students who are the eldest sons of large families with just a single mother who view their roles as setting examples for their brothers and sisters and by excelling in school to help them out. What teachers need to remember is that for the most part, disadvantageous home life (such as that due to separation, indigence and to dysfunctional families) is oftentimes not the cause of difficulty in school in terms of behavior or performance. Rather, these situations may exacerbate other issues that are already present with a child's conduct or academic prowess (Baum and Flores, 2011, p. 171). But teachers must remember that just the way these situations can exacerbate such issues, they can also be used as motivation to overcome these obstacles, depending on a family's values.

It is absolutely essential to provide comprehensive training to all members of an educational facility that will work with data-based, functional assessment problem solving processes. This includes similar training for instructors, administrative staff, and those providing related services. All of these professionals need to be familiar with the same information since they are all playing vital roles in carrying out what is essentially the same process: assisting with commonly found problems that can potentially negative impact education (Knoff and Dyer, 2010, p. 51). It is vital that the specific training that they undergo is data-based so that it is applicable to actual situations in real-life educational institutions. Each of these three different professionals (those issuing instruction, related services and administrative assistance) needs to be familiar with the processes involved in alleviating difficulties so that those processes are streamlined and operate as seamlessly as possible. If these individuals were not familiar with the same problem-solving processes, they could take longer to implement and detract from the facilitation of a conducive learning environment -- even worse than the students are in such situations.