Things That Hurt Kids in School

¶ … Student Learning External Distractions Mental intimidation Name-calling Insults Physical violence/injury Pushing/shoving/fights Groups cornering single victim Social media Gang/Criminal Activity 6 Violence/crime near school Troubled Family Mental health concerns While being one of the most demanding professions, teaching is also particularly difficult in school settings where there is a performance problem for a large proportion of the student body. Job stresses are also high as school authorities strive to raise standards and hold teachers accountable (Adelman & Taylor, 2002).

However research has shown that poor teaching standards is not the only reasons that can lead to poor performance. There are many other factors that act as barriers to the effective learning efforts by students and the teaching efforts by teachers. The highest possible level is what every teacher, counselor and administrator wants to achieve. But despite the best efforts of both teachers and students, it does not always become possible to achieve the potential.

There are factors that are called barriers to effective education that affect the performance of students in schools (Fingar & Jolls, 2013). There are two major concepts to the notion of barriers to learning. These are external and internal factors. Research has found that many students go to school under conditions and situations that are not helpful for promotion of healthy development and are often even antithetical to the process. Learning and performing also often becomes difficult when some students have inherent intrinsic conditions.

Therefore a section of the students at almost every level come to school effectively unready to meet the demands of the school and learning settings. Problems such as youth delinquency, violence, substance abuse, teen pregnancy and school dropout have been identified as the common risk factors that that research has found to impede effective learning in students (Adelman & Taylor, 2002).

Other problems such as mental health concerns that include school adjustment problems, physical and sexual abuse, relationship difficulties, severe emotional disturbance and neglect are also have been found to be responsible for prevention of effective learning for students. While these factors and reasons should not be considered a=s justified reasons for ineffective performance for students, it is a fact that the above mentioned factors are one that both parents and teachers would ideally want to avoid submit the children to.

While most of the factors identified by researcher are external barriers to healthy development and learning, the internal factors should also be given due importance. The external factors that act as barriers to effective learning can include factors that are imposed by the community like availability of drugs and of firearms and the community laws and norms that are favorable towards promoting drug use, firearms use and engaging in crime, media portrayals of violence, the detachment with the neighborhood and the community and disorganized communities, extreme financial depravation and poverty.

External factors can also be related to the family and can include a historical prevalence of the problem behavior in the family, improper management of problems in the family, conflicts in the family and the lack of favorable parental attitudes and involvement in the problem behavior. Peer related barriers is also among the major causes of poor performance of students and this barrier includes factors like friends who engage in the problem behavior and mental and physical bullying by the peers.

Internal barriers can be related to biological and psychological differences in normal developmental curve and not fitting into the curve in terms of looks and behavior and vulnerabilities resulting from physical disabilities and other deficiencies and deficits that can result in reduced ability to regularly attend classes and school (Goodemann, Zammitt & Hagedorn, 2012).

Thesis Statement There are barriers apart from school settings that educators face in providing effective instruction to students External Distractions From the above discussions it is clear that the external barriers play a major role in a section of the students in impeding the effective learning of the students. Some of the factors are not only impediments about are also antithetical to the process of effective learning.

The external barriers to effective education for students and children are the ones that have the biggest impact over the learning abilities of students. Mental intimidation Name-calling Mental intimidation is also part of the bullying actions that students engage in and inflict upon other students. Such bullying can be in the form of verbal abuse to other students. Name calling is one of the most common forms of verbal bullying in schools and education settings.

The act by students intended for other students has the potential to diminish a student's ability to effective learning along with the ability of the school to educate. There is thus requirement for providing of safe and non-hostile learning environments in school settings for students to negate the negative effect of name calling (Kuhlenschmidt & Layne, 1999). Insults Another form of bullying that often takes place in school is insults, majorly verbal, from one student to another.

While name calling can be one way of causing insult to another student there are other ways that a student can be made to intentionally feel insulted and such comments can be related to ethnicity, language, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic condition, color, any form of disability, national origin, military status, ancestry, age, religion, order of protection status, status of being homeless and actual or potential marital or parental status among others.

Physical violence/injury Apart from verbal bullying as have been discussed earlier, physical bullying and violence is another form of bullying comprise external barriers to effective learning for students. Physical bullying can result in injury and create a potential fear and impediment for the bullied student for concentrating in school and impede learning. Pushing/shoving/fights Pushing and shoving and even fights is one of the most common form of physical bullying in schools.

As with verbal abuse and insults, this form of bullying can prevent the student from effective learning. Groups cornering single victim Students can also group up against a single student on the basis of race, culture, nationality sex or economic or social status and engage in physical bullying. This is one form of bullying where the group engaging in bullying denies the bullied the right to have effective learning by creating detest again going to school (Kuhlenschmidt & Layne, 1999).

Social media Bullying friends on the social media is also a new form of bullying that has serious consequences both physically and psychologically on students impeding their ability to gain effective learning. Gang/Criminal Activity Violence/crime near school This form of barrier comes along with community and neighborhood. It is common knowledge that groups growing up in negative localities or neighborhoods can get involved in crimes outside the school at a very young age.

While education is impaired in case such students get caught, their learning curve is significantly affected even if they remain free. Such criminal activities also can happen in school and due to the same reasons.