J.A is one of the students in our class from the origin of Latin America. His physical appearance such as brown skin tone and curly hair fully certifies his real homeland. J.A’s involvement in academic practices such as his participation in class lessons for instance languages and technical subjects such as mathematics, was a bit minimal. Nevertheless, he used to be very active when it comes to group work participation whereby he was very involved in matters relating to group assignments. In addition, J.A used to be very active in other extracurricular activities such as sports and drama. However, in matters concerning socialization, he used to have few friends whom he used to trust and when they were not around J.A preferred hanging out himself with no interaction with anybody or sharing anything with anyone else.
Theoretical Explanation
Theoretically, culture and society influence the growth and development of a child as well as parenting style does. The different parenting styles are also influenced by different cultural practices and determine the developmental milestones of a child. Also, Race and racial type can have a lot of impact on child development. Children are developed according to different stereotypes that are present and accepted by their race. At an early age, children learn the way to interact with the surrounding and adopting various methods of response to actions resulting from the object within the environment: according to Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory, they refer to early childhood as a period at which a child develops self-control mechanism. (Wikström,2007) Depending on the method of nurturing, children exposed to controlled and strict surroundings with strict and harsh repercussions are prone to development of self-control faster due to the negative conditions they have been brought up knowing. Environmental upbringing of a child determines future actions such as self-discipline, social interaction and features in an environment. While children brought up in a lenient and laisser-faire environment tend to be care-free and act as they want. Therefore, the value of self-control in these children tends to be low or completely nonexistent. Thus in the case of J.A, his interaction and involvement with other students have been facilitated by the environmental upbringing of his country which was very strict on drug cartels and citizens hence they had to do what the government stipulated and not what the citizens wanted. The drug cartels also had some control over the citizens forcing them to follow certain unwritten rules thus the citizens had to exercise a lot of self-control to avoid antagonizing any of these groups.
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A student with such weaknesses like J.A requires a lot of institutional caring. It is important for teachers to have an understanding of each and every student’s culture and societal upbringing since this will enable them to differentiate instructions and cues relating to students community culture. The teachers should understand that teaching does not only involve issuing of an instruction to the students but also connecting to them and helping them bring out the talents within them. Teachers need to understand various development theories and how they can be applied to individual students in order for them to understand and know how to react to them. It is also important for teachers to identify the best teaching philosophies that would work best with the students. Also, as a teacher, you should be in a position to understand that various attributes such as cognitive ability, speech and language abilities are developed during the early stages of child development and profoundly affected by different cultural practices and environmental factors.
Behavior and Performance Assessment Plan
For a better understanding of child development, Erikson’s psychosocial theory is a crucial theory in understanding and dealing with childhood adolescent behaviors. He believed personal development is composed of a series of stages. The theory states that in each stage of development, individuals encounter a conflict that acts as a turning point in development. (Rosenthal, 1981) It further states that if people are capable of dealing with this conflict successfully, they come out of that stage with psychological strength that would help them in the rest of their life. However, if they fail to solve the conflict, they may not be able to come up with the essential skills required for a strong sense of self. For example in J.A’s case, he may have failed to solve the conflict within the development stages thus it has led to his current behavior. Thus for J.A to be helped a group presentation from the class community would be created in order to determine the level of support system they should apply to help him. The group assignment and presentation will involve carrying out of several activities which will be used to measure his emotional openness, public speaking skills and some of the prinicples that may be driving him.
Academic and social support plan
Since he is from a different origin, speaking in English may have been a challenge when he moved to the U.S when he was at the age of 9 years. This may be one of the contributors to his current behavior that even affects his interest in other activities that mostly rely on speaking in English. To help him, the group should consider increasingly involving him in drama activities by allowing him to take part in activities that he enjoys while at the same time using the activities to solve his speech related problems such as public speaking and speaking English. Since J.A is active in extracurricular activities, the whole class decided to choose J.A to be the class captain in the forthcoming interclass sporting activities. This will help him get through his fear of social connection and improve his interaction with people during the game. Further, the class has been asked to give him maximum cooperation to assist him to succeed in the captaincy attempt which will facilitate the rise of self-esteem and as a result enable him to sail through the struggle of social interaction he is under currently.
Reflective analysis
According to my perspectives and considerations from other students and teachers’ thoughts, J.A should be helped indirectly through the use of his three friends whom he usually hangs around. This is because, being the only people in class whom he cooperates with despite them not having any family relationship or even come from the same culture, means that there may be something very special that may be attracting J.A to them. The best thing I would propose is the three friends be called upon and interviewed on matters concerning their close friendship with J.A, what they share with him, the kind of stories he likes and how they came to be friends. After that, each of his three friends should be given a role to play in ensuring J.A actions and behavior are according to the set objectives.
Another recommendation on top of using his friends, the teacher should try and contact J.A parents or relative who might be taking care of him currently to give more information concerning J.A behavior and specify whether that was normal behavior according to him. Also, the guardian should explain in details how J.A was brought up and the type of environment he lived during his early childhood. By doing this, we will be at a position of helping him. This is because all the information concerning him shall have been known hence it will lead to the establishment of suitable mechanisms by both students and teachers for dealing with him for a better change.
References
Rosenthal, D. A., Gurney, R. M., & Moore, S. M. (1981). From trust on intimacy: A new inventory for examining Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. Journal of Youth and Adolescence , 10 (6), 525-537.
Wikström, P. O. H., & Treiber, K. (2007). The role of self-control in crime causation: Beyond Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime. European Journal of criminology , 4 (2), 237-264.
