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Reflection

The experience of identifying a student at risk of devaluation and implementing a SRV

plan has been an eye-opening, exciting, frustrating, and rewarding journey. In the last few

months, I have learned a lot about myself and have observed and become more aware of the

inner-workings of our classroom society. I have witnessed some positive changes due to this

project, not only for my target student but for our whole class as well.

Reflection of the Process

What has this experience taught me? I have learned that devaluation starts at a young

age. The students in my class come to school with ideas and perceptions of what makes a person

valuable and what does not. They are astute at finding similarities and differences between

themselves and their peers based on appearances, behavior, competencies and even status, and

they have definite ideas of whom they want to be friends with.

I also learned that it is difficult to changes someone elses perceptions of another, but it is

not impossible, and that change takes time. I had only a few months to implement this project

and I can say with certainty that this was not enough time. Fortunately, I have another year with

Brian in my classroom and plan to carry on. It was frustrating to see some of my students

continue to reject and devalue Brian even though others were beginning to include him and see

him as one of them. I had to remind myself that change is a process and does not happen at the

same rate for everyone.

When I set out to help Brian acquire appropriate and expected social behaviors, I

expected to see some improvement in this area from him. What I did not expect to see was the

improvements in social behavior of the class as a whole. The implementation plan did not just
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benefit Brain, but ALL of the students in my class. This really should not have surprised me, but

because this intervention was directed towards one student, I did not foresee the other students in

our classroom also learning from the indirect exposure.

I was reminded that children are fantastic imitators as well as enthusiastic educators. As

my students noticed my instructing behavior, they began to do the same. In the course of a few

weeks, it became natural to remind each other to say sorry or excuse me and this was mostly

done in a positive, matter-of-fact way.

This imitation also worked in the way Brains peers interacted with him. When my

students saw what they perceived to be valued individuals interacting with Brian, they too would

choose to play and work with Brian. The more this happened, the more integrated Brain became

into the community. I can say that I saw a positive improvement in the inclusiveness of our

classroom community.

However, imitation does not always work in positive ways. There were occasions when

Brian had some very off days, reminding his classmates of his differences, and when a

student made a comment and a snicker about Brian, others joined in. I also observed a few

occasions where other students would move from their lunch spot or play activity when Brian

came to join them. Thankfully, these occasions became less frequent as the project went on.

Having other staff that were willing to team up with me to implement this project has

been a huge help in keeping the plan consistent between classrooms. Brian could expect the

same instruction from all of his teachers and he received the same feedback from his classmates

as well. I am thankful for everyones participation in this. Consistency is very important. End-
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of-year activities, although fun, disrupted the routine and consistency in our classroom and

student behavior suffered due to this.

Personal Reflection

Throughout this course and during this process I have become more aware of how my

own perceptions influence the decisions I make for my students and how I interact with them

daily. I have always thought myself to be an open-minded, positive, accepting person, but I have

come to realize that I have contributed to the devaluation of students by focusing on what they

cannot do instead of working with what they can do. Since starting this course my way of

thinking has changed. I am looking for a students strengths instead of weaknesses. Their

challenges still need to be addressed, but how can I use their strengths to help overcome the

obstacles they face?

Since learning about social role valorization, I have become aware of the gap I have

created between Brian and his peers by implementing certain interventions without taking the

time to think about how those interventions would be perceived by his peers. While some

interventions are necessary, we can differ the delivery to be more socially acceptable. For

example, when I realized that Brian was chewing on all kinds of items that should not be in his

mouth I consulted with resource teacher and was given a wand with a vibrating topper for him to

chew on. I was hesitant to try the wand as I thought it might only draw attention to yet another

thing that was different about Brian. Instead of giving him the wand I decided to try gum first as

chewing gum is a socially acceptable activity and would not be viewed as odd by his peers. It

worked! Brian could chew gum to help with his chewing fixation and it did not draw attention to

his difference. This awareness and thinking also took place for me when deciding to

implement the friendship group for Brian as I described in my evaluation of outcomes.

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During this process, I became a bit preoccupied with making sure the social instruction

that I gave out was equitable to all students and not just focused solely on Brian. Again, my

concern was to not draw too much attention to this difference. I found that I needed to be careful

about constantly correcting Brian. I had to stop myself and think, Would I correct this behavior

if another child did it? Questions like, If Brian did this behavior, would I correct it? or Is

this normal behavior for a 7 year old child? were often thought about before proceeding with a

correction.

Making the changes necessary to implement my plan was not that difficult. Did it require

some extra time, effort, and creativity? Yes, but as everything was put into place it became part

of the natural rhythm of our classroom and was well worth the effort. This has changed my way

of thinking. As I go forward in my teaching, I will be using my awareness of social role

valorization to evaluate my teaching practices and to look for ways to make sure all students in

my classroom are valued.