Kayra Maglaughlin

Educ-230

3 May 2019

IDSP Final Paper

The student, let's call her Erin, appears to be physically alike her peers. Erin is a student,

mostly within the general education classroom, who has several struggles that contribute to her

academics and keep her away from doing her best in the learning environment. In this essay,

Erin’s struggles and experience will be viewed through observations made over 15 hours.

Physical Description

The student -let's call her Erin- appears to be physically alike her peers. She is Caucasian,

right handed, has dirty blond hair with blue eyes, and stands at an average height in comparison

to her peers. She is athletically built and appears no different than her peers. She suffers from a

bladder condition, specifically something with her liver, which causes her to frequently need to

excuse herself from class to use the restroom. Her physical activities are no different from any

other child, she plays and runs alike her peers. She doesn't appear to have any issues with her

fitness. Her nutrition, however, is different. She receives food from the school every Friday to

take home with her, to ensure that she is able to eat for the weekend while she is not in school.

She eats the "hot lunch" when at school that is provided by the cafeteria. She does have fully

developed large and small muscles and is capable of all possible activities that her peers can do.

Academic History
 She is in a third grade general education classroom all day, every day. Erin is not

involved in any special programs and doesn’t leave the classroom. She has a short attention span

and often gets distracted and finds it difficult to focus. This is because she has a doctor diagnosis

for attention deficit disorder -ADD- but lacks the hyperactivity. She often stays very quiet and

avoids direct attention in class activities. She does enjoy working with other students and tends

to participate better with a partner. She shows motivation and initiative, however, when it is

material she doesn’t fully understand, she tends to get a little frustrated and shut down a bit. She

seeks out help from her peers, a paraprofessional and/or the teacher when she doesn’t understand

and shows responsibility in advocating for herself.

Stage of Cognitive Development

Erin fits in with her peers, according to Piaget’s stages of development. She might struggle with

paying attention and in turn require more direct instruction, however, she is capable of learning

material according to her age group. She operates within the concrete-operational stage, which

fits with the 7-11-year-old age estimation. She fits into this category because she can think in

more logical ways and has an awareness beyond just her own needs. She can manipulate and

understand the meaning of symbols that make up our numeric system as well as our alphabet and

reading. She isn’t into the formal-operational stage yet because she isn’t necessarily dealing with

symbols relating to other abstract concepts. In terms of her learning and thinking I have observed

her most in dealing with her mathematical thinking. She is fully able to comprehend material and

manipulate numbers, as I have observed within the fractional unit that Erin is going through

currently. Her thinking occasionally gets interrupted because of other stimulus, due to her
attention deficit disorder, however, when she is aided and stimulus is limited, she can effectively

work through mathematical processes and understand them at the same level as her peers.

Socio-emotional Development

Erin’s interactions with her peers tend to be very minimal. She doesn’t have many friends

but instead has one singular friend that she partners with during group activities and plays with

during breaks and recesses. Outside of her partner, she doesn’t make many interactions with

other classmates. Erin does, however, love adult attention. When I enter the room, she hops up to

hug me without fail. She is a very sweet little girl. She loves to hug and interact with the teacher

as much as she can. It appears as though Erin struggles with her self-esteem a bit when she is

working academically. She gets frustrated and shuts down very easily. She isn’t confident

academically because she struggles with her focus, her social skills, and with her academics. I

believe her struggles with her academics and peers have aided in this lack of self-confidence, as

displayed in Erikson’s socio-emotional development stage 4, Industry vs. Inferiority. I believe

that she is in this stage, along with her peers, however because of her relative social isolation and

dependency on praise from adults that she struggles more with feeling inadequate and inferior to

her peers academically and socially.

I have observed this lack of confidence in her several times, especially at recess. Erin and

her friend will usually sit on the ground and talk while watching other students play. Erin will

also buddy up with her friend and in her struggles, easily give up and copy her friends’ work.

Selman’s stage three, as know as self-reflective perspective-taking, is where Erin fits most. She

fits within the 7-12 year old range along with her peers. She can connect with how other people

might perceive her and understand what they are feeling. She is fully capable of this stage in
development. It hard to exactly place where Erin would be on Marcia’s stage of socio-emotional

development. Children are always quietly assessing the world around them. I would say that at

this point, however, Erin is still accepting what she is told by her parents and lacks motivation to

differ from it. This would put her in Identity Diffusion. She doesn’t know or care to know what

is different from what she is used to. I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing, just that she

hasn’t come across anything challenging to her identity yet. Erin fits into the level two stage one

section of Kohlberg’s stages. I believe this because, as I stated earlier in reference to Marcia’s

stages of socio-development, she hasn’t really gone outside of the identity given to her through

adults and behaviors reinforced by adults. She is, however, able to look outside herself which

puts her further into stage two.

Conclusion

Erin, though mostly developmentally the same as her peers, continually struggles with

attention-keeping, socially interacting with many of her peers, and with her bladder which then

brings her self esteem and performance decrease in her academics. Her ADD, though unofficial

in the SPED program, still inhibits Erin from working to her full potential. Despite all of her

struggles, Erin does her very best to succeed and shows interest in trying to learn. She loves to

draw pictures and read. Overall, I would say that Erin’s learning disability, unofficial yet

diagnosed ADD, and her bladder condition, do not stop her from trying to continually create and

keep up with her classmates. This cuddly little girl is going places and I am excited for her.