Introduction
Sheffield school for the disabled comprises challenged students in one way or another. Most students are mentally disabled, while some are dumb. It is a medium-level public school with a population of about 2 500 students from the primary to the high school level. It is located in Victoria, Australia. It is a part of the Sheffield primary school, which teaches students who are “normal .”There was a need to separate the students with disabilities from the other students to ensure smooth learning and avoid distractions during education by the regular students from the disabled students. The primary school section of the Sheffield School of the disabled has only eight teachers who manage about 1,800 students in ten classes, from grade one to grade ten.
On the other hand, the high-school section has about 700 students with only three teachers for the four classes, from grade eleven to grade fourteen. Sports activities in Sheffield school were conducted separately in the two schools, and each had its field. The practice of music competitions was also done independently.
This essay aims to develop a proposal to ensure inclusivity and student well-being at Sheffield school. It aims to provide strategies the school could use to create social-emotional learning for the students to gain more knowledge and education. It provides ways in which the students’ families can participate in their student’s well-being regarding social-emotional learning (Jagers et al., 2018). It also provides the community’s roles in the student’s education. All these discussions will align with the education policy for students with disabilities that UNICEF set up in 2007 that encourages the rights of children with disabilities should be respected. This policy was enacted since there was observable negligence of disabled children as they were being deprived of essential social commodities compared to the “normal” students.
From the studies we will carry out, we will observe that disabled students in Sheffield school are treated as lesser than those from the other school. They are not allowed to interact with the other students; hence the social-emotional learning policy need for student well-being will not have been met. These students are also denied access to teacher interaction as they only have a few teachers. From the findings we will obtain, we will provide some recommendations that Sheffield could apply to ensure that disabled students do not feel discriminated against by their fellow students and that they can be treated with equity and equality.
Explanation of students with disabilities challenges across the country regarding social-emotional learning
The humanitarian aid organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, developed a policy that showed that students with disabilities excelled in their academics and became all-around people who could positively impact society. Disabled students were discriminated against by the community, their families, teachers, and peers. They treated them as lesser children. They were being prevented from accessing essential social services, developing to their fullest potential, and enjoying their rights. This is why UNICEF provided a framework that provided the rights of these children in schools.
Attitudes and stereotyping of these students are one of the challenges that they face during their education. They view them as incapable of achieving specific goals and excelling in their studies; hence they do not give them the required assistance to help them achieve the social-emotional learning needed for student well-being. The schools do not, therefore, invest much in them. They deny them the necessary commodities, including ramps and elevators for students who are physically disabled and are prohibited from engaging in sports with other students, who, through that, can get an opportunity to interact and achieve social-emotional learning. They do not provide them with enough teachers, which arises from the lack of enough colleges where people can learn the expertise to deal with students with disabilities. At home, their families do not take them to school early as they do not take their education seriously and hence do not provide the requirements they need to learn.
Another challenge faced by students with disabilities across the country is the lack of enough funding. These students, therefore, cannot access the commodities that could aid them in achieving social-emotional learning. Some commodities they cannot access due to insufficient funding include trips and benchmarking from other schools. The government does not provide enough funding to pay their teachers, resulting in fewer teachers who cannot achieve the social-emotional learning need for student well-being since they operate with many students (Jagers et al., 2018). the teachers also lack the motivation to teach these students all-around since they are only paid peanuts.
Students with disability also lack the opportunity for effective participation and inclusion in society. Schools around Australia and the world usually organize debates and other competitions that could enhance cultural diversity (Pentón, 2020). The students who participate are only regular students, while those with disability are denied the chance to engage in those competitions. In other cases, they may be allowed to participate in those competitions, but they separate them from other regular students. They are treated as if they belong to a different category; hence, they do not get the opportunity to interact with other students and engage with them. Competitions promoting cultural diversity, like choir and poems, can be the best place where these students could exchange ideas and learn about each other’s feelings and how they could cope. Separating them means depriving them of the student’s well-being in social-emotional learning.
Students with disabilities are also denied the respect for inherent dignity, the freedom to make their own choices, and independence of persons. Disabled students usually do not always have the voice to choose the schools they would like to attend. Their parents choose for them; hence, they are denied the freedom to make their own choices. This mainly applies to disabled students who want to attend schools specializing in particular talents and abilities, like musical or sports schools (Pentón, 2020). Their parents deny them the opportunity due to the mere belief that they are incapable; hence, they are denied the ability to socialize and interact with musical and sports students from different regions.
Moreover, they cannot learn how to cope with their peers with talents, being denied the chance of social-emotional learning as a component of student well-being. During school days, the guardians and parents of these students drop them off and pick them up from their schools, hence denying them time to interact with themselves after school hours. Lack of socialization is a barrier to social-emotional learning, which is essential for their well-being.
Students with disabilities are not respected for their human diversity. They are denied the chance to respect the difference of persons as they are not addressed with respect. They are constantly being shouted at or locked in their rooms, denying them the opportunity to engage in family conversations. They are also hidden when visitors and relatives visit and are not allowed to engage in family functions like family meetings and weddings. Being hidden denies them the opportunity to interact with their cousins from different parts. Denying them the opportunity to engage in conversations also acts as a barrier to social-emotional learning, as they will not get an opportunity to learn how their family members react to issues.
Analysis of how Sheffield school denies disabled students to experience social-emotional learning
Students in Sheffield schools with disability were being separated from the regular students during learning hours and, therefore, being denied the right to socialize. Socialization brings about social-emotional learning. A student cannot be complete with only the knowledge they gain from the classroom. The separation of students by Sheffield school management was an act of discrimination. Therefore, students could not learn how to cope with other “regular “students when they were angered or happy. In the other case, the regular students were being denied the opportunity to learn how to cope with students with disabilities in terms of feelings; hence they were also deprived of social-emotional learning. The separation of the students could not allow them to engage in sporting activities together since they were in different fields with different timetables (Juvonen et al., 2020). This prevented the disabled students from learning new ways that they could use to improve their skills in sporting.
On the other hand, the “normal” students were denied the opportunity to teach the disabled students and engage them in competitions that could see to it that they also improve. By separating the schools, they taught the “normal” students to have the impression that they were superior to the disabled students. The disabled students, too, felt like they were inferior to the other students. Hence this prevented them from ever socializing even outside school hours; hence this was a barrier to the students of Sheffield school gaining the social-emotional learning in their education that could impact their lives positively in the future.
Students in the Sheffield School of disabled students also felt discriminated against in matters relating to their tutors. With a population of 2 500 students, these students have a right to have many teachers. The learning orientation that is to be followed is supposed to be student-centered. For that to be achieved, Sheffield school had the right to employ enough teachers. However, they failed at that. This demonstrated discrimination since the Sheffield school with regular students had enough teachers. Students also had the opportunity to utilize their teachers extensively; hence, they could learn social-emotional learning, a part of the student well-being that was grooming them into responsible citizens who could make a positive impact in society. However, disabled students only had a capacity of eight teachers in the primary section, with each teacher handling more than a hundred students. This learning was, therefore, teacher-oriented, and therefore the students could not utilize their teachers extensively (Cefai et al., 2019). This made it difficult for the teachers to instill the social -emotional learning form of well-being that could equip these learners with the necessary tools to deal with different people in the society.
The separation of the fields for the two sections of Sheffield school prevented them from learning the behavior of one another. The disabled were denied the opportunity to engage in school activities with the “normal” students and they therefore could not learn their skills as well as their behavior in the field. The “normal” students, on the other hand, were also denied the opportunity to watch and learn the kind of sports that the disabled engaged in. the disabled, therefore, could not have good skills in sports as they were not allowed to compete and this became a shatter of dreams for those students who aimed to become professionals in sports. They were denied the platform of improving their skills and talent (Juvonen et al., 2020). The inter-class competitions that were meant to instill the cultural diversity among students were only taught in the “normal” section. Disabled students were denied the chance of engaging in such activities that could enable them to share their different cultural practices; hence they did not achieve the social-emotional learning of student well-being.
The families of the disabled students at Sheffield school were not supportive of their children. They did not provide a listening ear to their children who felt that their rights were being deprived, instead, they ignored and dismissed them whenever they raised complaints. The parents did not also co-operate with the teachers and the school management to provide enough resources for their children and come up with ways that could enable their students to interact with the other students to achieve social-emotional learning. Parents are a key factor in enabling their children to learn SEL (Allbright et al., 2019). The communities, on the other hand, discouraged their “normal” children from interacting with the disabled and created a negative perception of disability to their “normal” children.
Implementation plan that would ensure disabled students in Sheffield school to learn social-emotional learning
Employing enough teachers for the students with disability in Sheffield school will be the first step that will ensure that these students learn social-emotional learning (SEL). Enough teachers will ensure that the learning system will be learner-oriented and therefore, the students will be able to utilize their teachers extensively (Cefai et al., 2019). The teachers will also get the opportunity to attend to each student one by one. This will enable well-being learning with students having the chance to be taught SEL. We will monitor this by making impromptu visits to the school to check on the student welfare and engage them by asking questions on their learning experiences and if the teachers are enough for them.
The second thing to implement will be to bring these students in the same compound to study instead of separating them. We will ensure that the “normal” students and the disabled students are treated equally and they will be able to perform school activities together (Kim et al., 2022). They will learn sporting activities together and they will also practice for the music competitions together. This will enable them to socialize and interact to the extent that they will be able to create formidable relationships. They will know how to cope with each other’s feelings and thus they will have achieved the SEL. We will monitor this by providing the school funds to expand their compound and build extra classes that would accommodate them. We will also be making impromptu visits to the schools and asking them about their experiences in sporting with the “normal” students and what they have learnt.
Family and community involvement in their children’s learning will also be implemented. We will ensure that there is the teacher-family cooperation for the sake of the disabled students. families will be advised on how to treat these students at homes and the benefits of exposing them to the world. The parents will also be required to provide enough resources for their children that will aid in learning SEL. We will monitor this by asking the teachers to report parents who neglected their children and did not expose them to other family members (Juvonen et al., 2020). The whole community at large will make sure that each of them respects these children and do not discriminate them.
The music competitions that are usually take place among different schools will be told to include the category of disabled students. they will compete with the other students in the same playing field without favoring them (Kim et al., 2022). This will make them feel equal to the other students rather than inferior and the other students will also treat them with respect. We will monitor this by actively involving the government in those competitions to check the progress of the disabled students.
Conclusion
Sheffield school is one among many schools that have led to the formation of the policy by UNICEF that promotes the rights of the disabled students. disabled students have not been achieving the social-emotional learning approach to well-being because of the continuous discrimination from their families, teachers and the community (Allbright et al., 2019). Treating these students equally and not depriving them of their social needs will enable them to grow into respectable individuals who will create a positive impact in the society by having formidable relationships because they will have learnt the skills of socialization.
Ways in which the disabled students could be taught social -emotional learning is ensuring that they are taught together with the “normal” students so that they could have an opportunity to interact with them and also give the “normal” students an opportunity to socialize with them and know how to deal them without hurting their feelings (Cefai et al., 2019). Another way is by employing enough teachers for them who will ensure the learner-oriented type of education. School functions like sports and cultural activities will be key in ensuring that these students learn SEL.
Various ways will be used to monitor the schools to ensure that they are creating an integrated learning system involving all students, so that they could be able to respect each other as equals, socialize extensively and form formidable relationships that will be a reflection of social-emotional learning.
References
Allbright, T. N., Marsh, J. A., Kennedy, K. E., Hough, H. J., & McKibben, S. (2019). Social-emotional learning practices: Insights from outlier schools. Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, 12(1), 35-52.
Cefai, C., Bartolo, P. A., Cavioni, V., & Downes, P. (2018). Strengthening social and emotional education as a core curricular area across the EU: A review of the international evidence.
Jagers, R. J., Rivas-Drake, D., & Borowski, T. (2018). Equity & social and emotional learning: A cultural analysis. CASEL Assessment Work Group Brief series.
Juvonen, J., Lessard, L. M., Rastogi, R., Schacter, H. L., & Smith, D. S. (2019). Promoting social inclusion in educational settings: Challenges and opportunities. Educational Psychologist, 54(4), 250-270.
Kim, D., Lim, J. H., & An, J. (2022). The quality and effectiveness of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) intervention studies in Korea: A meta-analysis. PloS one, 17(6), e0269996.
Pentón Herrera, L. J. (2020). Social-emotional learning in TESOL: What, why, and how. Journal of English Learner Education, 10(1), 1.
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