Daniel Sute

April 6th, 2017

Professor Collette Cullen
TED 5780
That Student: A Case Study

Introduction
We all know that student. Near every class has one. The walls of teachers lounges

whisper their names, and they are the baby names that teachers immediately cross off of the lists

their spouses generate of possible names for their children.

While almost every classroom provides a teacher with at least one of these children (and

some classes are so generous as to provide a few) the majority of teachers seem content to

complain about these children and do their best to contain them within specific boundaries which

do not disrupt the teachers ordinary plans of the class altogether too much. Where are the

courageous teachers who are willing, no, devoted, to the development of these children into the

human beings which we are charged to develop them into?

My intention in this case study was to practice such devotion to a 7th grade student

named Henry Monroe.1 As the following report will reveal, I was not successful. Ultimately, I

would end up much more resembling the teacher intent on problem-containment than on the

courageous teacher who succeeds in her devotion to the development of each and every one of

the children charged to her care. However, this failure is indeed a teacher and a reminder to me

as an educator of where my professional commitment can give way to emotional reaction, and

my dedication to each pupil of my class can give way to the leaders utilitarian mindset of the

preservation and advancement of the most.

The following is the story of my experience with Henryso far. I am not done with him

yet, and I can only hope he might say the same of me.
1 The actual first and last name of this student is not used in this essay.
 Rationale for the Case

I chose Henry because he is a student who is very easy for teachers to give up on. In the

2016/2017 school year, Henry was suspended for a total of 18 days (plus one day in school

suspension) missed 9 class periods due to visits to the office, was absent 4 days, and was tardy to

96 separate class periods. He is a student who is below grade level in his reading and

mathematics scores, but on occasion showed glimmers of academic potential which he generally

does not express due to his behavior problems. I chose this student because he has plentiful

struggles behaving in school and I would like to be able to reach not only him, but other students

in the future who have similar struggles as him.

Description of Student

Henry Monroe is a 12 year old 7th grade male student. Henry is an immigrant student of

Yemeni origins. His primary language at home is Arabic, and Arabic is also his first language.

Henry no longer receives ESL support in school, due in part to underfunding of the ESL

program. Henry has 4 siblings, two of which are adults, one in high school, and one in

elementary school, making him a lower middle child.

Observations

Henry definitely has a stubbornly strong will. This is, in itself, a positive feature to his

personality. However, his stubbornly strong will seems most often to be opposed to the will of

his teachers, which presents serious frustration to his instructors. Considering Dr. William

Glassers 5 basic human needs of Choice Theory, Henry seems to have a strong need for freedom
in making his own choices and thus either requires plentiful opportunities to express his

individual freedom or an education plan which aligns with his interests strongly enough that he

completely freely chooses to participate in the curriculum.

Continuing with Dr. Glassers 5 basic human needs, Henry also seems to have an inordinately

high interest in having fun. He commonly expresses that whatever academic task he is given, it is

boring, even while most students would consider lesson objectives to be unusually dynamic and

entertaining. When he refuses to participate, he usually tells his teachers that it is because the

work is boring. It is, however, also possible that he says this in efforts to exert power over his

teachers by making them feel inadequate as instructors. It could also be a result of his low

attention span. In my observations, knowing that Henry made this remark to me even when our

rapport was at its highest indicates to me that he either has a high need of fun or has more trouble

than most students paying attention.

Henry is a very social student who loves to work with friends and can generally get along

casually with a multitude of students. However, again, in each of these relationships, his

classmates eventually tend to find him annoying and either move their seats away from him or

ask for him to move (our classroom had open seating during the majority of our internship).

Henry was suspended multiple times for physically fighting other students. Still, his best work is

when he is working with a partner. Henry also deeply dislikes being asked to sit in the back room

when he is being reprimanded for distracting the class. Being excluded from the class affects him

deeply. This indicates a high need for love and belonging, which is another basic need of Dr.

William Glassers Choice Theory.

Henry does not receive speech or ELL classes, but he tends to speak in very simple,

choppy sentences. His diction is very fast. It is clear that he struggles to communicate well in

English, and his fast, choppy diction may indicate that he is frustrated by his inability to voice

his thoughts as quickly as he would like in his second language. According to multiple teachers

at Stout Middle School, the school is so inundated with English Language Learners that the ELL
program is not large enough to serve all of these students. Thus, even while Henry would have

benefitted from continuing in the ELL program, when more students immigrated to Dearborn

from Arabic speaking countries and enrolled at Stout Middle School, students such as Henry,

who can communicate with some degree of fluency and have been in the ELL program since

elementary school, are pushed into general classes whether they are entirely ready or not. Henry

received ELL instruction, and was tested with an alternate, English language learners WIDA test,

until the end of the 6th grade.

In Henrys most recent standardized test, midway through 7th grade, he scored a reading

level of 4.9, indicating that he is not quite reading at a 5th grade reading level.

Additionally, Henry has a deep distress about missing his bus after school. It causes him

immense worry to imagine needing to ask his parents to pick him up from school (Henry does

live with both of his parents, and 2 of his 4 siblings. This deep distress suggests his parents might

react severely when they need to drive him home from school, but I do not have any evidence to

support this idea besides Henrys reaction.) However, while Henry does dislike staying late, he

seems to show little worry about being asked to stay after class (we have Henry 7th hour, just

before the final bell) as a consequence to misbehavior. Often, he does not realize how much

distress staying after school will cause him until he is literally undergoing that distress. This

indicates a lack of foresight.

Henry is not diagnosed with ADHD, but he has extreme difficulty holding focus. He

changes the topic constantly while communicating with teachers. Having a conversation with

him in the hallway is near impossible as his focus is distracted by the plethora of stimuli of the

halls.

Finally, Henry lacks discretion when interacting with his peers. Often, Henry is so

playful, that he plays jokes on other students who are highly offended by his actions and

respond violently with Henry. He has been suspended for a total of 19 days this school year,

often as a result of fights or confrontations with other students. Additionally, Henry has
expressed a lack of discretion in his use of technology. While using a Chromebook in English

class, Henry accessed highly inappropriate material on multiple occasions and has subsequently

been banned from any use of technology, at school and at home.

Interpretations/Hypothesis:

Henry seems to have a high need for fun, love and belonging, as well as freedom.

Additionally, Henry seems to struggle to communicate well in English. His lack of discretion

indicates that Henry has not much internalized the boundaries of acceptable behavior with both

his peers and teachers.

In class, Henrys major struggles include a refusal to participate in the classs learning

objectives, persistent behaviors contradictory to cultural norms and expectations, and a desire to

interact with others that exceeds his interest in complying with classroom expectations.

I doubt that Henrys refusal to participate in learning objectives is entirely as he says it is,

because they are boring. Plainly put, my lessons arent boring, at least as most people would

define the word boring. I find it more likely that Henrys attention difficulties require a different

lesson structure, even while the current lesson structure tries to shake things up every fifteen

minutes or so. It is also possible that Henrys English language skills make it difficult to

participate in the given learning objectives in the mostly written form that student are asked to

participate.

Henrys interruptions and great desire to communicate with others could well emerge from

his need for love and belonging. Most of his conversations with others are friendly. He does not

seem to dislike other students, which is puzzling because of his colored history of violent

confrontations. Other students, on the other hand, certainly seem to dislike him, which is

probably related to his lack of discretion and internalization of social norms and boundaries.
 The only reason I can imagine that Henry might have such a lack of awareness of social

boundaries is his personal history of immigration. He is still very much so in the process of

socialization in the Dearborn-American culture, and I have no idea what deeply embedded

lessons about socialization (especially in regards to playful pranks and physical confrontation) he

learned in his previous culture, or in his family setting of 3 brothers, and 1 sister.

Academic/Behavioral Interventions:

The intervention plan which I am the most proud of, and which was the most based on the

evidence I gained in my research on Henrys background and my personal observations on his

interactions with others, was an agreement made between me and him which included a large

amount of time for partner work on an individualized assignment. This intervention allowed

Henry to only need to retain his focus in class for a smaller and more attainable portion of time

for his attention span. It also allowed him to socialize with others, which satisfied his need to

love and belong as well as allowed him to practice his English skills and become more

comfortable with the social norms of the Dearborn-American culture by way of increased

communication. Finally, the individualized assignments given to Henry and his partner (which he

chose each day) were designed to allow him to follow along with the basic content of the whole-

class lesson as well as give him more scaffolding to account for his low reading level. I could

have elaborated on this intervention plan and written a very impressive looking case study.

However, this would not be entirely honest.

The intervention plan I alluded to above took an amount of effort which I chose not to

consistently give to Henry as the semester progressed. Ultimately, I abandoned this intervention

in favor of a series of four other interventions which were less evidence based and more

consistent with what other teachers in the building suggested worked with Henry in their classes.

Full details on all five of these interventions can be found below. I will begin with my first, most

evidence-based, and most effective intervention.

 My initial analysis of Henrys behavior was that he was interested in being successful but

lacked the necessary support to be successful. I hypothesized that if I provided Henry with more

of an individualized learning plan, he would be able to be successful and thus would not

disengage from the class curriculum. I provided this support in the form of individual

conferencing before each class period to discuss the days plan clearly and provide a reward if

Henry should perform his job in the class. The reward, determined by asking Henry what he

would like, was consistent with what I hypothesized his needs required: socialization. Henry

asked me, simply, if he could work with a partner as a reward for participating and not disrupting

the first part of class.

To put it briefly, this intervention provided initial success. Henry focused for the first 15

minutes of class, and then was given an alternate assignment with another student in the back

room. This provided Henry with a task of focus that he could accomplish well and a reward

which he appreciated.

However, this intervention did not provide lasting results with Henry because I, as a

teacher, did not consistently provide Henry with this structured plan. After three class periods,

the learning objective for the day did not allow for partner work (or so I decided) and so I told

Henry that he could not work with a partner on a certain day. The assignment that I deemed to be

incompatible with partner work was writing a persuasive paper. In hindsight, I believe that this

perceived incompatibility had more to do with my desire to hold absolute control over the classs

learning environment than actual academic impossibility. I do not fault myself entirely for this

mistake. As a student teacher, a large part of my attention is on managing a learning environment

with the authority of an effective leader. However, my freshman-need to put so much focus on

classroom control had a notably adverse effect on Henry and on my abilities to focus my

attention on his individual needs.

I adjusted the intervention plan this day in that I would work individually with Henry,

still allowing him to communicate with someone. However, I took him to the back room to work,
since the rest of the class was working silently. Henry bitterly resented being separated from his

peers and working with his teacher did not substitute working with a peer. This day was a

frustrating day for Henry and I both, and we struggled to recover after this period.

For the next few days, Henry not-so-discretely disregarded my instructions and did not

participate in the classs objectives at all. He also distracted his peers. Thus, I went back to the

drawing boards. I formed a new hypothesis, but this one was not build on my observations, but

frustrations with my student. I hypothesized that he did not regard the expectations that I was

verbally telling him to be serious enough, and that he was disregarding my instructions because

he did not think there would be a consequence to him and that he could get away with it. I

intervened in regards to this hypothesis by paying close attention to Henry, continuing verbal

redirections consistently, and providing consistent consequences such as staying to clean up the

room after school and separation from his peers by moving seats. Henry responded to these

interventions by complying with the expectations of the classroom, but he still did not participate

with more than 1/3 of the learning objectives of the class period.

Henrys class period (7th hour) was provided with a permanent seating chart, and I

continued the previous intervention by sitting Henry in the front corner desk, separated by a full

row and column by any of his peers with whom he enjoyed communicating. This intervention

was recommended by a fellow teacher. In this intervention, he was more consistently complying

with the behavioral expectations of the class.

Henrys interruptions in this new seat would take the form of questions about what to do

towards the academic expectations. Henry would generally ask questions which were directly

discussed in whole group conversation a moment or so earlier. Henry would usually wait to ask

these questions, without raising his hand, when the entire class began to work independently and

silently. It seemed he may have timed his interruptions to intentionally disrupt the learning

environment. Additionally, after I would answer these questions directly to Henry (which was a

slight disruption to the classroom environment which took the form of silent work) Henry would
ask another question, and another question, and another question, continuing the conversation in

a string of questions that could not be satisfied. I hypothesized that Henry was intentionally

asking questions with this timing in order to gain attention by disrupting the classroom

environment of silent work. I hypothesized that by responding to Henrys interruptions, I was

reinforcing this behavior by giving him attention and allowing these interruptions to disrupt the

learning environment. I decided to intervene in response to this behavior by ignoring Henrys

questions when they were asked in an inappropriate manor at an inappropriate time, and then

later provide Henry with support in response to the exact question he asked a moment or so later

so that it did not seem that my response was in connection to his interruption, but was instead

consistent with the way that I try to support all students. By supporting Henry once he was not

disrupting others, I was reinforcing the good behavior of complying with the learning

environments expectations of quiet work. After providing as clear, succinct, and simple of

support that I could in these exchanges, I would walk away from Henry if he asked me a second

question that seemed to not genuinely emerge from a lack of understanding, but a lack of desire

to do his assignment.

This intervention was moderately successful. Henry began to participate with about half

of the academic objectives of the class period and his interruptions greatly decreased. However,

soon after the implementation of this intervention, Henry was suspended from school for a week

due to a fight with another student in another class and he has not been back to school since this

event.

Data

Consistent with the classroom structure established by Francis Serazio, the coordinating

teacher for my internship experience in 7th grade ancient history, each days learning objectives

were completed in the students Social Studies Notebooks. Each day, students are expected to
complete their bell work, take notes, and answer prompts given by Mr. Serazio in complete

sentences in their notebooks.

As I began to plan and lead my own lessons in this Ancient History course, I wanted to

mostly maintain the basic structure of Mr. Serazios notebook-based classwork, while adapting it

to be more compatible with my teaching philosophy which is intent on high student engagement,

frequent teacher check-ins, as well as higher-level thinking activities which foster the use

application, synthesizing, summarizing, and creating techniques. As I planned lessons in this

course, a typical lesson would progress from bell work, review, mini-lesson, reading, visual

diagram/graphic organizer, discussion, and independent practice. Each of these components

would have an objective, or mini-task, which the students would complete in their notebooks.

Thus, when I speak of Henry completing about 1/3 or 1/2 of the days learning objectives, I am

literally referencing the amount of notebook objectives he completed in his notebook.

Below is a typed account of Henrys accomplishment of his learning objectives in his

social studies for each of the 5 interventions, organized by date.

Intervention Date Henrys Learning Objectives met by

Objectives Henry
15 minutes focus, rest 3/8/2017 Athens and Sparta All objectives met
of class separate Government with partner
partner assignment Create Pros and Cons
T chart on
Government
3/9/2017 Athens and Sparta All objectives met
Economy with partner
Pros and Cons T
Chart, 3 factors each
side
3/10/2017 Athens vs. Sparta All objectives met
Education system with partner
Pros and Cons T
Chart
Direct, tutoring based 3/13/2017 Outline Athens vs. Henry refused to
assistance in the back Sparta paper write more than one
room by teacher sentence of his
outline
Firm expectations, 3/16/2017 Take notes on Henry wrote down
proximity, reminders, classmates one Greek God name
and consistent presentations on the and refused to work
consequences Greek Gods and more than this.
Goddesses Was disruptive and
distracting to
classmates.
3/17/2017 Take notes on Henry was less
classmates distracting,
presentations on the understand to not
Greek Gods and disrupt class. Henry
Goddesses took no notes this
day.
3/20/2017 Test Athens and Henry worked on his
Sparta test and was not
disruptive.
Seat removed from 3/21/2017 Junior Scholastic Henry was disruptive
peers in front corner Article and did not do any
of room Student writes page work. Intervention
of notes on article plan was not
Student writes full consistently enforced.
page summary of
article
3/22/2017 Ionian Revolt Henry completed his
Challenge you faced map and partially
Map completed his
Character Profile summary.
Sheet
Summary of Battle
Ignoring disruptive 3/23/2017 Battle of Marathon: Henry completed his
questions and Greek Avatar Greek Avatar, Diary
providing support Diary entry entry, and summary.
and attention Diagram Battle
discretely once Henry Summary
was not disrupting
class
3/24/2017 Battle of Henry completed
Thermopylae: tombstone and
Letter to Athenian, summary.
Sentence prompt,
Tombstone
summary

Elapses between dates signifies that Henry was not in class on the days not seen.
 Results and Discussion:

All in all, I am not satisfied with my progress with Henry. I opened this case study with the

pure-hearted intention of committing to a student that many teachers give up on, and then my

personal interventions with him began increasingly to look like a teacher who was giving up on

him, and merely attempting to contain him behaviorally. After initial success with an intervention

which took a large amount of effort, I retreated into several interventions which more took on the

spirit of how can I run a classroom with Henry in the room? rather than how can I help Henry

be a successful student? I will discuss below the success of the five separate interventions I

provided for Henry.

My first intervention with Henry was the most successful. This intervention, where I gave

Henry an alternate assignment to complete with a different student and only required him to

focus in the whole group lesson for fifteen minutes, worked well with his attention span and fed

off of his interest in cooperative learning. During the days with which this intervention was

implemented, Henry greeted me in the hallways with positivity and our rapport soared. However,

instead of taking this success and reflecting deeply about how I could apply this intervention

structure to each lesson which I gave, I abandoned this intervention structure once partner work

did not seem readily compatible with the lesson plan. Of all of our classes, and all of our 120

students, 119 of them worked well with the independent writing unit because students worked at

their own level producing a paper about any topic they chose. However, Henry was the 1 student

who this structure would not work for. I failed to accommodate for Henrys needs by not

thinking of one alternative assignment for him to work on which accomplished the same themed

objectives with another student. Once I abandoned this intervention for the three days of this

writing unit, I never returned to it. My personal frustration with the levels of disrespect which

Henry showed me after this intervention honestly contributed to the decision that I would not

reward him for his disrespect by giving him what he wanted, which was partner work. I did
not consider this intervention to be an objective, emotionally neutral response to a students

academic needs, but rather, an emotionally charged gift which would be given or taken away

based on how I subjectively felt about the student. In this regard, I failed as a professional with

Henry.

The following interventions had varying degrees of success, but none of them were

altogether inspiring. They were behaviorally focused, rather than academically focused.

Moreover, they carried an attitude of containment. Containing the misbehavior of Henry was an

attitude focused on the common good of the 7th hour learning environment, rather than the

individual growth of Henry as a person. This is not to say that these later interventions were

meritless, and neglecting Henry of the attention he seemed to be desiring in the 5th intervention

did provide success and allowed him to be more academically successful. Additionally, providing

firm redirections, consistent consequences, and separation from his peers did reduce his

classroom disruptions and allowed the class as a whole to run smoother. However, I doubt that

these interventions will have a lasting impact on Henry Monroes development as a human

being.

I am not done with Henry. While the four interventions spoken of following my initial

and most successful intervention seemed to be headed in the direction of giving up on him, my

reflection here has renewed my desire to provide him with the effort and individualized planning

that he needs to be successful. I will continue to intervene with this student in a manner which

follows the structure of my first intervention with him rather than the later more utilitarian

minded, containment intervention strategies.

Professional Reflection

I owe Henry a great deal. He has taught me as much as any student that I have worked

with this past year about my own humanity. He has humbled me as an educator, a Christian, and
as a man. In working with him, I have seen the divide between my hearts desire to help each of

my students and my current ability to do so while also nurturing the learning environment as a

whole. This semester, I placed the majority of my focus and attention on developing dynamic

and universally designed lesson plans. I placed much less emphasis on individualized learning

plans. As a result of this emphasis, I did plan and deliver excellent lessons this semester, which

did reach the majority of my students. I also built in time into each of these lessons to check-in

with students of concern in each class period. This structure worked well with most of my

students, and our final test results certainly supported this. However, I did not provide very

strong individualized attention to my one student who simply would not participate in the lesson

structures which I designed for everyone else.

Reflecting on this, I do not propose that I simply need to spend more hours planning. I

was regularly in the classroom until 7:30pm, planning for four hours after school. My problem is

not a lack of commitment to the classroom. I have a clear conscious in that I believe that I gave

all of the energy I could give to my students while maintaining something of a healthy balance

between my professional and personal life. However, I do believe that there is such a thing as

opportunity cost in the way that I planned. If I am going to plan for whole class instruction for 4

hours every day, I will have no time to plan for individualized instruction. This is a problem. I

have learned as a teacher that if I should spend something like 3/4ths of my planning time

planning universally designed lessons for my class, and at least of my time planning

differentiated lessons specifically for students who are outside of the realm of even universally

designed lessons, I could potentially reach students who would otherwise remain unreachable.

Some students simply require their very own lessons. In my personalist philosophy, which

regards the individual as the highest purpose for which my decisions are geared towards (as

opposed to the common good of utilitarianism) even if my whole group lessons must fall from

out-of-this-world to simply outstanding, I should make this sacrifice in order to provide at

least adequate differentiated plans for students who require them. I do not believe inability
prevented me from being a more effective instructor to Henry. I believe that my problem was a

simple unwillingness to believe that he as a student mattered enough to put in the time to help

him, which is unacceptable.

In designing interventions, it is important to use specific evidence to come up with

intervention plans. The later four of my intervention plans were emotionally charged rather than

evidence based plans. My initial intervention was founded on specific observations of how

many minutes Henry could focus before disengaging from the lesson. Additionally, the

expectations for work which his partner assignments were based upon were determined from the

quality of work which he would produce on occasion either in our class or with other teachers on

rare days when he was motivated to participate in either our class or theirs. In contrast,

intervening from subjective thought processes rather than from evidence-based observations run

the very high risk of originating in subjective, emotional reactions rather than in objective

evidence-based reasoning. The former sort of reactions have very little to do with the student and

his growth. If teachers make emotionally based decisions, we decide what to do with students

based on how they make us feel. Evidence based decisions decide what to do with students based

on what they need, as students, to learn. The former looks at students as frustrations to be dealt

with, or endured, while the later looks at students as humans who need help to learn.

The case study framework is a great way to go about designing effective, evidence based

interventions because it is focused on the individual, and not on the learning environment.

Necessarily, between 8am and 3pm our focus is primarily on the learning environment, and

secondarily on each student. In this regard, the teacher is and to some extent, as a professional,

should be a utilitarian during the school day. However, a teacher can be a personalist once the

school day is over, and we can pour our focus entirely onto one student. The case study

framework requires the teacher to focus on the individual student by looking at his individual

profile first, at the objectives which the teacher wishes to accomplish with this student, and then

at how these objectives will be accomplished with this particular student. This framework puts
disruptions from the student in a totally different perspective. Instead of considering these

disruptions with the question of what harm they might cause to the learning environment, the

case study framework places these observations in the realm of what they reveal about the

students internal needs, where the teacher will also find the answers as to how to provide for

these needs and thus allow for this student to be grow.

Conclusion

The lessons learned in this case study will stick with me throughout my career. I have

learned from Henry about my own unfortunate capability in making poor professional decisions

regarding my plans for the growth of an individual based subjectively on how this individual

makes me feel. This has encouraged me to detach myself from the frustration which a student

can cause my utilitarian minded management while nurturing a learning environment by

individually planning for students according to the case study model, which lends itself to

intervention plans which are formed of evidence rather than emotions.

Additionally, this case study has helped me look at the way in which I plan. I will not

spend the entirety of my time planning for lessons of whole class instruction. While my lesson

planning was guided by principles of universal design aimed at reaching as many students as

possible in the whole class instruction, it is apparent from the results of my method of planning

that individuated learning plans are still needed for some students who simply lie too far outside

of the rest of the population of students in their academic, social, and personal needs to be

successful in even universally designed lesson plans. Henry, indeed, required Henry designed

lesson plans, because his needs were so different from those of the rest of his classmates. I knew

that Henry was an outlier student when I chose him, and I certainly know that outlier students
such as Henry exist in any school environment. This case study has helped form in me a much

more practical look at what it looks like to actually be an educator who is able to serve these

outliers. Practically speaking, being such an educator looks like about twenty minutes every

night of planning individual learning objectives and individual lesson plans specifically for these

students. To the extent that I am able for the remainder of this semester, I will be providing these

sorts of lessons for Henry in our 7th grade Ancient History course.