Books by Ronald Mah

 

Difficult Behavior in Early Childhood: Positive Discipline in PreK-3 Classrooms and Beyond Description: "Teachers of young children will feel validated by this book that explains the issues underlying behaviors that challenge us on a daily basis and shows how to address them effectively." -Xiomara Sánchez, NBCT, Dual Language Pre-K Teacher, Darwin Elementary School, Chicago, IL "Covers the breadth of children's behaviors that teachers are likely to see, and describes the major motivators for them very well. The examples and scenarios are highly interesting, meaningful, and transferable to classroom practice." -Gail Hardesty, Early Reading First Mentor, Chicago Public Schools, IL Increase your understanding of children to guide and shape behavior in positive ways! Teachers are masterful in balancing the diverse backgrounds, social-emotional needs, and academic goals of children in their classroom-that is, if they can only get them to sit still, pay attention, keep their hands off of each other (or out of the fish tank), or a host of other effective aggravations! But creating a classroom of attentive learners takes more than swift discipline-it involves helping children make good behavioral choices by developing their self-control rather than controlling them to make the choices we prefer. Difficult Behavior in Early Childhood offers insight into understanding why certain children behave in certain ways, so teachers can react appropriately to individual behaviors and needs. In an engaging, conversational tone, the book covers: Reconciling the different behavioral expectations of families and schools Applying timeout effectively Motivating children immediately and powerfully Establishing and following through with boundaries Developing behavior incentive plans that work Identifying early signs of depression, anxiety, grief, and special needs Through informed practice, teachers can bring about positive behavioral change and healthy, productive development.	To order online from Corwin Press,  Difficult Behavior in Early Childhood: Positive Discipline in PreK-3 Classrooms and Beyond
The One-Minute Temper Tantrum Solution with  Tantrum Igniters, Tantrum Styles, & Types of Tantrums Description: "Mah's new book is fantastic! It simplifies the different types of temper tantrums into a manageable approach for educators and child care professionals." —Kelly Van Raden, Career Advocate for Early Care and Education, Child Care Links Learn what ignites tantrums and how you can prevent them or lessen their impact! In clear and understandable language, this invaluable resource explains what's happening when a child throws a tantrum or exhibits other disruptive behaviors. The book offers specific guidance and directions to help teachers meet the challenge of a temper tantrum when it occurs while also increasing their awareness of their own expectations, beliefs, and reactions to children’s aggressive behaviors. In The One-Minute Temper Tantrum Solution, Ronald Mah examines developmental, situational, physical, and temperamental factors that can trigger acting-out behaviors and explores four types of tantrums—manipulative, upset, helpless, and cathartic—that can appear as verbal and/or physical outbursts. With a wealth of examples, vignettes, and easy-to-implement strategies that help educators avoid long-term negative consequences for children, this accessible book: Offers interventions for managing each type of tantrum Explains how tactics based on distracting, ignoring, or shaming can lead to escalation Addresses tantrums that may be related to disabilities Includes a chapter dealing with misdiagnosed tantrums and how to respond appropriately Based on sensitive, caring principles that nurture and support all children, this practical book can also be used alongside Mah's Difficult Behavior in Early Childhood, which covers issues underlying harmful behaviors.	To order online from Corwin Press,    The One-Minute Temper Tantrum Solution with  Tantrum Igniters, Tantrum Styles, & Types of Tantrums
Beyond Difficult Behavior in Inclusive Early Childhood and Elementary Classrooms, Empowering Challenged Children Against Bullying  (est. publication in Summer 2009, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA)      ***draft of introduction***   “Glad and sad and bad.”  Is that about children, or is that about teachers?  Or about inclusive classrooms?   Perhaps, glad and sad and bad is about idealistic educational, social, economic, and political policy when it collides with classroom reality.  “Glad” because the inclusive classroom is a wonderful concept, but also a complex day-to-day challenge for mainstream classroom teachers.  “Sad” is problematic behaviors already disrupting classroom communities, specifically exclusion and bullying, may intensify with greater inclusion of child diversity.  “Bad” would be denying the reality of modern education means children with a diversity of learning and processing abilities and issues in the mainstream classroom, often with more and different academic and behavior problems.  Principles of an inclusive classroom to address the challenges of learning and processing differences are similar to principles addressing socio-economic diversities of race, ethnicity, religion, class, and family composition.  Caring adults may hope that children naturally accept each other, interacting with respect, appreciation, and kindness.  Everyone wishes that were true, but if wishes came true, then we’d all have ponies!  Reality as testified to by veteran teachers’ experiences however is much more difficult since challenged children often experience misunderstanding and mistreatment by peers, especially those peers with aggressive tendencies.  Teachers must be activists and facilitate sound principles to develop respectful and inclusive communities and relationships among identifiably diverse children.      This book will focus on four groups of children with specific challenges included into the mainstream classroom: children with learning disabilities or differences (LD), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) children, children with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), and gifted children.  These children are often in need of skilled and conceptually sound adult support.  This book proposes that information, concepts, and skills gained from working with these four groups of children will be useful for working with any children, since diagnoses or labels represent higher or lower extremes on normal continuums of abilities or challenges. The more teachers become aware of their knowledge, skills, and wisdom acquired working in the mainstream classroom with the normal spectrum of child diversity, the more they can apply that to working with and supporting children with specific challenges, including: learning disabilities, ADHD, Aspergers Syndrome, and gifted abilities.  Conversely, the more teachers become aware of their knowledge, skills, and wisdom acquired working with children learning disabilities, ADHD, Aspergers Syndrome, and gifted abilities, the more they can apply that to working with and supporting a diversity of children in the mainstream classroom.    A functional definition of culture is that it consists of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors that promote survival in a given context, specifically a community with particular environmental requirements and challenges.  The cultural adaptations in one context may or may not be cross-culturally effective in a new context.  Specifically, when moving from a supported environment such as home or a special education class to a mainstream classroom, or from one classroom to another), with new peers, or a new teacher will be cross-culturally challenging.  Areas of survival include academic, social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual functioning.  Children with learning disabilities, ADHD, Asperger’s Syndrome, and giftedness often develop problematic attitudes, values, and beliefs for survival prior to and in the mainstream classroom, expressing them in sometimes, unfathomable behaviors.       The book will examine the dynamic of adult attention, nurturing, and guidance for all kinds of children while focusing on the four groups, as it affects several foundational processes for developing healthy, powerful, and successful individuals and community members.  Specific aspects of each of the four groups’ challenges will be referenced to academic, emotional, psychological, and social responses of mainstream children.  A cross-cultural perspective of those children’s challenges helps teachers and other caring adults reference their own experiences and processes to better understand children’s experiences and processes.  Topics examined for both mainstream children and the four groups of children include:	(With apologies to Dr. Seuss’  “One fish two fish red fish blue fish”)   From there to here from here to there, challenging kids are everywhere.   Quiet kids loud kids shy kids proud kids.   Dyslexic kids hyper kids Aspergers kids gifted kids.   This one is my little star. This one always goes too far. Say!  what a lot of kids there are.   Yes. Some listen well.  And some can’t attend. Some are nice.  And some aren’t a friend. Some are glad. And some are sad.   And some are very, very bad. Why are they glad and sad and bad? You must know or  it’ll be very bad!
§         The Dynamics of Victims and Bullying    * Specific Issues for Each of the Four Groups §         Relational Aggression §         Social Emotional Intelligence §         Resiliency §         How to Build Powerful Successful Children §         The Thirteen Reasons individuals may miss the Social Cues that facilitate interpersonal relationships §         The 90 Second-A-Day Self-Esteem Prescription Plan   The classroom community exists to meet the academic needs of its children.  It also functions to facilitate emotional, psychological, and social development, whether or not that is the expressed intent of the teacher, school, district, agency, or society.    As an educator turned psychotherapist (credentialed elementary and secondary teacher, owner-director of child development programs, and Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist) still involved in education (training, consulting, and writing), I find that individual and group behaviors, emotional and psychological health, and children’s individual challenges fundamentally influences academic development.  I often assess children with co-existing behavior and academic problems, finding significant social-emotional problems, along with learning and processing issues.  Children with the greatest problems almost always have a complexity of issues.  Fortunately, issue by issue, and in combination, children’s dynamics and functioning always make sense.  Thus, teachers and parents can be activated to address and support children’s needs.  Generally, children who are ready to learn and be taught are happy children.  And happy children learn more readily and are more available to teaching.  Anything that interferes with, or conversely supports emotional, psychological, or social stability supports children’s readiness to learn and be taught.  Anything academically empowering or stimulating facilitates children’s self-esteem, happiness, and social satisfaction.  The inclusive diverse classroom must integrate prior academic and social-emotional strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures with current challenges for all its students.   INCLUSION MEANS MORE:  More Learning Disabilities, ADHD, Aspergers Syndrome, Giftedness Services for special education often have been curtailed despite the mandates of the American Disabilities Act.  Finding special education teachers has been difficult.  “Historically, teachers trained to work with children with special needs have been difficult to find. According to the group Recruiting New Teachers, 98 percent of school districts have reported shortages in special education professionals. A reason cited by several in the field is overall lack of interest from prospective teachers” (Gaetano, 2006). With the right to an equitable education, shortages of special education teachers, and more rigid criteria for special education services, many children with learning issues are now placed in mainstream classes.  There always have been undiagnosed children in mainstream classrooms (especially, THAT kid in your classroom!), but now diagnosed children are placed without additional educational support.  Inclusion may increase percentages of children with difficulty keeping up academically and with difficult behaviors.  Different and quirky children have always been a part of classrooms.  Teachers, who never heard of high functioning autism or Aspergers Syndrome, find children with these issues in their classrooms regularly.  Or, now have a diagnosis for the odd behaviors.  “The best studies that have been carried out to date suggest that AS is considerably more common than ‘classic’ autism. Whereas autism has traditionally been felt to occur in about 4 out of every 10,000 children, estimates of Asperger syndrome have ranged as high as 20-25 per 10,000. That means that for each case of more typical autism, schools can expect to encounter several children with a picture of AS (that is even more true for the mainstream setting, where most children with AS will be found)” (Bauer, 1996).  Gifted children are in mainstream classrooms with needs that challenge mainstream teachers, whether or not there are effective Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) programs.    The mother of a gifted middle-school student said, “They designated him as gifted years ago, but haven’t taught him any differently from regular education kids.” Meeting heightened academic needs, while providing appropriate emotional and social support intimidates some teachers, not to mention dealing with aggressive parents “advocates”.  “Some teachers have an attitude of, 'That's not who I signed up to teach, that's not my problem, that's not my kid,' and that's an attitude problem,’ said Amy Dell, who is the chairwoman of the Special Education Department at The College of New Jersey” (Gaetano, 2006).  Some teachers want less, not more demands.  Less challenges, behavior problems, and diversity translates into easier children, classrooms, teaching, and… less requirement to be outstanding teachers!  Difficult and challenged children means need for more great teachers.    INCLUSION MEANS LESS:  Less Time, Energy, and Resources, and MORE Responsibility Challenged children disproportionately draw teachers’ already scarce time and energy.  Inclusion means less time and energy, especially current demands for educational accountability and academic standards.  Despite greater diversity, there are often fewer resources.  Resource and specialty teachers may go the way of full-time school nurses, counselors, and assistant principals- ancient history when such personnel were common.  Teachers and other educators suffer the greater demands and responsibility without greater resources in other countries as well.  For example, from Great Britain, Steve Sinnott, leader of the National Union of Teachers states, “The inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools is carried out without sufficient preparation and resources” (BBS News, 2007).    INCLUSION MEANS CHALLENGE Educational challenge is intensified with inclusion.  Although Federal and state laws mandate inclusion of children with disabilities, there are no minimum training standards for general education teachers for special needs instruction.  In teacher credential programs, prospective teachers may take a course on teaching special needs students or programs may integrate special education topics into general education courses. Training for experienced teachers may be as minimal as one day of continuing education, if that.  Fortunately, experienced teachers often can make effective adjustments to established techniques for support and discipline to support challenged children.  Other times, when there is something special about the behavior, or children’s underlying energy render “regular” responses ineffective.  Behavior may come from distinct processes or challenges at the extreme ends of continuums of traits or skills.  Children range from gifted to very challenged in a diversity of traits and skills: artistic skills, creativity, musical ability, auditory or visual comprehension, reading, physical coordination, abstract thinking, deductive versus inductive reasoning, and more.  If children are continually frustrated, stress accrues, self-esteem deteriorates, and acting out increases.  Temper tantrums and other disruptive behavior become habitual, leading to long-term social and emotional damages, academic, and vocational failure.  Conversely, well-supported children grow in self-esteem and social skills, and become more successful.      INCLUSION MEANS EXCLUSION… and BULLYING Challenged children process and behave similarly to and differently from others.  Children with any of the four challenges highlighted: learning disabilities, ADHD, Aspergers Syndrome, and giftedness share an important characteristic, they are identifiably different from peers.  Differences may activate problematic social dynamics, specifically exclusion and bullying.  Bullying may be overtly physical, but also manifests socially and relationally. Children’s identified differences are often difficult to handle, especially if adults are unclear how to attend to them.  Prior experiences with other diversity prepares individuals for healthier inclusive responses to learning and processing diversity, while ignorance and inexperience may lead to prejudice or worse: exclusion, sexism, racism, classism, bullyism (the practice of irrational force on a weak opponent or supposed weak opponent to exercise power), ablism (discrimination in favor of the able-bodied; asserting people with disabilities as being unable), and so forth.  Otherwise well-intended people can promote inclusive philosophies, yet deny harsh realities.     INCLUSION MEANS INTENT The challenge of inclusion is not always well met.  Greater inclusion or diversity just means more different individuals around, unless the intent that everyone becomes integrated into a cohesive community is realized.  Three practices can compromise the intent of inclusion.  Invisibility is the practice of keeping disabled or different people out of sight.  Sometimes well-intended people downplay, ignore, or pretend not to notice disabilities, fearing others discomfort or embarrassment.  Unfortunately, this implies disabilities or differences and individuals are unimportant.  Denial or minimizing happens with ethnic or religious differences, as well as with learning ability, attention, restraint, social functioning, emotionality, skills, and other differences.  Challenged children require visibility to gather the support and intervention that empowers them to handle bullies, and other negative circumstances.   Infantilizing is treating individuals with disabilities as fundamentally incapable and dependent like infants.  Consistent infantilizing messages create learned helplessness.  Overprotected children (with or without disabilities) fulfill expectations, becoming incapable, vulnerable, and dependent.  Challenged children can function quite well when and if, they reach adulthood without debilitating emotional damage.  While infants are expected to develop abilities, infantilizing individuals keeps them unable.  Understanding the depth, breadth, and nuances of a challenge counters the presumption of inability and directs developing compensating abilities.    Objectifying is seeing only differences rather than whole people.   All people with disabilities possess many other abilities and also many other traits, interests, intelligence, and individual personalities.  When children are objectified, they become fundamentally limited by definition.  For example, a black child should not be defined solely because of race, nor a hyperactive child because of being hyperactive.   Ethnicity or race, or being hyperactive probably has significant ramifications upon emotional, psychological, and social processes, but not to the exclusion of other influences.  The full amalgamation of personality is sorely incomplete only naming ethnicity or race, and likewise labeling children solely as learning disabled, ADHD, Aspergers, gifted, or otherwise.   Rather than a stereotypical hyperactive child, a child who is hyperactive... and a lot of other things as well!  Honoring the all types of diversity is important in a pluralistic and multi-cultural society.  Supporting children’s diversity of skills and traits must be key principles in developmental and educational processes.  Misunderstood, devalued, and frustrated, challenged children become ostracized and/or misfits.  Society loses their creativity, skills, energy, and other contributions.  All children should have knowledgeable and skilled adult caregivers: parents, teachers, and other caregivers, coaches, or mentors.  Inclusion may not mean your classroom will have the Seussian diversity of a seven hump Wump, a Zans, a Ying who can sing like anything, a Yink, or Zeds with one hair on their heads, or a Gack, but it will have…       Different kids Interesting kids Mystery kids Special kids   Some children need more from me. This one really challenges me. Say! That’s why teaching fulfills me!