April Article – “Social Competence”

“Collaboration to Promote Social Competence for Students With Mild Disabilities in the General Classroom: A Structure for Providing Social Support“  by Hedda Meaden and Lisa Monda-Amaya.

By skimming over the articles available to read this month, this title caught my eye.  In particular, I have a few students in my class who are in desperate need of learning some skills in “social competence.”  While some of them are actually labeled with minor disabilities like autism, ADHD, or an OHI, one of them in particular is not labeled at all.  However, his interactions in the classroom are not average in relation to his peers. 

While I realize that not all students should be on the same page as far as development at any given time, I do feel that in certain areas, students should be somewhat at the same level.  For example, while I recognize that some of my students are more mature than others, it seems they are generally all on the same level as far as social skills (in general).

However, for these few students, it seems that social competence (or the ability to recognize cues in certain situations) is a challenge.  Not even that they are not executing correct social skills or choosing to be defiant, but that they are not even recognizing the appropriate behaviors for a given situation.

In the coming year, while setting up my own classroom, I hope to implement some of the strategies discussed in this article.  Particularly, setting up a classroom community in which students are constantly being reminded of appropriate behaviors.  More importantly, I am extremely interested in the “modeling” strategy that was suggested by the authors.  Recently, I have been trying to demonstrate to my students the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behaviors by acting them out – literally role-playing for them and allowing them to visually see what actions are appropriate.  This “modeling” strategy is definitely something I hope to use in the future.

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