Shannon Creedon

SE 601

Consultation Project

March 3, 2020

Consultation Project

For this project I decided to meet with a general education teacher from Williams

Elementary School who is struggling with a student in the classroom. This student has been

having sever behaviors in the classroom that has started to intensively effect his learning. He

consistently does not want to be a part of the class when learning is involved. I consulted with

this teacher about this student because of the difficulties that she has voiced to me. The first part

of this project that I did was taking some data on the student so that I got a better picture of the

behaviors that this student is exhibiting in the classroom. I decided to do this so I could practice

taking data since that will be a huge part of my future role as a special education teacher. I will

include this data at the end of this paper.

Over the few times that I went to observe this student, I found a few things that were

interesting. The times that the student was exhibiting behaviors that were unexpected for school

were all times that similar things were happening. One of the main triggers that I found was

math. The student was displaying these behaviors almost every time math was the next subject.

There was one time that the student was showing these behaviors before writing, but most of the

time the next subject was math. A different time that was consistent with the displaying of

unexpected behaviors was when the student was coming in the morning. This student is part of

the METCO program and has voiced before to his teacher that the bus ride is long and tiring

which could be a trigger for this student as well. Lastly, the last trend that I found was that the
student was displaying unexpected behaviors when he was surrounded by his friends that were

not a part of his classroom, which were the behaviors in the hallway and in the cafeteria.

This consultation felt successful due to three different concepts that were included in the

conversation. I felt it was successful because I was prepared for the meeting, I started the

meeting by talking about how the student is smart and capable, and I showed respect for the

teacher’s opinion during the conversation. When I collected this data I made sure that I wrote

what the trends were that I specifically saw before I consulted with this teacher. I wanted to

make sure that I was confident in what I was saying so that she knew that I was serious and

motivated to help her with this student. I wanted to bring my own perspective into the

conversation like we had talked about in class but in a way that was supported by the data that

was taken.

After listening to the conversation that we had, I want to point out a few parts of the

conversation that stood out to me. During the conversation, we both started by talking about how

this student is smart and super capable of doing his work in the classroom because of how

intelligent he is. This falls under the taxonomy of the cognitive domain because we discussed

how this student is capable of learning regardless of his disability, which is ADHD. The teacher

and I discussed how the student is capable of doing his work and when he is having a good day

he can do everything that every other student is doing which is why this teacher has such high

expectations for him. This agreement that we had about his capability shows that we both know

that having high expectations for students is required for student success.

A different part of the conversation that we had was showing that we both understood

and valued each other’s perspective. One part that I said during the consultation was “I respect

your opinion and I feel as though the data validates that you are correct about how math is a
trigger for this student” which I feel is a great way of showing the teacher that I respect her

opinion on this student. Making sure that the pair that is consulting knows that they both respect

the others perspective is essential for having a successful consultation. This also helps build

collegial relationships that is also essential for teachers who are working together to have

effective student learning. This consultation followed a doctor-patient method that

Knackendoffel, Dettmer, and Thurston discuss because this teacher had come to me with the

behavioral problem that she was having with a student and I took data and offered solutions to

this problem based on the data that I had taken (2017). Overall, I believe that this was a

successful consultation due to my preparation for the meeting, the way I included the capability

of the student being discussed, and by the way that I showed respect for the teacher’s perspective

of this student.
 Works Cited
Knackendoffel, A., Dettmer, P., & Thurston, L.P. (2017). Collaboration, Consultation, and
Teamwork for Students with Special Needs. New York, NY: Pearson.