Interview the special education professionals who will serve on the unit. Keep in mind the median annual earning for a special education teacher in 2008 was $50,020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. EBD schools should be staffed by experts capable of providing services that other teachers are not capable of providing. Specialists should have at least a bachelor’s degree and should have taken part in an approved special education training program. However, some states require the specialists hold master’s degrees. They should also be licensed by the state they are working in.
Inform EBD units that they are responsible for ensuring that students are included in the same activities the other students are involved in. They provide teachers with temporary relief, allowing them to focus on students not struggling with behavioral and emotional problems.
Prepare EBD unit members for challenges that students will bring them. Students with these disorders often show a lack of guilt or remorse. Members of the unit should have an awareness of the psychology of emotions and should have strategies for helping break down walls these students build. They should also be able to give students more constructive ways to manage difficult situations. In addition to explaining more constructive approaches to difficulties faced by the student, unit members can show students examples of other students engaging in desirable behavior.
Students with emotional and behavioral disorders often behave aggressively towards others, including those trying to help the distressed students. Those in the unit should be emotionally stable and should have strategies for managing students who behave in aggressive ways.
Ensure that teachers and unit members regularly interact with each other. The unit members should troubleshoot to find behavioral modification approaches that are most likely to cause the student to change his behavior. Therefore, when a unit member discovers a method the student seems to respond well to, that unit member should share the effective strategy with other teachers and with fellow unit members.
The special education specialists should also communicate with parents to inform them about techniques that parents can implement that help improve the academic success of their children.