Classrooms as the Root of Challenging Behaviors

Michelle Salcedo, begins her article, “Classrooms as the Root of Challenging Behaviors,” with this quote by Alexander Den Heijer: “When a flower doesn’t bloom you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” She goes on to explain that this is a metaphor educators might consider when addressing children’s challenging behaviors.

“Rarely does a gardener throw up her hands and declare a plant as unfit. Similarly, when a child exhibits challenging behaviors, what if, instead of blaming the child, we were to look first at the environment? What if the focus were to shift from fixing the child to adapting the conditions in which the child is growing and learning?”

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