Case Study on a Student with Emotional Probems

I have done this case study on a student named Mohammad. He is thirteen years old; one year older than all the other students in his class because he failed in the previous year. He is a confident student who always gives comments on his friends and makes fun of them.

One time, they had a dictation and the teacher distributed papers for them to write the dictation on. Everyone was writing while he was acting as if he’s moving his pen and when she asked them to submit their papers, everyone gave it to the teacher except him. He didn’t only leave the paper with him, but also ripped it in front of his classmates and he was proud of that. This incident grabbed my attention and made me think deeply of his case. Since then, I always kept an eye on Mohammad and observed his behavior in class and how the teacher reacted to it.

In the sake of knowing more information about this student, I asked people surrounding him about his family so they told me that his elder brother died two years ago. This brother was very close to him and they told me that they always played together. As a result, losing a close friend and a lovely brother at the same time is really painful and shocking.

Mohammad faces another obstacle in his life which is having a stepmother who lives next to them. This strongly affects children and makes them act in a strange way. As a result, he has two main external problems which will for sure affect his emotions and education.

Furthermore, I noticed that he needs more attention and he always misbehaves or takes his

classmates’ stuff in order to let them tell the teacher and talk to him to return them back. This

might be the result of being neglected from his parents and what leads him to look for care and

attention.

As a result, Mohammad’s behaviors might be affected by internal and external factors which have a big impact on his academic achievement at school. Teachers can’t do anything with the external factors because they are out of everyone’s control, but they can exert more effort and work on the internal ones to let the student feel interested in the school and view it as the place where he/she belongs and feels secure.

After analyzing Mohammad's case, I prepared an action plan to deal with him. At first, Mohammad needs to feel the connection to school through having the sense of belonging to his classmates. This sense can be developed through involving him in activities which include group work and give him the opportunity to work with others.

Moreover, I always came closer to his desk and asked him about what he was doing. This made him later ask me to come next to him and to help him do the task. He even started telling his friends to come and ask me when they needed something because he was sure that I’m ready to help them. This teacher-learner relationship strongly affects learning and affects the level of students’ motivation. As a result the teacher should show students that she’s there to help them and to facilitate their learning and not to count their mistakes.

To sum up, Mohammad is an isolated student who doesn’t want to be involved in the learning process no matter what the consequences will be. However, as with other cases, there are some ways that can be used with him in order to motivate him intrinsically to learn. The first important thing to consider is the teachers’ expectations about his abilities which will strongly affect his progress and achievement. As a result, if the teacher shows him that she really believes in his abilities to succeed and excel in the language, he’ll work harder to meet her expectations and prove for her as well as for others that he can do it.

The picture bellow shows one of the group work activities that strongly engaged Mohammad and made him interact with his classmates: