Recently, Mitch Joined Your 5th Period High School Physical Education

Multiple Choice

Recently, Mitch joined your 5th period high school physical education class. He is an exceptional soccer player and has taken over the spotlight. Until Mitch joined the class, Abu, who has an emotional-behavioral disorder, was the most skilled soccer player in the class. Previously Abu received a lot of praise for his skilled performance. Now, however, for basically the same behaviors, Abu no longer gets much attention from anyone. Instead, most of the attention goes to Mitch. During the past week, Abu has engaged in temper tantrums, shown unprovoked aggression toward teammates, and was heard overtly criticizing classmates. How best to intervene in such a situation?

A) Help Abu deal with being a failure compared to his new classmate.
B) Help Abu deal with the short-term effects of extinction. Make sure you do not inadvertently give attention to him after his emotional outbursts. Talk with Abu in private and help him establish personal goals, encourage him to work on self-improvement, and give him a little extra feedback and praise contingent upon self-improvement.
C) Help Abu deal with envy toward Mitch by forcing the two students to become best friends.
D) Help Abu deal with the permanent effects of low self-esteem. In such cases, the teacher should help the student more effectively focus on outcome rather than the process of self-improvement, emphasize success, provide extremely high expectations, avoid too much flexibility, and set long term goals only.