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Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES STUDENT PROFILE 1

Individual Differences Student Profile

Martin Vargas

College of Western Idaho

Educ 230 – Intro to Special Education

Instructor: Natalie Tau

12/11/2023
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Individual Differences Student Profile Essay

This semester I had the privilege of being able to observe a kindergarten class at Purple

Sage Elementary school. With the help of the teacher, I was able to observe different classes with

students of diverse types of needs. I was able to observe students with down syndrome, autistic

children, and mostly children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). Out of all

the kids I was able to observe, the one that caught my eye the most was a kid with ADHD that I

will be calling Percy. In this essay I will be explaining more details as to why I decided to pay

more attention to him during my observations. I will be talking about his general information,

physical development, cognitive development, socio-emotional development, and finally

summarize his strengths and my suggestions to help with his ADHD.

General Information

Percy is a five-year-old kindergarten student that is attending a school that has now

adopted the four-day school system. He is in school Monday-Thursday from 8:00 am to 3:30 pm.

Percy is on a system where he must divide his day in two different sections with a different

teacher each section. Percy is not the only student in this system, the number of students per

class has been very overwhelming for the teachers at purple sage so the school decided to make a

substitute teacher a full-time teacher. The substitute teacher is then able to take a class of fifteen

students and has them half the day. Before the incorporation of this new teacher, Percy’s main

teacher had to deal with up to five students with disruptive behavior. Percy has a sister that is in

the third grade and seems to be having behavior issues as well. According to the teacher her

behavior issues tend to be more emotional behaviors, and the teacher has now found Percy

mimicking some of her behaviors. Through the teacher I was able to find out the Percy and his

sister belong to an adoptive family. She did not know much about his actual parents but did
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know that they had drug related issues. According to the teacher, the adoptive parents seem to be

nice people but does not like the vibe the father gives. She believes that he is not as into caring as

the mom is.

Physical Development

Compare to the rest of his class Percy is about two inches shorter than his classmates. He

has brown hair, brown eyes, and is light skin. Putting his disruptive behavior aside, Percy is a

sweet boy. His favorite thing to do during recess is play on the swing. He has large muscle

development; I got the chance to play catch with him with a football and I was incredibly

surprised to see how far he can throw the ball. During class I was able to see that he is right-

handed and that he loves to look at books. Unfortunately, I was not able to watch them during

lunch time, so I was not able to see if he brought lunch from home or if he just grabbed lunch

from the school cafeteria.

Cognitive Development

During my observations and even before the teacher mentioned anything about Percy, I

was able to deduce that Percy had behavioral problems. His attention span was short, he would

easily lose focus and would also try and distract his classmates. Percy attended the regular

classroom all day except when he was being extremely disruptive for the class. The teacher to be

able to continue her lesson, would either allow him to go sit in a bean bag and grab a book or

would have no choice but to call an aide to take him to the hallway when he was being extremely

disruptive. His participation in class only came when the teacher gave out a prize. He starts the

worksheets given by the teacher but would never finish them. The only time he comes close is

when he has someone by his side making sure he stays focused. He looks like he enjoys the

books he grabs, but I could never figure out what he thought of them. According to Piaget’s
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theory, Percy would have fallen in the preoperational stage of cognitive development

“Piaget’s second stage of intellectual development is the preoperational stage. It takes place

between 2 and 7 years. At the beginning of this stage, the child does not use operations, so the

thinking is influenced by the way things appear rather than logical reasoning.” (Mcleod,

2018/2023).

Socio-Emotional Development

Percy’s socio-emotional development is by far the biggest obstacle teachers and parents

will have to work the hardest on. In Erik Erikson’s (2017) eight stages of emotional

development based on his age he would fall on the stage 3, initiative vs guilt. This is the stage

where the kids take initiative and start to learn what type of things are wrong which creates the

guilt from being told that it is not okay. Based on my observations though, Percy has still not

fully arrived a that stage. He does not seem to feel guilt when he does something wrong. He has

yet to learn to take turns. As I mentioned before, Percy loves the swing set, but he will refuse to

give another student a turn. If a teacher tries and teaches him to share, he starts his go to

tantrum where he takes off his shoes and socks and just lay down on the floor not wanting to get

up. He will do that action every time something is not going his way. During one of his tantrums

the teacher said that he ended up getting completely naked. The teacher explained that luckily the

rest of the students were not in class and that her and an aide managed to cover him up with

some posters and take him to a different classroom before the class got back. The teacher also

explained that this had been his worst tantrum yet and that it took him a couple of hours to calm

down. He refused to put his clothes back on and even ended up peeing in the carpet. One thing I

mentioned earlier is that he has been starting to mock the actions of his sister and his sister tends
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to take her clothes off in her class. The teacher believes that there maybe issues at home and that

the school’s psychologist is trying to figure out the problem.

The relationship with his classmates is particularly good. He cares for two of them more

than the others, but I did not see him argue with any of them during class. The two students he

follows quite often even try to tell him to pay attention before he gets in trouble. They warn him

to stay quiet and to sit properly. They try and stop him when he starts throwing stuff around. One

of the two students he follows is one of the girls in the class, even though they are the same age,

it is like he sees her as his older sister. He will sit next to her and give her a hug from time to

time. She does not seem to mind as I have seen her give him hugs back.

Summary

In general, I could honestly say that Percy is a nice kid. There are things that need work

and that require professional help as well. I have witness that when given the full attention of the

teacher he does strive and can finish his worksheets. Unfortunately, the teacher is not always

able to guarantee that for him and there are days that aides are not available for help as they are

busy helping other students. When the days of not being able to give him one-to-one help, the

teachers priority becomes trying to not get him to distract the rest of the class. That is when she

allows him to grab a book and sit on the bean bag.

Based on the things I managed to learn from this class I have thought about ideas that I

think would help Percy in class. I would first start with creating accommodations for him. I

would start by trying to find a fidget spinner what would allow him to focus on that when feeling

the need to distract the class. I would also create worksheets that are shorter and easier for him to

complete. I would also develop a plan where I can get the parents more involved with Percy’s

education. I would create worksheets for him to take home where his parents could help him.
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I would also like to give Percy a visual schedule where he can know when something is

about to change. Finally, I would also really like to see more of the school’s psychologist in the

classroom. The three times that I was there, I did not have the privilege of meeting her and she is

the one person that should be involved as much as possible. Percy requires a lot of attentions so

the more adults available to guide him the better it will be for him.
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References

Mcleod, S. (2018/2023, November 29). Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: 4 stages.
Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html

Sprouts. (2017). 8 Stages of Development. YouTube. Retrieved December 11, 2023, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYCBdZLCDBQ.