246 The Explosive Childset demanded by this example of reciprocal inflexibility
was more than Danny could handle. Kaboom.
Teachers and schools have little choice but to put
some serious thought into how to handle the Caseys and
Dannys in their midst. We live in the era of inclusion (by
the way, that’s a good thing), which has encouraged in-
cluding students with special behavioral and academic
needs in mainstream classrooms, thereby providing these
students with opportunities to interact with “ordinary”
kids (and vice versa) and reducing the stigma of having
special needs addressed outside of the classroom. Thus, a
typical mainstream classroom is now likely to have nu-
merous special needs students, some of whom have dis-
orders their teachers have never even heard of, let alone
worked with, before. Teachers must therefore have ex-
pertise not only in the curriculum but also in the differ-
ent emotional and behavioral issues presented by some
of their students and how to handle those issues effec-
tively. Unfortunately, in many instances teachers feel—
justifiably—that they have not had the training and are
not being provided with the kind of support they need
to function effectively with students with emotional and
behavioral challenges.
To make things worse, in the United States we also
live in the era of high-stakes testing, which places ex-
pectations on teachers to try to ensure that every square
peg fits into the round holes defined by the standards
imposed by statewide mandated testing. Not even a