The Foreign Service Journal, June 2014

66 JUNE 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT Non-Academic Concerns Most schools, including international schools, also have a variety of specialists on staff, or available on an itinerant basis, who deal with non-academic concerns. Speech and language . Common refer- ral concerns, in my experience, include deafness, stuttering (e.g., disfluency), lack of vocabulary development and diffi- culty generating and organizing speech. Because language development is so inte- gral to academics, it can be very beneficial to have a speech pathologist weigh in whenever a student is struggling academi- cally. For more information, please refer to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Occupational therapy. Frequently reported concerns include handwriting, visual tracking and visual-motor skills—all important to academics. Please see the American Occupational Therapy Asso- ciation’s page on Children and Youth for more information. Behavior. There is a wide spectrum of concerns in this area, but they tend to fall into two categories: externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Externalizing behaviors typically involve “acting out”—children may be described as hyperactive, aggressive, defiant or “out of control.” Internalizing behaviors are those exhibited by “quiet sufferers,” who may be seen as withdrawn, inattentive, anxious or depressed, and dif- ficult to engage. There are a myriad of factors involved in untangling a behavior issue, from neurological (e.g., executive functioning weaknesses, injury to the brain, develop- mental trauma) to environmental (e.g., response to a classroommanagement style). Often it is a combination of factors. In cases of mild to moderate behavior difficulties that continue for more than six weeks, it is strongly advisable to engage a