Aisha Roscoe

Reporter Lori Stern has been talking to us about Walt, a student in St.

Paul, Minnesota, who has a special education label called Emotional or Behavioral Disorders, known as EBD.

Students labeled EBD tend to spend more time in their own separate classrooms than kids with other disabilities do.

So one of the key questions is, how does separating out these kids affect their future?

Lori, you met Walt in an EBD classroom his junior year, and he agreed to let you check in on him during what he hoped would be his final year in high school.

And he basically said he wanted to be heard, which is a beautiful thing.

What did checking in on him look like?

And as we know, he had a lot of catching up to do since he was really behind in his credits that he needed to graduate.

And maybe an example of why he had the EBD label.

Okay, so emotions ran high.

I mean, this is a teenage boy with a lot of, you know, testosterone.

I mean, people get worked up, but no one was hurt.

So Mr. K is seeing growth in Walt because a lot of this comes down to impulse control, right?

Like, and especially for teenagers, you can be very impulsive and not see kind of the bigger picture.

And it seemed like he was doing well.

So does this mean that he couldn't finish high school, that he had to drop out?

So nothing has really changed for kids with EBD?

And how did that go?

Well, it sounds like mainstreaming, like being in the classes with other kids who weren't EBD, like that that made all the difference for him.

Why wasn't that something that could have happened for Walt?