Graduation Speech : A Special Education Classroom

As I grew older, I began to realize that students with disabilities have many significant obstacles to overcome. Seeing them get excited about learning things that we take for granted provided me with the desire to become part of their learning. For example, one kindergartner with Down Syndrome struggled daily to learn how to write the first letter of her name. It was such a joy for all of those involved when she finally succeeded. Working with these students furthered my resolve to not only fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a teacher, but I soon realized that special education is my niche. After 13 years of teaching in Glynn County, I still teach with the same fervor and enthusiasm as the first day I formally stepped into a classroom. My principal once said, “Teaching is not a job. It’s a profession.” I wholeheartedly believe in this philosophy. Education was never a back-up plan or alternative for me; being a teacher is who I am. As a special educator, I strive to

Throughout my life, I feel as though I have had many encounters with special education. Growing up, my grandmothers close friend had a daughter that had down syndrome. She was extremely sweet and loved company. Her parents had six other children who were grown and lived on their own. However, she lived at home with her parents her whole life. In elementary school, I do not remember many encounters with special education students. I do remember some kids being taken out of my class for part of the day, but that was my only experience during that time.

A higher education has been an important priority in my life. While I realized a high school education was important, my parents expected more. They said if I wanted to succeed in life, a college education was something that I could not live without. What they don’t tell you is how exhausting and confusing the process is to get even into.

The author performed two separate interviews face-to-face, selecting two individuals with different backgrounds in order to obtain unique perspectives. The first interviewee, named Jennifer Hodge, works for Allen ISD as a special education teacher for a self-contained DEAR (Developing Early Academics Readiness) class for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. In addition, her experience includes teaching for 22 years, with seven of those years teaching students with disabilities in both self-contained classrooms along with resource and inclusion environments. The meeting to discuss psychoeducational testing occurred in Jennifer’s work place during her conference period over a 45 minute period on Friday, August 28, 2015. The second

Usually high school students meet with the counselor and follow a determined set of coursework in order to graduate high school. However, if a student has been identified as a special needs student, the process of signing up for classes is not as simple as for other students. When trying to earn a high school diploma, special education students encounter difficulties not faced by their peers. The first step is for parents, school staff, and the student to meet and determine the best option for the student in order to receive a diploma. Determining the student’s path is called an IEP, individualized education plan. All special education students have an IEP that identifies the courses they will take in high school and the plans they will pursue after graduation. Students may choose from four paths: the traditional pathway, the career pathway, the occupational pathway, or the certificate of completion. The traditional pathway, which most advisors put the student on at first, allows the student the option of going to college. The next is the career pathway, which does not require a student to have an eligibility ruling for special education but still is another option if the student cannot obtain a high school diploma through the traditional path. Third, occupational pathway is a way to receive a diploma and not have to achieve as many credits or pass state test, but is still a difficult process. The last option for special education students is certificate of completion.

During my field work experience, I got the opportunity to work with my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Francisca Gachett, who has been teaching for over 11 years. She worked between 2005 and 2013 in community school with students with special needs and English Language Learners children. She then furthered her career in the Department of Education, working in District 75, where she has taught for the last three years. She got the opportunity to work within an ICT, 6:1:1, and 12:1:1: settings. As Mrs. Gachett continues to grow working with Special Education, where her love grows stronger for her students. She creates a bond with her students which makes them felt loved and wanted in the classroom. Mrs. Gachett don’t believe in the no child left behind act. She believe that the no child left behind should not related to special needs children. Special needs children testing are not able to grasp the curriculum that required. They are not advance enough to cultivate in that population as the regular students. The purpose for her believe is that each students need someone to believe in them. Believe that no matter what stage they’re in, they can still be the person they want to be. Mrs. Gachett says “when I look at my students, I see them as how I see my own children.” Mrs. Gachetty was blessed to have two children of her own. She says that “I treat my students the same way I would want my children to be treated. I want them to be comfortable and confidence in their classroom, where

I interviewed Andrea Erickson who teaches reading, writing, and pre-algebra at Central High school to students who have mild and moderate disabilities. Her students have varying abilities and she makes many accommodations in order to ensure her student’s success. The varying learning problems Andrea has encountered within the reading and writing realm include reading difficulties, reading comprehension, problems with inferencing plots, problems with predicting plots, and connecting sentences improperly. In pre-algebra Andrea expressed problems with students connecting the dots. For example, a student would understand one concept, but would be incapable of connecting that concept to the next. From my experience at the Boys and Girls Club, I

Brandon is a middle grades student with special needs, who is on occasion placed in a Special Education classroom and program during school hours. He has always struggled in school with in-classroom assignments, but seems to struggle more when being place in a general classroom setting. When asked to do course work, Brandon ignores the teacher on purpose and does what he wants, and think that he can get away with it because of his special needs.

For my interview paper, I decided to talk to my neighbor Rebecca Schwartz, who I have known for 14 years. I decided to interview her because she was an early education teacher for infants and toddlers and has experience working with an entire classroom of students with disabilities as well as experience working with a classroom with only one student with a disability. I wanted to gain insight on her experiences teaching a classroom with only one student with a disability, while the remaining classroom was non-disabled students. I would like to talk about Tyler, a deaf student with Down syndrome, and Rebecca’s experience working with him.

I help a classroom that contains special education students. While I am there I am often asked by the teacher to take them out one by one to help with their sight words and phrases. There is a couple of them that still struggle to read fluently and these kids are in the third grade. This article gives a good insight that if I can keep working with the kids that I know that don’t have good reading skills could help them in the future to keep practicing with them. In this article they gave methods on what type of things to do while working with the students. If it is okay with their teacher I could apply those methods with the students to examine progress. Hopefully, I can help these students become the best they can

For the purposes of this assignment, I will be referring to the teacher I interviewed with a pseudo-name. I interviewed my neighbor and long-time family friend, Ann. Ann has been a special education teacher for over twenty years. She teaches students who have been diagnosed with dyslexia at Sunny Mead School, a Kindergarten to Fourth Grade elementary school in the Hillsborough Township school district located in Central New Jersey. Ann and I had an extensive conversation on April 13, 2017 regarding my specific interview questions, and special education in a general sense. Our conversation was quite intriguing. These next few pages will explain our conversation and what I took away from it as an aspiring special education teacher.

Tonight since it was my last time working with Keily, I told keily that today she could pick the game that we played today, but I told her it had to be math related. Of coarse, the first couple games that she wanted to play were not math related at all, but the she asked if we could play a card game. After observing in a kindergarden classroom last semester and looking at Pintrest from time to time, I drew from my previous knowledge to think of a card game that we could play that would relate to math. The first game that popped into my head was the card game war, but this was a modified version of the game. Instead of the regular war game, we would play addition wars. I told keily that in this card game we would split the deck of cards between

In 2002, the President’s Commision on Excellence in Special Education report stated that many students are “placed in special education are instructional casualties and not students with disabilities. They noted that almost half of all children in special education were identified as having a learning disability, and this group has grown since 1976. 80% of those students with learning disabilities are there “ simply because they haven’t learned how to read.” Thus, many children receiving special education because they weren’t taught to read, and few close the achievement gap (President's Commision on Excellence in Special Education, 2002).

As I began facilitating my scheduled students, a classroom teacher requested I also support non disable students not being serviced in the program including them in minor groups. Overjoyed with this innovative position, I knew instantly this was my calling to be an educator. The love of engagement of the lesson that reflects unambiguous communication between students and their peers, collaboration between teacher and student, motivation from students to students. In addition, I appreciated and accepted my newly found role, becoming euphoric when the Special Education Director employed my services in the summer of 2006. I carefully observed numerous effective and efficient teachers’ model positive curriculum lessons and strategies to students

Overbrook Educational Center is a public school outside of Philadelphia. The student body is predominantly made up of students of a minority background and almost one-third of the students are visually impaired. Although the entire school is not special education, many of the classrooms are considered special-ed. My field placement is within a mixed second and third grade classroom comprised of students who all have varying degrees of visual impairments. There are ten students and two of them read using braille and write through a braille typewriter. The others read and write without braille, but use certain specialized equipment such as magnifying monitors to make it easier to see the letters and words. The students are all behind where the majority of other students their age are, lagging behind students in non special-ed classrooms particularly in the subjects of reading and writing. They all know the letters of the alphabet and how to write those, but are mostly unable to form the letters into words and sentences. My participation is primarily working on the students reading and writing skills and I’ve found that the purpose of education in the classroom is predominantly focused on “catching up” these special education students.