What are you going to do to meet the needs of your special education students?
Last year, I had way more special education students than I do this year. This year, the only special education students I have come with 504s more than IEPs. One student, for example, struggles with ADHD and needs to be able to get up and walk around. Another student has high anxiety and therefore needs to be able to have a note-card for any quiz or test I give not out of an intention to use it or a crutch, but as a backup in case the test anxiety gets so overwhelming that he needs an escape plan. Another student struggles with social anxiety and because pep-talks in the mirror help, she needs to be able to go to the bathroom if she feels overwhelmed. I am happy to meet each one of these needs. So far, not one single student has needed to take these tasks up to help in class, but it's really important that they have them available in case they need them.
Interestingly, I have a student who is on the spectrum, but her parents refuse to acknowledge her need. I guess it's not that surprising, because I've seen this before at another school. I can see where the parents hesitate to help her out of a preoccupation with stigma. While there is no 504 or IEP for this student, I have adopted my own kind of IEP --not to the point of altering curriculum, but at least in altering my own interaction with her to best meet her needs. For example, she is someone who will always need more time for questions, so I adjust for more question time. Because I learned early on in teaching that different kinds of learners need directions given in different ways, I may give the same set of directions in different phrases, but I always connect with her after class to make sure she understood the assignment in one way or another. She doesn't do well with any abstract thinking, so whenever I give a prompt for bellwork that is more creative, I stop by her desk to make sure she understands directions.
Most of what she struggles with are things that are outside of the curriculum. She struggles with eye contact, though she's getting better. When she's aggravated by a subject, she tends to growl and snap at teachers, so sometimes I have to remind her to speak respectfully. If she struggles with finding something, she expects me to do the work for her, and I imagine she has had parents and teachers who have --for her entire upbringing-- identified that she struggles so it's just easier to do it for her. I'm trying to break that expectation by leading her through steps of logical reasoning, allowing her to find the information herself without my spoon-feeding her because it's the easiest option right now. I think that's probably the biggest struggle because she wants to be instantly gratified (don't they all?), but I'm trying to show her that it is within her power to seek out answers to her own questions and therefore to show her she has more choice and agency than others have allowed her to think. Isn't that what teaching is all about?
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