Blog 9

Prompt #9: General Education Teachers: When working with special education teachers, what are your challenges? Strengths? What could be done to increase your skills in this area?

Well, for starters...my greatest challenge is finding time to work with the special education teachers. As a first-year teacher, I feel like I am spending most of my time scrambling to finish everything on time and anything additional might ruin my sanity. Still, I realize that working together with special education professionals is an essential piece to helping all of my students succeed. It's very difficult, however, when the culture of the school is not focused on addressing the concerns of special education. Our special education administration and staff has seen quite some turnover in the past few weeks. I lost my paraprofessional, several IEP meetings were cancelled, some of our special education staff don't know their case load, no one has any additional time to meet after school to discuss co-teaching plans or addressing specific IEP goals. Some of the staff have expressed to me that the number of IEPs in the district are inflated while others believe that every student should have an IEP.

I tried giving my IEP students different worksheets in addition to the classwork that addressed their IEP goals, but after one student faced ridicule from their fellow classmates about their "dumb kid homework" I stopped trying to discreetly hand out the extra assignments. I also tried to explain that additional practice was always a good thing, but the teasing appears to be a cultural norm and even the targeted student seemed to internalize what was said regardless.

I don't suppose I have very many strengths with special education. Then again, I don't see a very good support system here either. To increase my skills within this area, I believe the special education services need to be addressed first.

The only thing that seems to work (slightly) is my recognition program which rewards students for being "a teacher today." Students that finish their assignments early during independent practice get a chance to sign a "I was a teacher today" poster on the wall after I have checked their work and they have helped a fellow student. Being a "teacher" enough times will earn them several rewards including extra credit, good phone calls home, and even a letter of recommendation for future use. Students seem to response better to their peers, but students aren't always able to finish their work before class ends. Hopefully I'll get better at designing this program in a way that will create more cooperative learning.