A professor recently encouraged me to include a blog about my experiences that I am having while in school. Different settings will be included from monthly community events, substituting in the local public schools and clinical hours assigned to me through my teaching program.
This week I had a student with significant intellectual disabilities dropped off into my class. And I mean literally dropped off. The paraprofessional dropped him off and said she would be back at the end of the hour. I asked her, what does he normally do in this class? She said usually he just copies words. My heart sank. He's not going to do that in my class. That's what I was made to do as a child after I got into trouble. Copy this sentence 100 times. What joy. I quickly looked around the room trying to find something I could do with him that he would be capable of and learn something at the same time. First I wanted to know something about his cognitive level so we played three games of tic tac toe. He was capable. I found a game on a bookshelf called Hedbanz that has lots of cards with pictures and the name of the picture below it. I laid three random cards on the table and asked him which one do you like? I told him to put the one he liked in a pile. As we continued to do this I would ask him simple questions about the cards, which one can you eat? Which one can fly? We would repeat the words he had troubles sounding out. The hour ended and the para came back to pick him up. I was told by an educator who is not directly involved with this student, but knew him, that this situation is not surprising. A few questions that come up that are related to my project I made this website for are: Why did the para drop off the student with a substitute knowing he would be doing nothing meaningful? Why wasn't there a plan of action or possible learning activities delivered with the student? If other people, even outside of his teaching team, are aware of this poor learning environment where is the communication gap on the team? Is his IEP sufficient or is the team just not carrying it out? I say all this not to make judgments against his whole team but it's a place to start, by asking questions. I made a difference for one hour, that's all that was in my control. The next hour came with it's own challenges. I look forward to seeing him again soon and I will be more prepared.
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AuthorSpecial Education major in a university teaching program. Substitute teacher, previous homeschool mom, wife. Archives
September 2019
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