Offering special education or rather teaching children with disabilities is a task that is unique and requires so much attention from the special educators. This paper sheds a light on working with students with disabilities and/or the response-to-intervention process, collaborating with parents and other professionals, and school-community events. It does this through an interview process with one of the special educators or rather teacher of children with disability. The whole process was very educative and left me in awe of how much work the special educators have. Questions and answers of the interview are as follows.
Professional Meetings/Collaboration
Do you have meetings with other professionals such as other teachers (special or general educators), related professionals (e.g., speech therapists, counselors, etc.? If so, can you describe for me about some of these meetings.
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Yes, we do have meetings with other special educators and related professionals such as counselors. With other special educators, we discuss how we can improve our ways of teaching while meetings with counselors, we discuss challenges we encounter teaching children with disabilities and the help in solving them.
Are there any other ways that you collaborate with other educational professionals (e.g., other teachers or related professionals)
No. Besides what I mentioned earlier, I have no other ways in which I collaborate with educational professionals. I would however mention that I use the internet a lot, especially YouTube, in researching what other special educators do their duties.
Have you attended any IEP meetings or other meetings about students with disabilities? If so tell me about them. If not, what meetings do you think would be useful?
I have attended only one IEP meeting being my first year in teaching. It was the regular annual IEP meeting where I just had to discuss a child's progress, what they are doing well, what is challenging to them, the current grade they have, and gave suggestions on what I thought would be helpful about a child with a disability.
What do you see as the value of any of the meetings discussed?
I find the meeting with counselors very valuable. It helps solve very many things that happen directly between a student and a teacher hence make learning easier and effective.
What are any challenges that you have related to any of these meetings and what might you recommend to overcome these challenges?
The most significant challenge so far was in the IEP meeting. It was hard when I had nothing specific to speak to a parent about their child. To overcome this challenge, I would recommend that teachers should keep clear records of their student’s progress so that they are not blank during an IEP meeting.
Working with Parents
Describe for me ways that you communicate and/or work with the parents of your students? Are some parents of students with disabilities? If so are there any differences in communicating/working with them?
My way of working with parents of my students is simple, creating an atmosphere of respect and open communication. That way, both of us can reduce tension and work together in supporting the child with a disability. We share observations, identify and discuss what strengths and interests that a child has, clarify what instructional program is best for a child, acknowledge the emotional reactions of the child and generally strategize together. I have not come across any parents with disabilities so far.
What do you see as benefits of working closely with your students’ parents?
The parents and I are able to easily figure out where breakdowns occur through sharing observations. Secondly, we can easily figure out how to enhance the child’s ability to learn after discussing the strengths and weaknesses. Thirdly, we can easily tell of the instructional program best for the child. The fourth and last benefit is that strategizing together helps us figure out tactics that have worked successfully before.
What are any challenges that you have related to working with parents what might you might you recommend to overcome these challenges?
The only challenge experienced so far is the parent's frustration where parents seem emotionally charged. This sometimes creates confusion in my communication with the parents. I would, however, recommend talking to professionals such as counselors to know how to deal with such kind of parents. That has worked for me.
School/Community Events
Have you been involved in any school/community events (such as PTA meetings, fundraisers, reading improvement events, charities)? If so, can you describe few?
I have been involved in both school and community events. For school events, it is the meetings we normally have with other professionals or rather special educators, as earlier mentioned, where we discuss ways of improving our teaching methods such as what you just mentioned; reading improvements. For community events, teachers from our school once visited a school for the disabled as a way of giving back to the society as well as learn how things are handled or rather benchmark from the school.
Could you describe some of the benefits of these meetings? Were there any specific benefits you observed for students with disabilities?
The benefits of these meetings are several but they generally give me teaching strategies. I am able to tell what teaching method is best for a specific child since there is no single method for all children. The meetings have in most cases given me answers like whether a strategy has been studied, whether one has been helped by a strategy, or whether a strategy can be harmful to a child.
Please describe some of the challenges of school/community events and what you might you might you recommend to overcome these challenges?
The only challenge I observed with the community event we had is that we did it as a one-day thing and that was it. It made an impact that day but we cut it at that. I would recommend that whenever there is such an event, the people concerned should keep on being in communication and work together to keep on learning from each other.
Response to Intervention (RTI)/Working with Students with Disabilities
Have you implemented response to intervention (RTI) in your classroom? If so, tell me your process. If they say "no" ask them for any reasons why they have not and ask them if they feel as though they have been trained well in it.
Yes, I have implemented response to intervention (RTI) in my classroom. My process is this, having a second test of a child’s progress after a child has received intervention. If I realize that there is no improvement, I call out other educators or rather RTI team and the parents to come up with strategies together. This way we will be able to recognize a specific learning disability (SLD) and work on it.
Do you see benefits in using response to intervention? If so, what are they?
Using response to intervention is very beneficial. One is that I am able to know a child’s specific problem before it gets worse and work on dealing with that problem immediately. RTI also enables monitoring of a child’s progress and makes it easy for me to evaluate a student and know what resources to channel to that student.
What do you see as challenges to using response to intervention and what you might you might you recommend to overcome these challenges?
There is only one challenge that I have encountered in using response to intervention. The fact that a student might not show ‘response’ and I or rather we are supposed to work on more evaluation. I would recommend using other more specific identification methods such as intelligence quotient (IQ) tests.
If you have students with disabilities in your classroom, what instructional modifications or compensatory techniques have you used with them?
I have used so many instructional modifications for different children since different children have different disabilities. For example, for presentations, I have introduced the aspect of listening to audio records instead of reading a text. I have encouraged giving of responses in a form that is easier for a child; either oral or written. For setting and timing modifications, I have made sure that the children take their tests in a room that is very quiet and increased the time taken to complete a test.
Conclusion
Teaching children with disability is not an easy task and that is why teachers need to collaborate with other professionals such as special educators and related professionals such as counselors. This collaboration helps the teachers in solving challenges that come with teaching children with disability. Teachers also need to work with parents because parents spend a lot of time with the children and will easily help identify problems that children with disability have. The teachers will hence have a smooth time on knowing how to educate the student. School and community events are important too in teaching children with disabilities as it helps people share experiences and make work easier. Lastly, there is the aspect of RTI that shows that there is much that needs to be invested in children with disability to be able to understand them and help them get an education. It is so amazing that there are people out there ready to move out of their comfort zone to go through all nook and cranny and educate children.
