Explain Your Background Knowledge Of People With Special Needs

“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”, Buddha

I spent my middle school years and early high school years helping out in Mrs. DiIanni’s 3rd grade classroom at Lee Elementary in Middleville. While helping Mrs. DiIanni with little things like filling and grading papers, I also helped the kids with problems they were working on. I had a lot of fun helping them with educational art projects and learn to write in cursive. I had also helped organize some of their holiday parties, and well as joined them in the festivities. I had done so many things with these kids and I hopeI at least impacted one of their lives.

Some of my favorite memories made in high school thus far are due to my involvement in the Best Buddies program. Best Buddies is offered across the United States and is a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the exclusion of people with special needs. I joined the program my freshman year and was selected my junior year of high school to be in the Best Buddies class where I get to develop a closer relationship with all of the buddies. In total there are about twenty-five special needs kids that attend my school. I am proud to attend a school that welcomes these kids and always makes sure to include them in major school events and extracurricular activities. Recently, Tyler, one of the buddies, scored a touchdown while playing with our varsity football team. This was a proud moment for the Best Buddies class because we wanted him to have this amazing experience.

After finishing middle school and the first two years of high school, I finished out my High School years at Jenkins. Jenkins is where I discovered I wanted to work with children. And not just any children, I wanted to work with special needs children and children who were only slightly behind. I had a friend there who had a learning disability. She could function just as well as the rest of us in the class; she just had a hard time grasping certain concepts. She was always picked on and decided that she wanted to give up. I felt horrible. My heart was broken because

When I entered high school in Saline, I was a part of the Connecting Program. The program was designed for students to learn about different disabilities, the politics of special education, and to give us experience in the classroom working with students who had a range of disabilities. I took this class so many times that I had to start taking it as an independent study so I could continue learning and participating in classrooms with students. It felt like home to be working with children.

I interviewed a woman who has a child with special needs. The child is now in kindergarten. The mother reported having a normal pregnancy with no complications. This was the second child for the mother, who has another child who was five years old at the time. The mother disclosed that during the pregnancy, she was in the process of separating from the child’s father and that this caused a moderate level of stress. At the time of the pregnancy, the mother was also working full time as a waitress in a local restaurant. The mother reported that her job required her to be on her feet for long periods of time. She was able to work until around a week before her child was born. The mother reports that the child was born around two weeks

Under the Education Act 1981 provision should be made so that children and young people with Special Education Needs (SEN)/Disability or children and young people that have a learning difficult but which has not yet been clearly identified, are supported and can access mainstream schooling.

For a child in my centre with certain needs, we can invite a specialist staff from the school to be part of a professional network to support families and children. We can check with the specialist staff on the financial support that the school may provide and facilities available in the school as students with special needs need to be taught differently or need some accommodations to enhance the learning environment.

Thank you for the opportunity to work one-on-one with special needs students expanding my teaching experience and knowledge. I have very much enjoyed being a part of the Oakleigh Elementary School team.

Working with those with special needs has given me a greater appreciation of the barriers they face on a daily basis and has allowed me to improve my patience and observation

Through the line of special needs cases, the Supreme Court has created an exception to the broad principle that a search requires a warrant. Special needs arise when there is a compelling government interest that allows for the warrantless search of ordinary citizens. These searches involve groups who maintain substantial expectations of privacy: the public at large, or classes of law-abiding citizens. The government interest must go beyond normal law enforcement. For example, inspections to ensure residents are in compliance with ordinance codes are exempted. In Martinez-Fuerte, the Court extended the special needs exception to include warrantless searches of cars within one hundred miles of the United States-Mexico border because of the government’s

1. How do you perceive the field of education changing, especially in the area of serving students with special needs?

The year was 1972 at Central High School in the small town of Bridgeport, Connecticut. There lived my father along with his sister, his mom, and his dad later to be known as my aunt and my grandparents. Knowing that my father lived in a completely different state as I live in now, I felt that interviewing him about his high school experience would be a smart idea as there could be major difference between high school in Connecticut and high school in New Jersey especially during that time period. Just after I started to interview my father (Barry Schnee), it was very evident that high school back then was definitely not the same as it was when I went. To begin the interview, I tried to get a good feel about my father's basic high school life

When I was asked to reflect on my experiences in EDSE 316 and the fieldwork, I had to think long and hard on how I would sum up four months of classes and fieldwork into four pages. I have learned so much about the various disabilities and how it has change the world of special education. I think a better term would be the “endless possibilities of education”. It wasn’t too long ago when children with disabilities would be stuck in a room in the back of school only to be seen in the beginning and end of the school day. They were the ones who rode the other buses and no one really talked about. This class has allowed me to speak of my own family and how special education impacted my life. I have a brother whose whole life was spent in the special education class, and my own sons with speech and learning disabilities who are now receiving special education services. It also allowed me to reflect on my own participation in the special education program in my early elementary years when I was struggling with my own speech disability. This class gave me the chance to see the timeline of special education, from its earliest beginnings to what it is now.

Mother: We tried for several months to get pregnant before we were successful. We both were reluctant to try for a child again because of a traumatic miscarriage I experienced several years prior. We both really wanted to be parents and made a tough decision.