preview

Special Education Career Goal

Satisfactory Essays

My career goal is to obtain a master’s degree in elementary education by the end of Fall 2016 in order to start teaching by the beginning of Spring 2017. Upon completion of the dual certification track, I will receive elementary (K-6), special education (ESE K-6), and ESOL endorsements. Before entering graduate school, I always believed these certifications would prepare me for teaching more than if I had started teaching immediately after graduation. Today, I still hold this belief to be true, for I have opportunities now to closely practice, implement, and refine teaching skills, strategies, and qualities that I learned as an undergraduate in a real school setting. I am also able to work closely alongside teachers who have experience working with students with identified disabilities and experience the different behavioral responses that students with identified disabilities may exhibit. As a first year intern this semester, I even sat in on an EPT (Evaluation and Planning Team) meeting regarding whether or not a student in my first grade classroom should receive a 504 Plan that I did not get to …show more content…

My interests in working with non-native English speakers were piqued when my second semester placement teacher happened to teach reading instructions to high-performing ELL students. Her interactions with those students were not any different than her interactions with native English speakers, but her presentations of instructions were slightly different. Since then, I always wondered how would her instructions differ if she had taught the lower-performing ELL students instead. What teaching methods did the ESOL certified teacher use that my placement teacher did not? How different would the interactions be between the low-performing ELL students and high-performing ELL

Get Access