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Students With Profound Mental And Physical Disabilities

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STUDENTS WITH PROFOUND MENTAL AND PHYSICAL DISABILITIES NEED MORE THAN PAPER AND PENCILTO BE SUCCESFUL IN SCHOOL. Heather Centaure As a Special Education Teacher, who has taught students with profound physical and mental disabilities for eight years, my greatest concern is the inability of many students with profound mental and physical disabilities to participate to their fullest potential in school. Several key factors contribute to this including poorly designed school programs, a lack of functional curriculum, and more specifically is the lack of students being placed in functional supportive positions during classroom instruction. Functional supportive positions as defined by Utley includes, “The position chosen must provide the student enough postural support to (a) normalize Tone, (b) minimize interfering abnormal movements (e.g., associated reactions, extension), (c) facilitate goal-directed movements (e.g., hand, arm, or head movements to activate a switch), and (d) allow the student to concentrate his or her efforts on participation in the activity instead of on maintaining body posture. This position also must (a) match the target behavior, (b) be similar to the position that peers without disabilities use for the activity, and (c) not interfere with the student’s functional vision and hearing abilities” (Utley, 1994 as cited in Smith, Gast, Logan & Jacobs, 2001, p. 136). To achieve this functional positioning “many students require therapeutic

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