The Importance Of Special Education Teachers At The School For More Than One Year Essay

The special education programs in the United States have been designed to help children with special needs learn easier and fit in better with the education program. Unfortunately, many minority students get caught up in the mix and don’t get the proper attention they deserve. Furthermore, minority students are seriously over-represented in the educational programs. Many minority students are misdiagnosed and put into special education programs when in fact; they do not have a learning disability. This has become a growing problem in this country because it is seen as the easy way out. Schools all over the U.S. are doing this in order to not have to properly test and evaluate students for learning problems.

Being an early childhood/special education major, I decided to observe during my field experience hours in a preschool class at Prairie Children Preschool, in Aurora. In this classroom, I observed a blended classroom, with ten out of fifteen children having IEPs. Thus far, I have visited three times and have completed a total of nine hours in the classroom. One opportunity I have in my placement is to be able to observe in the classroom on Fridays, during which only students enrolled in the Preschool for all program. Through my field experience I was able to observe Ms. Vanessa Seppa in the blended classroom. I have observed her work with children towards goals that have been set. Only having experience in early education made me curious as to the difference from preschool to the upper grades. One of my relatives was a substitute in a special education class and connected me to Vanessa Villalobos, who is a special education teacher in middle school.

When Public Law 94-142 was passed in 1975 it had a positive impact on the education for children with disabilities. Millions of children in the United States were supported by the law. These children had previously been excluded entirely from the education system.

The time is now to become a Special Education Teacher. I believe the best fit for my academic and vocational goals is the UWM Exceptional Education Post-Baccalaureate Teacher Certification Program.

Mrs. Alice McLoughlin-Doro is a Special Education teacher at Downers Grove South High School in Downers Grove, Illinois. The community is known for its excellent school districts. According to the 2010 census there were 47, 833 people living in Downers Grove with approximately 19,000 households and 13,000 families. The racial makeup of the school was reported to be 88% White, 3% African American, 5% Hispanic, 0.2% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 5% Asian, and 1.6% from two or more races. About 1.7% of families were below the poverty line. The school district report card reports the following racial/ethnic background for the school: 68.1% White, 10.3 African American, 11% Hispanic, 7.3% Asian, 0.2% American Indian, and 3.2% two or more races. The elementary schools, middle schools, and high school all perform very well academically receiving above state average scores on standardized tests. She has been working there for 10 years and is currently a Case Manager of 17 students, all with an IEP, all with different needs and goals in the LD department. She co-teaches two general education classes in English intervention, all freshman. Although she is a Special Education teacher, she works with all the students. She also teaches a READ 180, Tier 3 reading and english intervention. This is where we will be focusing on for this

My personal philosophy of special education drives not from teaching in the field, but from, observations, and personal experience, and the workshops I attended. I have had the opportunity to work with individuals with special needs in many different settings, all this help cultivate my knowledge in handling the needs of the special needed student. Special needs students have the ability to learn, to function, to grow, and most importantly to succeed. The difference comes into how they learn or how they need to be taught. There are as many beliefs about the "hows" as there are teachers and each of us forms our own philosophy through our experiences and research. As a student in a special education teachers’ program, learners with

The special education teacher interviewed, co-teaches algebra into three class periods. She is able to teach up to 50 students. In her classroom she can teach children with disabilities or up to 25 at-risk students.

The purpose of schooling is to help our special education students to be functional and independent in the real world. I want them to learn how to deal with real life situations and to be able to understand and adapt to the changes it may bring. For example, being an autism teacher of high school students, my philosophy is different than of an autism teacher of elementary students. The most important thing of concern for the older students is to make sure they are as independent as possible and teach them some type of job skill to help them acquire a pay check to help with their care. I also help them have an

Autism Speaks. (2012). The Federal Response to Autism. Retrieved June 17, 2012, from HYPERLINK "http://www.autismspeaks.org" http://www.autismspeaks.org.

Special Education is a topic of controversy with many advocates fighting for the justice children and adults with special needs so rightfully deserve. With laws being passed and modified so frequently, it is important that the educators being brought into the world have an extensive knowledge of the developmental needs of many different types of children. With this knowledge and their constant measures to keep up to date with the fast-moving world of education, they will be able to deliver an appropriate atmosphere that is in accordance with the law that ensures ethical practices and guidelines are always being followed.

Special education has faced many changes during the last century. During this time there have been many opinions on the way students with differences should be taught and treated. This paper will discuss the history of special education during the twentieth century. We will also discuss the laws associated with Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Finally we will discuss the current and future challenges that the laws have on special education.

Many children have had learning disabilities for many years. Each year more and more of these children are being helped. Schools are working to improve their special education programs and to have all kinds of students work together in the same classroom. The practice of inclusion was started because educators felt that special needs students would achieve more in traditional classrooms with non-learning disabled students than they would in special education classes. However, research findings suggest that there really is no difference in academic achievement levels for special needs students when they are placed in regular classrooms.

Being a special educator, there are different roles and responsibilities separate from a general education teacher. As a special ed teacher, you need to be able to be more flexible and open-minded when it comes to teaching. These students, whether in a self-contained classroom or an ICT class, will have such differing needs than their counterparts. While they may still have some same needs, most of them will be different and individual. Even though we may have several students with the same disability in our class, that doesn’t mean that we can treat them the same; each student has differing abilities that we must figure out individually. This is one huge problem that I see prevailing in schools today. Teachers tend to think that if a child has autism, they have the same issues and needs as another child with autism but this is not the case. One child might need headphones for noise-canceling features while the other child might be ok with sound but need more social interactions skills. The ability to discern what a child needs based on their own performance is a crucial aspect to supporting every student equally. As a special educator, we need to not only look at their deficits but their capabilities as well. To define someone by what they can’t do is such a negative point of view. If we go into the classroom trying to find what is wrong with a child, we may never notice what exceptional skills they may have. For example, in class when Mark Sarabian came to talk about the

     Special Education 332 (Education and Inclusion of Individuals with Special Needs) has been enlightening for me as a secondary mathematics educator. In the beginning of the semester, my feelings towards special education were those of apathy and insensitivity. I now understand that my feelings were due to my lack of knowledge and my judgment based on stereotypes.

In order to effectively plan any instruction, it is important for teachers to know their students. Two vital aspects of this knowledge include students’ academic background and their home circumstances. Things like home language or special education classification can affect students’ academic performance in very obvious ways. Much of this information is normally made available to general education teachers through a student’s records, and ESL and Special Education teachers each have their own screening and evaluation processes to help gather more information about these statuses. These evaluation processes consist of past schooling experience these students have had and how much of their schooling they actually remember. Teachers should know what the students know to better plan for future instruction. Students need instruction that provides new information but also is not past the zone of proximal development, meaning the tasks are not too difficult for students to accomplish even with scaffolded support. There are a number of strategies teachers can use to find out what their students already know. One helpful strategy is to ask students about their previous school year at the beginning of a new one. By finding out where they went to school and what they liked best about it, teachers can find out a lot about what sort of curriculum they experienced and what subjects they might remember more about. Additionally, before the start of a unit, teachers can give students a