Types Of Students With Disabilities

Special education teachers make a conscious decision to work on a daily basis with students who display various disabilities. Some of the disabilities include autism, negative social and emotional behaviors, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, mobility disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, as well as students who suffer from being blind and deaf. When these disabilities interfere with the daily educational activities of a child, the child is in need of the valuable opportunities provided in a self-contained classroom.

These are just five factors that can affect students with disabilities in a general education classroom. Only a deep understanding of these factors, and other issues that hinder inclusion, and the elimination of them will make true inclusion a reality for all children to learn together.

In some general classrooms, teachers tend to give more time and attention to children with disabilities, leaving general education students who may be struggling with little to no help. Socialization is another whole ballpark, inclusion could lead to children developing negative attitudes about peers with disabilities, especially if they feel they are receiving more attention from the teacher and other students in the classroom. Teachers of general education classes may have a fear of teaching students with disabilities. They feel they do not know them well enough and that they will make a mistake. This can then in return allow the teacher to push the student with a disability away and not give them the best education piece they can. These teachers feel like they should not have to change their classroom for a student that is coming to them. It also shows that these teachers are not trained properly in special education.

There are many different reasons that students may need additional assistance to be successful academically. Students may have a difficulty reading, or English may not be their primary language. They may have suffered a traumatic brain injury or may have been born with Autism. Students might even have difficulty socially interacting with teachers and peers or due to some physiological impact in their young lives might have other emotional impairments. No matter what the cause for the disability, special education services and interventions are vital to success of these special students.

One student I observed had severe disabilities. She seems to be very high on the Autism spectrum. She spent most of her time in the other room, but from what I saw she had severe communication difficulties, would repeat words, and would repeat actions like spinning and rocking. She also showed aggressive behaviors, especially when she didn’t want to do something, like read.

Students with special needs need deserve the same education general education students are presented with. The philosophy of “ Disability Inclusion” concentrates on creating a safe, loving, and effective learning environment for students who suffer from physical, learning, and behavioral disabilities. When a student with disabilities is placed in the same environment as a non-disabled student, the results show wonderful improvement. When we are able to discover the strength of the student we are able to see just how much the student can improve in an inclusion classroom. Disability Inclusion not only sets a new beginning for an equal education of special education students, but it allows for more interaction with the child, and a more hands-on assessment.

The teacher can encourage this inclusion by teaching the students, parents, and other community members about negative stereotypical attitudes about students with disabilities by avoiding negative words, such as “disabled”, or “crippled”, or “handicapped” and to promote positive ideas about disabilities into class work, the student’s play time and other activities. To further ensure that the classroom is promoting equality for the child with the disability, the teacher should incorporate an inclusive curriculum mindset, by adapting the lessons, learning materials and classroom to suit the needs of all the different types of learners including the child with the disability within the classroom.

I choose to do an onsite visit in a resource math class at a middle school for this field project. I was there from 9:30-1:00. The classroom I observed had 2-3 teachers in it at a time. One student teacher, one head teacher and sometimes a teacher that had to help a specific student would be in the classroom. There were about 15 students in the class at a time. Two of which had to have teachers who followed them to every class. I asked the head teacher how many of these students have a learning disability and she said that about three quarters of them have a learning disability. I then asked her why the students might be in the class. She said “Well, because one of two reasons. Students either have hard time learning math the normal way or the normal math class just moves at too fast a pace for them.” She also explained that the middle school had three mainstream math classes for seventh graders and three mainstream math classes for the eighth graders. Each grade had a math class for students at who scored at grade level for math, one for students who scored above grade level for math and one for student who scored slightly below grade level for math. Her students were the ones that scored significantly lower in math. During this field project and interview with the head teacher, I learned and noticed a tremendous amount about how a special education class is run.

My class is a special education, self-contained multi-grade class. There are 11 students in the class. Two students are in the 3rd grade, two are in the 4th grade, and seven are in the 5th grade. All of the students has an IEPs classification which includes but not limited to autism, auditory processing disorder, attention deficit with hyperactivity [ADHD], attention deficit disorder [ADD], communication impairment, emotional disorder, and multiple disabilities. Additionally, several students also exhibit severe deficits in social and behavioral age appropriate skills. These challenges mentioned above interfere with my students’ attendance and ultimately their learning. All of the students are performing significantly below their grade level

Children with special needs are slightly different from non-disabled kids, but they’re should not be a barrier between non-disabled children and children with disabilities. Special needs covers a wide range. Some children with physical disabilities use wheelchair, or cane while other children with learning disabilities such as, autism, or emotional disorder. Children with special needs are like all children they want to make friends. Non-disability children want respect, love, good education and job of their dream. Children with special needs can do the same things non-disabled kid do, but it can take them longer. It requires additional explanation or attention. Parents of children with special needs usually feel isolated and uncertain about their child 's future. Schools can help them find support that children are not alone and help is available. Teachers should meet with parents in order to get to know the children better, the specific of their children. Special teachers may come into the class to work one-on-one with the student, for individualized attention. Change begins with an honest examination of understandings, knowledge and belief. Children with special needs should spend more time with non-disabled kids. Children with special needs should study more at public school to learn from

The modern classroom has many challenges that face it. Shrinking budgets, less parental involvement, higher expectations, and growing class sizes, just to name a few. If this list was not daunting enough you also have the special needs students that have an array problems in your classroom that need specialized attention, lessons and seating. There are many forms of diverse learners from students who suffer from ADHD to physical disabilities to students with autism to ones that are bullied in school. There are so many things going on in our students lives we sometimes forget they have lives, pressures and disabilities that affect their performance and attitude in our class that have a profound impact on how they learn. For this paper I

Special education students have severe behavior or emotional issues that can disturb the classroom learning environment for themselves and the non-disabled peers. Disabled students often act out from not feeling accepted, frustration from the difficult material, and their cognitive obstacles. According to the article Time to leave inclusion out, seventy percent of teachers blamed the inclusion of children with special needs for increasingly bad behavior in the classroom.

According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, students with disabilities should be placed in a “least restrictive environment.” One of the main ideas of this act was to improve the learning experiences of students with disabilities by giving them learning opportunities outside of a special education classroom. The number of students with disabilities being placed in their general education classrooms is increasing more and more each year. The U.S Department of Education’s 27th annual report to Congress on the implementation of The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2005) indicates that the number of students with disabilities in general education classrooms has risen to almost 50 percent. This is about a 17 percent increase from the 1997 U.S

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

Every person deserves an education. It is what shapes us, allows us to grow. As future and current educators or parents, understanding the perspective of persons with disabilities in the classroom is important. Being confident in your own abilities and not being afraid to use the resources available to you.