Why I Want To Pursue A Degree In Special Education

The notion of inclusion is progressively being accepted as a vital method of learning in our growing school systems. I believe that every student, those with and without exceptionalities, have the right to be included in a general education classroom. Students with learning, social and behavioral exceptionalities or varied abilities deserve the right to be provided with the same opportunities as any other students in the regular general education classroom. The information that I have acquired through my own experiences (in my observations and my classes) have molded my goals as a future teacher. I believe that teaching and education are fundamental in getting students to grow, learn, and flourish;

“Disabling segregation” by Dan Habib solely focuses on inclusion within the classroom and the community. He, like most people, grew up in a society where those who have a disability were separated from those who are “normal”. Habib’s passion for inclusion did not occur until after the birth of his youngest son, Samuel. Samuel was born with cerebral palsy. After Samuel’s diagnosis, Habib wanted to do everything he could to make sure his son was included. In his speech, he talks about how inclusion in schools leads to higher marks on tests and assignments than classrooms that are separated. Habib stated that 56% of kids with disabilities spend their day in a separate classroom. He advocates for inclusion, not only for the sake of his son, but also for all children who are like Samuel and who may have never gotten the chance to succeed. Habib tells a story about a man who was very much like Samuel but was never lucky enough to be given the tools he needed for success. Due to the lack of resources, people in that man’s life held him to a much lower standard and he became resentful towards those who were not treating him like a real human being.

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 integration of children with disabilities in the same classroom with non-disabled youngsters has emerged as one of the most complex, important, and controversial practices in the field of education” (Tarver-Behring et. al, 1). Depending on the type of school, special needs students can be segregated from others and placed in their own learning based classroom. However, some argue that special needs students positively impact themselves and the others around them when being placed into the mainstream classroom setting. Special needs students should be placed in the traditional classroom setting because they positively impact students without disabilities, as well as

Was it difficult to divvy up your time given that all of your kids had different needs, depending on their conditions? Were you provided with an aid?

Inclusion in classrooms can further benefit the communication skills and sense of community among students with and without disabilities. “Children that learn together, learn to live together” (Bronson, 1999). For students with special needs, inclusive classrooms provide them with a sense of self-belonging. The classrooms provide diverse environments with which the students will evolve feelings of being a member of a diverse community (Bronson, 1999). For students without disabilities, they learn to develop appreciation of the diversity. The classrooms provide many opportunities for the students to experience diversity and realize that everyone has different abilities that are unique and acceptable. From this realization, the students will learn to be respectful for others with different characteristics (Bronson, 1999). Inclusion in classrooms is beneficial to all students’ individual and community growth.

After thinking about what my skills and what I’m really passionate about, I decided that my first career option is to become a Special Education teacher. I need Bachelor Degree and that will take me four years. I know this career will be the best choice for me because I have walked, and still do walk, through in the shoes of special education students. I would write student's IEP, IEP is the abbreviation for individualized Education Plan one is made for a student who is in special education, it is made through team effort. I will make modifications and or accommodations. I will have so many kinds that I will be a case manager to, a case manager is who makes the IEP sets up the meeting to help the kid achieve their goals and help them to stay on the right track with what they have to be doing. They will make choices that they think that is the best for their kids and sometimes the kids may not always

I am Jessica and it is nice to meet you. I applaud you for working in special education. I have found that it takes a special and very patient person to work in that area. Since you have a degree in elementary, did you ever work with elementary students? If so, do you prefer elementary or middle school? Right now, I work in an elementary school and am going for my elementary license; however, I was also thinking about being endorsed in middle school in case I wanted to go that route.

The reform to a more integrated classroom is a fact of life, for better or for worse, so it is the goal of educators to find a way to make this new integrated classroom beneficial for both Special Education and main-track students (Hines, 2010). Curriculum design should be inclusive or differential based on the real needs of local communities, not abstract political principles. A district that only has thirty disability students among six hundred students could certainly afford to distribute Special Education students among the classrooms; one with a hundred Special Education students in a two thousand student middle school, on the other hand, might see a benefit at having separate classes due to the disparate needs of such a wide student

For years children with special needs were ushered off to separate classes and schools. Children with special needs have the right to attend classes with their same aged peers in the same classroom with support. Students with special needs deserve the same opportunities they would have if circumstances were different. Inclusion gives those students with special needs the chance to be part of the community; able to form relationships outside of the family unit. All students benefit from inclusion; students with disabilities develop social skills and develop friendships while non-disabled students learn tolerance and acceptance.

The age of inclusion classrooms resulted in students of varied academic abilities in a single classroom. The general education teacher’s goal was to educate larger numbers of students, including those with mild disabilities, in the general education environment. to increase the overall academic achievement of the school. Over time, the objective of inclusive programming has grown-from simply increasing academic achievement, to also increasing social competence and fostering positive relationships between children with special needs and their differently abled peers (Malmgren,1998). Traditional methods of whole classroom instruction are applicable in some areas of the inclusive classroom, but in others, are a disservice to certain

Effective special education teachers are supposed to be good humored and organized. They should be people capable of accepting their students the way they are, even tempered, confident, intuitive and thick-skinned, optimistic, and dedicated to their students. The teachers should also be creative with their teaching methods (Webster, 2012). The coming into force of President Bush No Child Left behind Act in 2001 made it a requisite for schools and teachers to be accountable for how well their students were learning. Student's progress in reading, math, science, and other academic content could now be measured through standardized testing. Test scores have been broken down to show how specific racial and socio-economic groups are performing with a view to preventing schools from teaching to middle class white children and leaving behind children from other ethnicities (Boe & Cook, 2006).

Over the past twenty years, there has been a strong movement within schools around the United States to integrate students with disabilities in to general education classrooms. Schools have been making more efforts to increase educational opportunities for students with disabilities, and while there are many benefits to inclusion, there are also many challenges. Inclusion of special education students in a regular education classroom continues to be the center of debate amongst administrators and teachers. Everyone has their own ideas and attitudes towards inclusion, and research studies have revealed that there are many things that contribute to those positive or negative attitudes.

At some point in their lives, nearly all people have interacted, whether it be an extended conversation or a brief nod, with an individual who has a disability. This is likely due to the fact that over one billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, have mild to severe disabilities with 93 to 150 million of them being children ranging from ages zero to eighteen (Lansdown 11). Many people who attended grades K-12 in an American public school system during the 1990s can recall similar memories of their schools’ methods of educating those with physical disabilities, mental disabilities, or both. Prior to 1997, “services for individuals with disabilities were still primarily provided through a pull-out or resource-room model in which students were provided services outside of the general education classroom, either by being pulled from their general education classroom or by attending a separate, segregated class often called a resource room” (Provenzo 746). However, individuals who attend public schools in the 21st century are able to recognize that segregated classes are no longer the predominant method of educating those with disabilities. This is partially due to the reauthorization of IDEA, or the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, in 1997 which mandates that schools provide education in a way that is not restrictive and designs a way for schools to transform their primary models for special education services from a segregated model to an inclusionary model

“In 2014–15, the number of children and youth ages 3–21 receiving special education services was 6.6 million, or 13 percent of all public school students” (NCES). From my seven years of experience in the public school system, and having a niece that had been placed in a special needs class for two years, I’ve seen that the majority of students who are in a special needs class are usually kept away from other students. Their interactions limited to the teachers and other special needs students. To fix the social isolation of the special needs students many believe that an inclusive education is the best way to go about the problem (“Open society”).