ITL 604 Fieldwork: Experienced Special Education Teacher

Fieldwork: Experienced Special Education Teacher

Colin J. Kenley

ITL604: Learners and Learning 1

Carroll Green

27 March 2019

Observation

John Meyer’s L/English 6 class is in room E- at Poway High School. To find it you walk past the full-sized pool, across the sunny outdoor campus, and past the rows of palm trees. His classroom is unassuming. A white board, rows of desks, pictures of John’s family and a few posters for movies or books are all that decorate the room. About 15 Juniors fill the seats, and they wait until the bell rings to pull out their materials for the day.  Most of the students in John Meyer’s class fall into the Specific Learning Disability category, while a few are classified as having an Autism Spectrum Disorder or Other health Impairment. During our interview, Meyers tells me that roughly 90% of his students either have a SLD or OHI, which falls in line with Slavin’s findings that “the largest proportion” of special ed. students are “categorized as having specific learning disabilities” (Slavin, 2018, p. 303).

 Every day starts with the class taking notes on the daily teen-oriented news program CNN Student News. Each student has a graphic organizer that to take notes into for the entire weeks’ worth of programming. As the program goes on, students record the “Top 5” stories of the day, the answer to the quiz in the middle of the show, and their favorite pun that the anchor uses at the end of the episode. The program is intended for 6-8^th graders, but since a lot of the students are below grade L/English is designed for special ed students to meet grade level standards with accommodations, so CNN Student News is perfect fit for Meyers’ class. Rather than asking the students to do traditional note taking on blank sheets of lined paper, John Meyers provides a graphic organizer with headings, bullet points, and lines drawn in to both model how to take organized notes and to create visual representations akin to the UDL model. “Provid[ing] multiple means of representations” for learns (the video, note taking, graphic organizer for the notes) is a key part of UDL (Universal).

After the student news, the class moves onto the bulk of the day’s work: reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Before the reading starts, Meyers leads a class discussion of the events of the previous reading and asks probing questions to aid knowledge recall. He previews today’s reading by having the students pre-read the short answer comprehension questions that they’ll answer at the end of the lesson. For the actual reading portion, John Meyers plays the audiobook version of The Crucible for the whole class while each student reads along in their own text. Giving students an audio and visual representation to is another example of multiple representations that mirrors UDL. After the reading the students answer five short answer comprehension questions, each answer requiring a direct quote from the text. To end the day, the students have to write a five sentence summary of the reading into a graphic organizer. Students have three different versions of the graphic organizer differentiated to give more scaffolding and support to struggling students.

At the end of the lesson, John Meyers only has 10 minutes to answer my interview questions, so I have to take hurried notes while he rushes out answers. He only has as a few minutes because he has to walk across campus to another class room. During the interview he tells me that he collaborates one period a trimester with a general ed teacher who has a large cluster of IEP students mainstreamed into a general ed classroom. Meyers tells me that over the years, Poway High School has moved to a more collaborative model, and in the future all special ed classes may be taught collaboratively in inclusion classrooms. Poway High’s current model of segregating students when necessary doesn’t violate IDEA which allows for the

removal of handicapped children from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the handicap is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily (Spring, 2018, p. 140).

However, the PHS administration feels that full inclusion of all mild-moderate students will better meet the requirement that “to the maximum extent appropriate, handicapped children… are educated with children who are not handicapped” (Spring, 2018, p. 140).

Interview

What is your current position?

Resource Specialist in the Special Ed. Department at Poway High.

What are the ages and grade levels of your students?

This year I only teach Junior English for special ed. students (we call it L/English 5-6) and collaborate in one general ed. classroom with a large cluster of special ed. students. So, Juniors around 16-17 years old. In the past I’ve taught and collaborated Freshman and Sophomore English .

What student information system do you work with?

The whole school uses Synergy to track grades, attendance and parent contact information. Parents, teachers, and students can all see that online through Synergy. The special ed department uses SAIS to track IEPs, goals and meetings.

What data is collected for teacher use?

Special ed teachers need to collect data on students’ progress towards their IEP goals through their coursework or outside assessments given specifically to measure IEP goals. You also collect data from their grades and attendance, which can show you how they’re doing in their classes and if that matches up with their ability level. Data on discipline and classroom behavior is important because it can relate to a student’s disability. Any information from other teachers about a student’s mood or behavior can be useful. Parent contact information is really important for communicating about IEP meetings which we have to do by law.

What are the assessments used in the process of early screening and/or identification?

Teacher recommendation from questionnaires are usually the first step. The school psychologist has a large roll in screening/identifying after the teachers recommend the student. The school uses a few different tests like the WAIT 3 and the KBIT.

What are the most important legal mandates a general education teacher should be aware of regarding services for students with special needs?

IDEA is the most important law that general ed teachers need to know about. It requires that all special ed students get a “Free and Appropriate Public Education” in the “Least Restrictive Environment” and that all of the student’s accommodations and goals are documented in an “Individualized Education Plan.” General ed teachers most commonly have to deal with the idea of the LRE and the accommodations on a given student’s IEP. Both of these impact the day-to-day teaching of an inclusion general ed class with special ed students.

What are important insights for a general education teacher regarding issues related to common medications administered to children and adolescents?

A lot of stuff. With medication you need to be aware of the frequency a student has to take it and what time they have to take it, because they may have to be excused from your class. When it wears off can effect a student’s behavior in your class throughout the day. If you have them later in the day, they may behavior differently than earlier. Also, side effects vs. intended effects is important. Sometimes a student can act lethargic or tired because of their medication, or when they take it during the day.

What is your experience implementing UDL in your teaching practices and / or collaborating with other teachers.

I’ve never head of UDL [laughs]. [I explain the main ideas of UDL]. For multiple representations, we listen to the audiobook while we read the text, and if there’s a movie available, we watch it at the end of the unit. Also, I use a lot of graphic organizers. Every day they watch CNN Student News, and they have to take notes on the main stories, the jokes the anchor tells and the quiz in a graphic organizer. Also, all of our in class writing samples come in graphic organizers that have a space for the parts of a paragraph like Topic Sentence and Concrete Detail. For multiple expressions, most of our units have a portion where students get to do something besides write; they have to draw a picture of the main character, create a poster or PowerPoint, give a speech in front of the class. And on multiple ways of engagement, students get to pick the topic of some assignments. The Junior Paper, for example, they choose one book of a long list to write about.    

What is the disability breakdown of your classes? How many students have specific learning disabilities vs. ASDs? 

Generally speaking, if I have 10 students in a class or on my caseload, I’ll have one student who falls into the ASD category, and the other nine are either categorized as OHI (typically ADHD) or SLD.

What has changed in special education since you became a Resource Specialist?

At our site, a collaborative model. We used to teach special ed students mostly in segregated special ed classrooms in the subjects their disabilities may affect them. We still do that, but now we teach more students in a collaborative setting. Some special ed students get assigned to general ed teachers in general ed classrooms, and special ed teachers come in a collaborate with the general ed teacher to help with the cluster of special ed students.

Resources

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational Psychology: Theory and practice. NY, NY: Pearson.

Spring, J. H. (2018). American education. New York: Routledge.

Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the Needs of All Students. (2017, December 11). Retrieved March 26, 2019, from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/universal-design-learning-meeting-needs-all-students