Special Education

Alright, so as I post this, I have to warn you that it may seem a little biased... After all, I am a special education major. However, I feel that this is important to everyone going into education because you will all work with special education students.

So today we had a presentation in one of my classes by a woman named Susan Egan. She is the Teacher Consultant of Special Education at Novi school district. She basically talks to teachers and gives them advice, she also helps out with IEP (individualized education plan) meetings for students with special needs.

Some things that she mentioned that I thought were important I listed below:

• See what's going on with the student- are they bored? tired? lonely? sad?
• Is behavior a problem? Is the student trying?
• Occam's Razor: "Other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one"  - When you hear hoff beats, think horses, not zebras
• Take all sources of information into account like (what is the home language? What other schools (if any) have the students attended?  What is the student's health history? What are the student's previous test scores? What is the student's attendance?
• All of these affect student's performance
• People to talk to about the student:
• Parent(s)
• Previous teachers
• Specials Teachers (they see the student in a different way than you do)
• Child Care program
• Office staff
• Other support staff
• THE CHILD!
• Don't teach the textbook, teach the kid
• If they can't learn the way we teach, teach the way they learn

These are just a few examples of what we can do as teachers/parents. She is a great resource and one day I hope to be a teacher like that.

She gave us this website: www.http://www.oercommons.org/ to look at for free resources. From what I've looked at so far, it's awesome.

So I left out some of the special education stuff that maybe I'll post later. But for now, look over these tips and remember them!

Enjoy!

All the preceding information is from a presentation created by Susan Egan, it is her work and I give her credit. If you use this information for anything, I ask that you do the same. 

Photo credit: http://spectrum.mit.edu/articles/normal/campaign-for-students-enters-final-year/