Final Reflection Blog

I feel like that this class is very beneficial,especially when it comes to working  children who have a disability. I honestly never truly sat down and thought about  what I am going to do when it comes to them in the class, and now that I have this class I will have to come up with a plan to how to handle each disability. Although it was a little difficult thinking of ways to help those, it was very challenging. I feel like a have a better idea of what lesson plans are, and how to actually write them. I really like having this class, because it just truly made me think about things. I learned brand new things everyday! The most encouraging thing about working with exceptional learners, is the challenge of reaching that goal of helping them the best of our ability. Also the most exciting part will be discovering different ways to help them learn, and watching them grow in a completely different way.

Disability in the Family

When it comes to children with a disability they need to be treated with respect, at all times if you don't treat them with respect I feel like personally you don't deserve respect. There are teachers in the world that lack giving out respect, we as teachers have to learn how give them respect. Being in a family of specials needs is hard most of time, but it allows them to learn how to adjust to something different in their life. Although having a special needs child can be hard at times, it teaches families quite a few different things: love,patience,consistency, teamwork and so much  more. The teacher should involve the student with the disability , as much as possible because you don't want that child feeling like they are any less than the rest of the students. They're no different than any of the students, they just have more difficulty and need a little bit more attention. The job of the teacher is to help as much as we can, and if we can't help we need to find someone who can help.

Parents often have to live with outcomes of the decisions made by education teams, there are things that they don't want to hear but they must except. So once the families except the decision that is made;they might go through a hard time but they eventually figure out a  way in order to help their child. If those parents can't decide on what to do, they're in constant search for who can help and what do. When dealing with a family of a disability, you never want to act like you know more about their child than they do. If you choose to act this way, parents will quickly lose respect for you as a teacher. Speak to them as if you know as much as they do; choose words wisely of how you bring things to them. The word choice and how you say things , is one of the most important things to pay attention to. If not careful I have noticed that the way people say things, can often interpret to something completely different even if you didn't mean it in that way. Sole contact can be one the worst things you can do during a parent- teacher conference. If you speak to them as if their child is literally special it can come off as a sign of disrespect. During a conference their should be certain words you never should use during the conference : special,unique,matchless. In other words I have learned that you must be careful,and think about everything that comes out your mouth ; also they way it is said.

My Experience

• Do you have any experience (personal/professional) with an individual with exceptionalities?

I have had experience with an individual with exceptionality, in the last year I have had the opportunity to be a paraprofessional for special needs. I absolutely loved being in the classroom with them, but  I must admit there were times to where it was a challenge for me due to their disability.  The trouble within the classroom was that  certain  things constantly changed every week just because a certain thing was not working in the classroom. When I would come in the next week, I never knew what to expect  I just knew things were going to change that week. The main thing I saw that seemed  stressful out of all things was the paper work. Each student  had a different disability, that was the hard part and their were certain days to where some of them hadn't taken their medicine which caused them to act completely different and made them disrupt the classroom. So this over all experience was a good one, because it allowed me to see how things operated. One thing I did notice was that some of the students were barley in the regular classroom, which made it even harder for some of the teachers to come up with things for those students to do because they knew eventually they would leave again. So some things I would say as a classroom teacher I would have to do is, always have something for them to do and make sure that they are able to do the work, I need to always have some type of work or activity for them to do in order to keep the occupied. If I don't have anything for them to work on or anything for them to focus on then more than likely  they will interrupt my classroom, in order to seek attention.