Being a Special Education teacher... what it means to me.

I am currently in my 23rd year as a special education teacher. For Twenty years I taught students with severe multiple disabilities who required full assistance for most all of their care and educational needs. The past three years I have been teaching Life Skills to students who have multiple disabilities including visual impairmants. During this past 3 years I have also been enrolled in classes at MTSU to obtain my vision endorsement.  I choose to continue and to complete a master's degree in vision disabilities. This is my 2nd masters in special education with my first being in severe/profound special education. I have devoted my life to working with and learning from the many students who I have had the priviledge of serving over the past 23 years. I have learned so much about life and how to appreciate everything I have, to not take things for granted, to appreciate every accomplishment (even the very small ones), to smile, to laugh, to cry. I truely believe I am where I am suppose to be in life and I am so grateful for all of the life lessons my students have taught me over the years. People say to me that I must be special to do this kind of work, but I feel that I am blessed by the work I have been led to do.

Pre-vocational goals and activities.

I have been looking for a checklist or assessment that outlines a good progression of activities to be addressed when it comes to pre-vocational skills.  After numerous searches, I have not been able to find any such thing. It seems weird to me that vocational goals must be addressed on IEPs yet there are no good resources for specific goals and activities involving vocational skills when it comes to students with severe disabilities. I have been working with students who have severe disabilities for years and have worked with them on the progression of skills that matched materials I had or could get and that made sense to me. I moved from basic pick up activities, to packaging them, to one to one correspondence, to 2 hand take apart activities, to 2 handed put together activities, to multi-step assembly activities. If anyone has a good source for such goals please let me know.  I have been reserching this issue for a co-worker.

Technology and special education.

Today I was working with a couple of my students who have vision impairments and they were helping to teach me more about the technology that assists them each day at school. One uses ZOOM text which is a magnification program which enlarges the print.  She needs the letters to be about an inch to 1 1/2 inches in size in order to read the print.  The other student has no functional vision and he uses the JAWS program on the computer which reads everything on the screen.  They both also use BRAILLE Plus devices which are small handheld braille devices that have recording systems.  These devices can be downloaded to the computer to print out their assignments.  I am amazed everyday with the abilities of my students to overcome their disabilities and to handle all of the challenges they face with using these devices and just simply with daily living activities.

Planning and collaboration...where does the time go?

Actually, when is there time to do proper planning and how do teachers with completely different schedules get together to colloborate?  Planning is such a crucial part of the teaching process yet all to often, teachers are provided with very limited time to work on planning especially when they are working with other teachers.
Communication is essential in all collaboration situations.  There needs to be a supportive environment, parity among those collaborating, a purpose, and common goals that are being addressed. When done right, collaboration can make a meeting or a lesson go smoothly and without conflict.  Support from administration by providing joint planning time is essential to a positive outcome for the students they are teaching.

Expaned Core Curriculum.

Expanded core curriculum (ECC) is a set a skills and knowledge that are needed by students with visual impairments but I believe there are many that would be good for all students.  The ECC includes 9 educational needs that are addressed above and beyond the core curriculum (english, math, science, etc.).  The areas of the ECC are:
1. Compensatory or functional academic skills, including comminication modes
2. orientation and mobility
3. social interaction skills
4. Independent living skills
5. recreation and leisure skills
6. career education
7. use of assistive technology
8. sensory efficiency skills
9. self-determination
These additional areas are essential to addressing the overall needs of students with visual impairments. They represent areas that are not traditionally covered in core curriculum courses. To me it sounds like a more well rounded approach to teaching students. I do think that several of these areas would benefit other students as well.  Many times students leave high school being very unprepared for adult life.  Teaching to the test doesn't always address the functional skills that our students need to function as independently as possible for the rest of their life. Food for thought.

Mini research project findings.

I completed the mini research project for our class and I found the results interesting.  Out of seven people interviewed, five individuals felt that the big issue in special education is about a real need to focus on the individual needs of each student.  Four out of seven brought up preparing students for their future. Three out of seven people talked about concerns surrounding the set curriculum standards. They said that they felt that the set standards did not address the needs of the students since they do not address functional skills. Two out of seven spoke about concerns with teachers and highly qualified. 
The over all view was that everyone was centered on the needs of the students. The fact that these individuals come from all sides of the special education issue (parent, teacher, administrator, SPED director, etc.) makes it even more interesting that everyone is wanting to directly focus on the students. I think they were pointing this out as an issue and a solution for special education.
Special education has come along ways but there is a great deal of room left for improvement.

Work Based Learning... creating opportunities to learn.

I recently attended a 2 day workshop on Work Based Learning (WBL).  I an currently working with students in our school's transition or vocational progam.  We offer our students a work based learning opportunity on campus with 4 training modules that include food service, facilities management, business and vending services.  The students spend 9 weeks in each module and learn safety, work skills and exposure to job related information and exploration as a part of each group. It is a wonderful program that is helping to offer our students a better understanding of different jobs and the skills needed to preform these jobs.  We are using this in the transition planning  and service part of the IEP process to better address transition goal planning for these students. Our next step is to take these skills and help these students move out into the community to work on generalization of these skills.   There remains to be some resistance from comunity businesses due to different disabilities and a lack of understanding about the WBL process and requirements. This is our school's 2nd year developing this program so I am excited that we continue to expand it and adjust it to better meet the needs of our students.