Love Is in This Room: Memories of Teaching Special Kids

There are always new horizons in teaching.

I find it fascinating that teaching can stay fresh — you are always learning, always building on what you know. My latest thing is doing some forest school training. It's a way of children using their environment, being in the woods, making fires, building dens. Being outside gives teachers another way to help children find their skills and strengths.

It's such a different way of learning and a different world for children to really shine. That confidence feeds back into what they are doing in other areas.

My worry about teaching now is that it's so hard to be a teacher these days. But there are many positives now that didn't exist when I started out, for example in the level of support a classroom teacher will get from teaching assistants is far more now.

And the very idea of PPA time is wonderful. I know teachers can't get all their planning done in this time, but the fact that it's formally recognised is a tangible way of admitting teachers work outside their teaching hours. It's got to be a good thing.

When I look around at all the personalities in the class I think: Read Mary's resource on religious symbolism here. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Sign up to the Guardian Teacher Network to get access to more than , pages of teaching resources and join our growing community. Looking for your next role? See our Guardian jobs for schools site for thousands of the latest teaching, leadership and support jobs. Topics Teacher Network Why I became a teacher. Order by newest oldest recommendations.

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1. Express your fears and concerns.

Students are always general education students first and are some are also served by special education. I think that mindset is crucial in a full inclusion school. I love how you pointed how how underutilized ed specialists are…they are, in fact, very skilled and they collaboration between the ed specialists and general education teachers is vital. I hope to see more posts on full inclusion from you. Thank you for this post! I always struggle with titles. Thanks for the reminder.

Thank you Christina for pointing out the person first language! I felt the same way. Also, I have stopped using the word inclusion. Someone will tell me there is an inclusion classroom or school and I immediately wonder who is in the exclusion class or exclusion school. Have you ever seen this short video regarded integrated vs.

Barb, this is a wonderful video. I have just pinned this to my Special Education board on Pinterest so others will find it as well. Or just no special terminology at all? I really need info on intergrating special needs in a middle school classroom setting. Specifically, Language Arts suggestions and technical writing ideas. These classes see a huge disparity in abilities to maintain pace and contribute in at an appropriate skill level.

Its really ridiculous to have to meet the needs of 30 kids x 5 sections with hugely varying abilities. I totally agree with your point about the gap of abilities in the classroom and making sure everyone is being taught in a way that benefits them.

Does your school have iPads? For example, speech to text, or predictive text really helps with forming sentences and quickly. Is it possible to get additional support for these students? Perhaps a resource teacher can work in a small group with them? Can they do verbal presentations instead of writing them? But with kids in a room of 24, all needing some level of support …. Everyone could learn so much more. They researched forms of nonverbal communication and created presentations about their research.

Students in the same class were not allowed to research the same things, so there were many great presentations including mime, hula, Braille even brought in a newspaper in Braille. Students exceeded my goal for understanding others better. I have passed along the link to my administration and my Special Ed Department. Thanks so much, Laura. Thank you for this podcast and the suggestions for classroom teachers. At the moment, the Senco might identify students with learning difficulties and then, with other SEN staff and outside agencies, provide strategies for teachers to follow in order to help particular students access the curriculum.

But if the new code is introduced in its current form, teachers may need to regularly assess and develop students' progress and identify the point at which they should receive additional support.

Given these new proposals, how can teachers improve their lesson personalisation? The key to excellent differentiation lies in observation. Here are three easily identifiable characteristics that may suggest a need for further investigation:. It might be the case that a small number of students disrupt for the sake of being disruptive — to oppose staff, for example, but look behind the behaviour for a deeper cause. If work is too challenging or too detailed, some students may feel threatened and disillusioned because it is beyond their ability. If they feel the challenge is too great, work becomes "boring" and any effort is "a waste of time".

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They may become disruptive to gain attention in a different way. Ask yourself why the student is performing in this way, check their files and then consider ways to re-engage them with the lesson. He would clash with staff and storm out of classrooms when things were not going his way. Detentions did not help the situation and his parents were at their wits' end as to why he was behaving in such a way. Eventually a specialist teacher assessed him.

It quickly became apparent that Steven had significant memory difficulties which prevented him from remembering information from one day to the next. Every time he went back into the classroom he was expected to consolidate and build upon the knowledge he had gained during previous lessons, but for Steven this was impossible. As a result, he would lose interest in the lesson and misbehave to get the attention he craved.

Soon, initiatives and strategies, including personalised differentiation, were put in place, and Stevent began to make progress. Eventually he achieved some good GCSE results and went on to college. The special needs of some students leave them unable to focus for long periods of time in the classroom.