This past week on September 29th, I sat down in person to interview my host teacher; Mrs. B. Mrs. B is a special education teacher at New Haven Elementary School of Columbia Public Schools, and she has been teaching students with disabilities for 15 years. Throughout all 15 years of teaching, she has always been in a self-contained classroom, but as the years have gone on she has experienced students of all different functioning levels. Her first year of teaching was in Moberly, due to the fact that she was hired on as a basketball coach. After her first year there, she realized that the school was too small, so the rest of her fourteen years have been at the elementary school, New Haven. Mrs. B. was inspired to be a special educator while
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B. because she has years of knowledge working with people with a range of disabilities. She has first-hand experience dealing with many of the topics that we have been discussing in Introduction to Cross Cat. There are many controversial topics that we have been discussing in class, so I was excited to get the opportunity to discuss the opinion of a current special educator. In Chapter 1 of the textbook, Learner’s with Mild Disability, we discussed the definition of disability, the history of special education, key principles of IDEA, and labeling. Disability truly does not mean anything to Mrs. B. There is such a range of abilities that we all have some sort of disability or difference. She also does not know what having the disability will mean until she gets to know the student. From what I understood, she does not let the disability label the person and that every person’s disability manifests itself differently. She lets the needs of each individual person decide what support they need, not their disability. As we have learned, our special education system and the way we treat people with disabilities has changed immensely. We have evolved from forcing …show more content…
Response to intervention is a three-tiered system of intervention. The first tier is the instruction that everyone gets, the second tier is more intense small group instruction, and the third tier is the most intense intervention with individualized support. Mrs. B. is very familiar with RTI and she discusses it often, however because of the functioning level of her students, it is not implemented in this classroom. I mentioned earlier that Mrs. B. does not appreciate that her students are required to take standardized testing, so she and I talked a little about alternative assessments. She informed me that each student has different questions and the test actually creates the levels itself. This means that if you do poorly on one part of the test, then the next section of the test gets easier. It tests over math, reading, writing, and then fifth graders are also tested in science. At the beginning of the year, Mrs. B. fills out a questionnaire that includes the level of each student academically. From the information that Mrs. B. gives, the test then generates the questions. In this particular class and functioning level, the teacher watches the student and then inputs the response. Overall, standardized tests are extremely difficult to complete in this
B. because she has years of knowledge working with people with a range of disabilities. She has first-hand experience dealing with many of the topics that we have been discussing in Introduction to Cross Cat. There are many controversial topics that we have been discussing in class, so I was excited to get the opportunity to discuss the opinion of a current special educator. In Chapter 1 of the textbook, Learner’s with Mild Disability, we discussed the definition of disability, the history of special education, key principles of IDEA, and labeling. Disability truly does not mean anything to Mrs. B. There is such a range of abilities that we all have some sort of disability or difference. She also does not know what having the disability will mean until she gets to know the student. From what I understood, she does not let the disability label the person and that every person’s disability manifests itself differently. She lets the needs of each individual person decide what support they need, not their disability. As we have learned, our special education system and the way we treat people with disabilities has changed immensely. We have evolved from forcing …show more content…
Response to intervention is a three-tiered system of intervention. The first tier is the instruction that everyone gets, the second tier is more intense small group instruction, and the third tier is the most intense intervention with individualized support. Mrs. B. is very familiar with RTI and she discusses it often, however because of the functioning level of her students, it is not implemented in this classroom. I mentioned earlier that Mrs. B. does not appreciate that her students are required to take standardized testing, so she and I talked a little about alternative assessments. She informed me that each student has different questions and the test actually creates the levels itself. This means that if you do poorly on one part of the test, then the next section of the test gets easier. It tests over math, reading, writing, and then fifth graders are also tested in science. At the beginning of the year, Mrs. B. fills out a questionnaire that includes the level of each student academically. From the information that Mrs. B. gives, the test then generates the questions. In this particular class and functioning level, the teacher watches the student and then inputs the response. Overall, standardized tests are extremely difficult to complete in this