My Experience Of Reflectioning Autism In The Classroom

On my first day of my observation and I began meeting with Principal Phillip. Principle Phillip kindly introduced me to the school and told me what is expected from me as a guest in her school. She then provided me with a schedule of the different classrooms I would be observing. She then walked me over to Mrs. Supple’s class where I was quickly introduced. I sat down in the back of the class and started taking notes.
This class is a SDC class for Language Arts. The class mostly consists of students with learning disabilities and a few with high functioning Autism in the first hour and in the second hour students have the same disabilities but to a greater degree there is also one student with a diagnosis of ED. The class also has a teacher’s …show more content…
I feel she displayed somewhat of a tough love among her students. She was firm when she needed to be, but very kind and caring at other times. Whenever a student did well she gave tremendous praise to that student. When a student was struggling and she knew that that student could do the task at hand. She provided the right amount of scaffolding to the student which allowed them to come to conclusions on their own. For example, during a class among my 2nd hour Mrs. Supple asked a student if he could explain to her why talking to his peers would be considered different than talking to a teacher. The student replied “among peers your peer you talk with more …ugh … more … ummm …”. He struggled with a particular word in his explanation. Instead of just saying the word he was struggling with. She was patient and gave him guidance by showing the word he was trying to say in her face and in her gestures and after a few seconds he said “expression”. Mrs. Supple gave the student a huge smile and his other classmates erupted in congratulation one even grabbed the student shoulder gave him a positive squeeze and said good job. The student that struggled was one of the students that has autism and he could not stop smiling for the rest of the period. This was such a great moment and I was so happy to have the …show more content…
Supple moves much quicker in her first class than she does in her second class because in her second class. She provides more detailed instructions and allows for more time for the students to complete their work. One way that her second class is able to move faster is that she uses identical lessons from her first class and uses the work they completed for the second class to copy down. She was told me she does this because if she does not want the class would fall behind because it takes them much longer to come to conclusions than it does her first period class. I can understand that Mrs. Supple has deadlines and standards to meet, but I can also believe that it is unfair to the students to deny them an opportunity to grow their academic abilities with their own hard work. During my observation I noticed that her second class remains on task much better than her first period class and wonder if she gave them an opportunity to come up with their own work, instead of having them copy the previous classes completed work, if they would surprise her with better quality work. I, however, am not the professional though and have to trust that she is doing what is best for the students. I do think though by denying them the opportunity she is, in a way, stunting their growth just a little bit. There is a student in Mrs. Supple’s class, who will be referred to as Sally; Sally is a talented artist who likes to write poems to go along with her artwork. Sally’s disability was not