Importance Of My Early Childhood Practicum

As a student in a graduate school for education, my only teaching opportunity that I have had teaching in an inclusive classroom was during my early childhood practicum. I was placed at HCA in a pre-preschool room. In this classroom, I typically had more students with special needs and less general education student just because the general education students had to pay tuition to go to the pre-preschool class. In the morning class, I had two to three general education students with six students with special needs. In the afternoon class, I had four general education students and seven students with special needs. Unfortunately, this placement wasn’t necessary the best experience for me because of the teacher turnover that I had in my class. …show more content…
But once the teachers and staff kept disrupting their schedule and new faces kept appearing, more and more emotions appeared, and I saw regression in behaviors that we thought we helped students overcome. I also noticed students copying other students’ inappropriate behavior during this time. Along with my early childhood practicum, my other experience with working with students with disabilities was during my undergraduate practicum where I was placed in a self-contained middle school classroom grades sixth- eighth at Johnson City. I worked with students with autism, multiple disabilities, and others with processing disorders. This was probably my favorite special education placement. I enjoyed how I could work with students at their individual level but, what I think I enjoyed learning the most during this placement was teaching the students life skills. Before that placement, I don’t think I ever thought about how important it was to start teaching students life skills in middle school or even younger grades, I typically thought about life skills being taught at the high school for students with special needs. In the classroom that I was in, we had a set routine, such …show more content…
I think when teachers have a great dynamic together they can create a powerful learning environment for all students. However, we all know that this isn’t always the case and teachers can have different opinions or views. Another thing that would make a successful classroom would be the attitudes that the teachers and staff bring into the classroom. Finally, the third thing that I believe that could create a successful inclusive classroom would be to have properly trained staff. Many things could pose as a challenge in an inclusive classroom, one thing that I believe that could cause challenges is teachers or staff with poor attitude/beliefs on inclusion. Another thing could be the accessibility for students in a classroom. Finally, the third challenge could be collaboration between the general education teacher and the special education