Introduction:
For the 2007-2008 school year, I will be employed as one of two first grade teachers at Horace Mann Elementary School, located in Northwest Washington, DC (in the same neighborhood as American University.) This school has the advantage of having an economically stable, if not wealthy, student population. Parental involvement is a forgone conclusion. The student population is also multi-national as many diplomatic children and children of World Bank employees attend school at Mann. Last year I was an aid in the first grade class that I am taking over (all primary grades have full time aids, many paid by the PTA), our class had students who were natives of Peru, Columbia, Russia, Spain, Turkmenistan, France, and El Salvador. Horace Mann utilizes the Responsive Classroom model as their social curriculum. Reading and Writing curricula are conducted in partnership with the Readers and Writers Workshop programs out of Columbia University. I have heard the school referred to as the top elementary school in Washington D.C.
Objectives:
After my course in Special Education I intend to:
a) Maintain an open mind as to the various ways in which exceptionalities can manifest in an individual. Even if I have worked with other children who have the same or a similar diagnosis, I should view students as unique and avoid generalizations for the sake of convenience.
b) Nurture an open relationship with the various professionals in my school that can help me to act in the best interest of an exceptional student. This list may include, but is not confined to: the social worker, the special education teacher, ELL teachers, the speech therapist, the occupational therapist, and the school’s nurse.
c) Utilize student based instruction, drawing on the life experiences of my exceptional students (and indeed, all of my students) in order to help them to connect to the learning that we are engaged in.
d) Employ the use of manipulatives and technology in my classroom in order to create a multi-sensory learning experience for my exceptional students.
e) Maintain awareness of developments in the field of special education by reading trade journals and news publications, attending professional development or in-service sessions, and communicating with professionals with a specialization in exceptionalities.
Measurable Outcomes
I feel that as a new teacher, one of the most important tools that I have at my disposal is that I have been taught to be a reflective teacher. As busy as I may be, I can create simple reflection guidelines for myself that will help me to track my work with exceptional students as it pertains to the objectives that I have just laid out. I will also be able to pinpoint areas where I have failed to reach my instructional objectives. The following rubric is an example of a weekly, biweekly, or monthly exercise that I might complete to monitor my own work.
Note: Answer each question with the following scale:
Y = Yes, frequently
S = Sometimes
N = No, little attempt made, never
I can use my answers to identify areas that I need to focus on. Additionally, rubrics can be compared longitudinally in order to identify areas wherein I am not meeting my instructional objectives. Anecdotal information and strategies for the future can be taken from the sections where I record my experiences.
Objective A:
1. Did I make personal contact with each exceptional student on a daily basis?
2. Did I make an effort to learn something new about exceptional students that can be incorporated into instruction?
3. Did I make specific adaptations to instruction in order to aid exceptional students?
Objective B:
1. Did I communicate curricular objectives with special education and educational support staff?
2. Did I communicate questions about exceptional students to the appropriate resource teacher?
3. Did I communicate relevant information about exceptional students to the appropriate resource teacher?
Objective C:
1. Have I familiarized myself with the prior knowledge of students before attempting to forge connections to new lessons?
2. Did I attempt to draw upon the personal experiences of my students to make connections to new concepts and lessons?
Objective D:
1. Did I use manipulatives and/or technology to enhance the lessons that I taught?
2. List new ways in which I encouraged and facilitated learning by using manipulatives and technology:
a.
b.
c.
3. Do I understand the purpose and procedures for utilizing technologies that are designed to assist my exceptional students?
Objective E:
1. Have I made an effort to read news articles and trade publications in order to understand current trends in special education?
2. Have I signed up for or attended any professional development or in-service sessions about topics in special education?
3. Briefly describe any new information that was learned about the field of special education and/or exceptional students.
a.
b.
c.
Materials and Accommodations
The list of materials that I may need to teach my students, exceptional and otherwise, is extensive and ever changing. Upon acquiring an educational tool, whether that is voice recognition software or 10 yards of green ribbon, I will try to find the most appropriate use for that tool within my classroom. As a teacher, it is important for me to draw from all available resources and use these resources in creative ways. Some of the materials that I hope to have access to in order to complete my IEP include:
Computers
Printers
Internet access
Voice recognition software
Microphone equipment
Books on tape or CD
CD/Tape player
Headphones for audio equipment
Big books
Blocks: wooden, legos, unifix cubes, multilink cubes, pattern blocks, and base-ten blocks
Overhead projector with markers
Individual white boards with markers
Magnetic letters and magnetic boards
Sentence strips and pocket charts
Individual clocks
Large pencils
Crayons
Markers
Glue
Scissors
While many of these items may seem to be fairly mundane requests, each can serve a wide variety of purposes, depending on necessity. Also, as I will be teaching in a public school, where exceptional students are mainstreamed, I cannot anticipate the specific nature of the exceptionalities that I will encounter from year to year. As such, this list will also be amended on a yearly basis to fit the needs of each group of students.
Assessment
Assessment for students with exceptionalities is closely tied to the nature of the exceptionality. For example, a student such as Christopher from Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time or Carol from Pearl Buck’s The Child Who Never Grew may not be able to meet the same benchmarks as James from Leah Hagar Cohen’s Train Go Sorry or Caroline from Caroline Kettlewell’s memoir, Skin Game. Nevertheless, each child has an exceptionality, and each child can be assessed based on the achievement of individually appropriate learning goals. These goals will be outlined for student, teacher, and family in the IEP or Individual Education Plan. I believe that two of the most valuable ways of measuring student success is through self-reflection and evaluation and authentic assessment. I choose to include self-evaluation and reflection as a part of my assessment plan because it is a tool for teaching students that they are responsible for the work that they do. If student work related to the curricular goals of the class is well planned by the teacher to be meaningful, students should be able to reflect on why or why not their efforts were successful and how they helped to solidify learning. This can also help students to plan for future endeavors and to spot problem areas as a part of the learning process. Authentic assessment in my classroom will mean a portfolio-type collection of work that the student deems to be a) meaningful and b) top quality. By asking students to select work that they are proud of and find to be important, I am reinforcing the idea of reflective learning. Moreover, students will spend time considering the relative success of the work that they have done. Once they decide why a piece represents achievement, they can replicate those efforts in the future. Finally, the reason that I choose to utilize a “portfolio” approach is because it is individualized to the work that each student has done; it can be designed to show personal growth as opposed to a more standard type of testing and grading which evaluates student progress in comparison with the class as a whole.
