Special Education in the 21st Century

As a special education teacher I am interested in learning about factors that impede my students’ learning and ways that I can help. After reading this article titled“Coping with Dyslexia”I learned a few things that I found interesting. For one, “Many teachers and (school) administrators haven’t been well-educated about dyslexia, so many of them are not able to recognize it,” says Martha Chiodi, president of the International Dyslexia Association’s Ohio Valley Branch. I found this interesting because I myself don’t know a lot about dyslexia and I have a group of students that I work with that have difficulties with reading and it makes me wonder and want to investigate if dyslexia could be causing their struggles.
Another important fact I learned from this article was that The International Dyslexia Association estimates that 15 percent to 20 percent of the population has a reading disability, and 85 percent of those people have dyslexia. The life-long condition occurs in people of all backgrounds and intellectual levels. It tends to run in families, and varies in severity from person to person. This article gave a real life feeling to dyslexia as it is about a girl growing up hating school because it was too hard and it shows me as a special educator some of the family and school implications as well as some solutions. I encourage anyone working with students to read this article.

For parents of struggling readers there is a great place for you to go to find out things you can do as a parent to help your reader. At the reading rocket site you will find many helpful things to do from supporting early reading skills at home, recognizing if there is a problem, support for your child as (s)he enters school, understand options for extra support, and recognize when you need to go outside the school for help. When you get to that site I suggest clicking the “Empowering Parents: Reading Rockets Parents’ Guide” it has many informative ideas/suggestions and also links you to sites that gives you a guideline to where a 1st -3rd grader should be in their journey through reading acquisition. I as a special education teacher thought this site was fabulous and will continue to look at updated articles, etc.

For all you classroom teachers, here is a way to get students engaged in reading while practicing for fluency and enhancing comprehension: reader’s theatre. This site gives you good strategies on what reader’s theatre looks like, what aspects in reading it enhances, who it is good for, and how to choose a script. This article motivated me to try it with my struggling readers.

My friend sent me this link to watch this clip at Teacher Movie I just want to warn you it’s a tear jerker but it is a nice reminder to the power we have to make a student feel bad or good about themselves.

This is great, I recommend all teachers (general/sped) and parents of struggling learners to read this. Put Downs and Comebacks  When you go to this site “Put Downs & Comebacks” it offers many suggestions on how you can address a child’s negative feelings about self or school. By doing so, you’ll help a child more readily reach his or her fullest potential. Most importantly, you’ll let your child know what you’ve always felt – that you believe in your child and that you are his or her biggest fan. It is presented in a way that is appealing and I found some GREAT ideas.

I just finished reading this article at reading rockets  and it went along with what I have been learning about in a SPED course I am taking through Bridgewater State College. The article states that, “In professional families, children heard an average of 2,153 words per hour, while children in working class families heard an average of 1,251 words per hour, and children in welfare families heard an average of 616 words per hour. Extrapolated, this means that in a year children in professional families heard an average of 11 million words, while children in working class families heard an average of 6 million words, and children in welfare families heard an average of 3 million words. By kindergarten, a child from a welfare family could have heard 32 million words fewer than a classmate from a professional family.” I find that amazingly sad. I work as a special education teacher and see the students struggle to make it academically and some live in poor households and I think to myself that if they heard more words and had conversations with their parents then maybe they wouldn’t have as much of a difficult time learning.  I wish parents could be more aware of the importance of talking to their babies and having conversations with their children.

I found this article: Screening early and found it interesting. There is a committee that is going to meet surrounding the issue of screening kids for reading difficulites before they begin school. Hearing and vision screenings have proved that they are beneficial, and it is likely that readign screenings would be just as important to determine a student’s success. They will also look at early screening for social, emotional and behavioral issues. It will help to identify those students who may be at risk.

I support this and hope that soon all students will be screened. I do see the time and effort that will need to be put into this but think it will save the students in their future.

I enjoyed reading this Time article,  How to Bring Schools out of the 21st Century I found it interesting that businesses are finding recent graduates are having a tough time working in groups, fiding that they can’t think their way through abstract problems, they can’t distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English. Our world and culture is evolving so quickly and schools are not being kept up to speed. It is our duty as teachers to help students to develop those skills as well as math, reading, etc. to help them to succeed in the real world.