Mandy Sanguigni
SED 201-Mrs. Dean
November 27, 2015
Interview Question
Interview with a Special Education Teacher
1. Why did you choose to teach students with disabilities?
The special education teacher interviewed, did not expect to teach special education when she graduated college. She got a job helping at a personal home with children ages 5-6 years old with some disabilities. After her experience with this first job she loved it, and began to seek positions in Elementary special education. However she was only able to obtain a position in a High School special education classroom.
2. How many students do you teach who have disabilities or are at-risk?
The special education teacher interviewed, co-teaches algebra into three class periods. She is able to teach up to 50 students. In her classroom she can teach children with disabilities or up to 25 at-risk students.
3. How do you meet the instructional, social, and emotional needs of the students?
The special education teacher interviewed, talked about this goal to meet each child’s need is challenging to her especially in eleventh and twelfth grade. The teacher tries to strive towards their educational goals, their need areas, and work on their strengths.
4. How do you set your teaching goals for special education?
The special education teacher interviewed, showed me that she uses the teaching/individual goals related to each student’s IEP. The teacher always tries to excel and reach the needs to relate
The mother reports having a normal pregnancy with no complications, and that her pregnancy was easy. This was the second child for the mother, who has another child who was five years old at the time. The mother also disclosed that at the time of the pregnancy she was in the process of separating from the child’s father and that this caused a moderate level of stress. At the time of the pregnancy the mother was also working full time as waitress in a local restaurant, the mother reports that her job required she be on her feet for a long period of times, but that she was able to work until around a week before her child was born. The mother reports that the child was born around two weeks early but that labor was easy and the child was
I enjoyed this 20-hour field experience, special education has always been a passion of mine. This gave me the opportunity to see first-hand what my future teaching job could look like. I noticed there was numerous amounts of paper work that must be filled out for each student that is in the special education classroom. There is also a lot of data scores that must be collected and used when determining a student’s IEP. Time management is very important when creating a daily schedule to meet the student’s needs.
After reading chapters one and two of the book “Exceptional lives”, I could more easily understand special education. As a teacher, I will mostly likely have many students with disabilities in my class throughout my career. With
For this assignment, I interview a service provider for special education services. The service provider I interviewed, takes part in the educational team, and provide services. The service provider is developmental therapist. I was able to develop a better sense of the importance of inclusion. After interviewing the service provider, and learning her philosophy of inclusion I have was able to better understand the accommodations and modifications for special needs students.
I have distinctly applied for Special Needs Education because special education has always been what’s near and dear to me in the field of education. Being a special education teacher would be an inevitably rewarding job, in which I get to watch my students grow, as I celebrate their small breakthroughs and victories with them. These small breakthroughs and victories will improve over time and turn into giant leaps, which will leave a lasting impact and ultimately change the child’s life. Beyond just educating children with special needs, I aspire to educate the public about children with special needs and special education. By doing so, I hope to remove any uncertainty and fear the public has on this group of children. Not only do I want to impart knowledge on these special children, I also want to advocate for them, which is something that goes
The United States Department of Labor states that “employment of special education teachers is projected to grow 6 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations. However, overall demand will be driven by increasing enrollment and continued need for special education services.” With the advance screening and the identification of different disabilities of children are expected to increase the demand for this career. But overall increase will depend on the government’s funding.
One of the reason people chose a career in special education is job satisfaction. Special education teacher perceived their job to be rewarding. They get personal fulfillment and gratification in teaching special need students. “It truly must be passion to continue working in special education because we all know it is a tough job.”(Participate 2010,”Motivational factor towards pursuing a career in special education”)They have the opportunity to make a positive difference in the students’ lives. When the student who is struggling in school graduate it brings great satisfaction to the educator. The most important part of this field is to help a child develop to their highest potential.
This paper provides a brief summary of special education services and explains how special education teachers can motivate their students in many different ways. In fact, this paper indicates the benefits of motivations in the special education process for both teachers and students and how teachers should motivate their students in order to reach a full satisfaction on students’ learning. Also, there are some general ideas that used on any special education class by teachers in order to motivate their students with learning disabilities are listed in this paper. In fact, the purpose of this paper is to provide teachers and educators who are working in the field of special education a general understanding of the variety of skills that students with disabilities have and could prevent them from learning effectively just as seem as their normal peers. Therefore, this paper could help teachers to motivate their students in the classroom.
I interviewed a woman who has a child with special needs. The child is now in kindergarten. The mother reported having a normal pregnancy with no complications. This was the second child for the mother, who has another child who was five years old at the time. The mother disclosed that during the pregnancy, she was in the process of separating from the child’s father and that this caused a moderate level of stress. At the time of the pregnancy, the mother was also working full time as a waitress in a local restaurant. The mother reported that her job required her to be on her feet for long periods of time. She was able to work until around a week before her child was born. The mother reports that the child was born around two weeks
I interviewed several service providers in my school, Stephen Knight Center for Early Education, that included the psychologist, special education teacher and a general education teacher. I interviewed Ms. Iris, the school psychologist, Ms. Kathy, the special education teacher, and Ms. Hilary, a general education teacher. Ms. Iris’ responsibilities include working with students who have social emotional needs. This can include behavior challenges, learning new social skills, managing grief, etc. She works directly with parents and teachers to provide resources regarding the child’s well-being, and ensure good attendance by setting up plans. Ms. Iris works with children in general education, counseling groups, and one-on-one situations, including special education minutes. Ms. Hilary is a general education classroom teacher. She is responsible for the well-being of her students academically, socially, physically and developmentally. Ms. Hilary also advocates for families and students to receive the support that they need to feel successful in their first years of school. Finally, Ms. Kathy is the staffing
Beakstead, personal communication, October 31, 2013). Alternately, another student’s area of concentration might be based solely on independent living skills at home or with caretakers, and less focused on academic goals. As the goals are implemented by the special education team the student’s achievements can be evaluated daily, weekly, or monthly and in independent and group settings until mastery of the IEP goal is achieved, and where the learning goals of the IEP are age and skill level appropriate and address the future needs of the student. Additionally, these experiences encourage opportunities to practice new knowledge and skills, where teacher-directed and student feedback is available, and where instructional practice and student expectations can be reflected on and adjusted if necessary (Johnson-Gerard, 2012).
In the profession of a special education teacher, a person commits to helping children achieve their best and to help “students overcome their obstacles” while finding a way that the child can effectively learn (Hollingsworth). My mom’s career as special education teacher for twenty-two years, allows me insight and experience into the tougher aspects of this career, but also the rewards to the job. My mom helps me understand that a special education teacher guides a child to expand their strengths, develop strategies to overcome weakness, and to make best use of all available resources. Through helping her, and learning from her experiences, she taught me that a career in special education can not only challenge me, but may also become a
After the teachers get to know their students, they need to teach based on their needs. General and special education teachers need to differentiate their instructions to help their students. This can become stressful because teachers must plan to accommodate all their students’ needs when they are still learning the skills of how to manage a classroom and how to teach based on a specific curriculum. Rock, Gregg Ellis and Gable (2008) enforce that teachers must make
For my interview, I interviewed a woman by the name of Mrs. Miskell. She is a close family friend and also teaches at the elementary school that I used to attend. Mrs. Miskell has been teaching for fifteen years. She has a class of 21 including 2 special education children who are mainstreamed into her class for a few areas of study. She team-teaches one day a week with the remedial math teacher, and one day a week with the remedial reading teacher. Her children switch classes with one other class for social studies and science. In this interview, I covered her views on special education and security in today's schools.
Being a special educator, there are different roles and responsibilities separate from a general education teacher. As a special ed teacher, you need to be able to be more flexible and open-minded when it comes to teaching. These students, whether in a self-contained classroom or an ICT class, will have such differing needs than their counterparts. While they may still have some same needs, most of them will be different and individual. Even though we may have several students with the same disability in our class, that doesn’t mean that we can treat them the same; each student has differing abilities that we must figure out individually. This is one huge problem that I see prevailing in schools today. Teachers tend to think that if a child has autism, they have the same issues and needs as another child with autism but this is not the case. One child might need headphones for noise-canceling features while the other child might be ok with sound but need more social interactions skills. The ability to discern what a child needs based on their own performance is a crucial aspect to supporting every student equally. As a special educator, we need to not only look at their deficits but their capabilities as well. To define someone by what they can’t do is such a negative point of view. If we go into the classroom trying to find what is wrong with a child, we may never notice what exceptional skills they may have. For example, in class when Mark Sarabian came to talk about the