Module 5

Michelle Suggs
Module 5
March 15, 2022

The following is the “I can” statement that I would like to add this week: I can teach all students, and all students can learn.

I do not currently have any ELL students, and the only ELL students I have taught in the past had a good handle on the English language. I did not encounter some of the difficulties that many ELL teachers do on a daily basis. However, this is my 7^th year in self-contained special education. Although several of my students are working on early literacy skills, such as naming letters, Pre-Primer Dolch sight words, and matching pictures with their initial letter, etc. I often have people outside of education question why these students are coming to school. People will sometimes refer to my classroom as a daycare. In some ways, that is true. We have fun, and we incorporate learning into the fun stuff we do, as opposed to the general education classes where they try to add some fun to academics. My middle school, students in my population have generally maxed out on academic achievement. They start transitioning to more daily/life skills, job skills, community skills, etc., and that is the main focus of the program at the high school. It is sometimes difficult to example the value of these students to people who have never worked with students like mine, and it is difficult to explain the value of them coming to school every day, interacting with their peers, interacting with the adults in the room, and interacting with the people outside of our classroom.

When I was put into this classroom, I had only taught general education my entire career. The only SPED training I had ever had was teaching inclusion (as the general education teacher) three and a half years. There were some major issues in the classroom with a student who had transferred in from another county, and he was violent and nonverbal with a whole host of other complications. In south GA terms, I watched videos of this student “tearing up” the teacher, paras, admin, and even the school resource officer. It was terrible. The teacher in the classroom was frustrated and “done” with this student. She wanted him moved out of the classroom, and she could not see any other option. I must look mean because I was moved the day after Labor Day to this classroom with this violent child who no one could control. What did I do? I implemented changes as I would in a gen ed classroom, and they worked. The first thing I did was to clear the room. It was full of junk! I was about to “nut up” with all that stuff, so I am sure a child like this was too. Second, I moved his “bedding” to a room connected to the regular classroom. I thought, “Sped or gen ed, children should not be lying around on the floor- rolling, sleeping, doing whatever, while I am trying to teach.” Another change I made was concerning eating. This student “grazes” all day, which was okay considering some other factors, but he was only going to eat in his desk- not on the floor, not in the connected room, not while he was lying down. The final change I made was concerning who would be involved when he was having a violent episode. The former teacher called everyone from the local school admin to the county office, and they all piled in the room to attempt to help, but no one was helping. They were escalating the situation. I told the two paras in the room that no one would be called to help until we needed medical attention. They were not helping at all, and we did not need all those witnesses to watch up get beat up! My stance was that if we could not handle the child, no one else can either. I immediately put strategies in place for when the child started fighting, and they worked as well as they could. We laughed a lot! Sometimes, that is all there is to do. One day, the student ripped my shirt nearly off my body. I was standing with my paras, and I looked down to see my bra and everything else showing. I told my paras that if I had known I was going to show them everything, I would have worn a cuter bra! Truthfully, the child was doing what the child knew to do, and we had to deal with it. Did we make positive changes? Of course, but we still had issues- sometimes daily, sometimes multiple times a day- when he was frustrated or hurting and knew no other way to deal with his frustration and hurt than to fight. He needed to be taught better ways of dealing with frustration, anger, and pain, but much of that was out of our control, so we did what we could to ensure that he was the best he could be in our classroom.

According to the article “The Influence of Teacher Power on ELL’s Self-Perceptions of Learning Empowerment,” ELLs must work with frustrated teachers who have limited experience with ELLs, no training to work with these students, and little guidance from their academic administration in dealing with language differences. But in the end, you have to get past all of that and do the best you can do for your students. That was the issue with the former teacher: her only answer was to move him, and she believed if she complained enough or shouted loud enough, he would be moved. However, that just was not an option. I could see both sides of the story, but sometimes, you just have to do what you are asked to do, and you have to be willing to try new options. I think the same holds true at time with difficult students with special needs. I do not know that there is a way to train for certain situations; it just becomes on the job training and trial and error at times. I have no training in special education; I took a test. I was given some fast and furious on the job training.

According to the article “Dropping out of School among ELL Students: Implications to Schools and Teacher Education,” although the data is significantly lacking, ELL students are at a greater risk of dropping out of school. Special education students are at a greater risk of dropping out as well. I think there are several reasons why this is true, and it is different for each student. The article states that English proficiency directly relates to academic performance and grade retention. This is the same for many special needs students. Even if they are in inclusion, they are generally well below their peers in reading ability. Reading is needed in all academic subjects, even math. When students cannot read well, they fall further and further behind, and they become more and more frustrated with school. Special education Students often exhibit behaviors that make them difficult to teach and deal with. Many times teachers are not equipped to deal with these types of behavior, and at times, the teachers do not get the support they need from administrators. My final thought is that students are often too high for one class but too low to be successful in another class. Several years ago, I was the 8^th grade ELA inclusion teacher. At that time, the only options for special education students was inclusion or self-contained, and they reserved self-contained. There was no other option, and I had two students in my 8^th grade ELA class who were not going to be successful no matter what I did or no matter what the special education teacher did. My thought was to move them to the lower class (self-contained), so they could experience some success. The self-contained teacher was completely against that idea. They both ended up being held back in the 8^th grade, which was a huge mistake in my opinion. My team teachers thought they should be held back because they “did not try.” How could they try? That would be like putting an elementary student in a calculus class and stating that he or she did not try. Both students ended up dropping out of school and pregnant at an early age. We now have classes in the middle of the two extremes, which greatly benefit students who really do not fit with the high or the low. However, one of our SPED teachers fought for these resource classes long before they were put into place. I can see this paralleled with ELL students as well. They do not seem to “fit” any of the programs we have to offer, so they fall through the cracks and become frustrated and unsuccessful in school.