Thoughts and Concerns on Education and Special Education

My thoughts on being an educator is of great joy. I have wanted to become a teacher since the first grade, and now it finally feels like that is really what I am doing. As I move forward in the TAL program I could not be happier that I chose the path I did in becoming an educator for education and special education. I always knew that I wanted elementary school, and through this process I learned about different age levels and needs of students at different ages. From being in a first grade classroom much of my field experience I have realized how much of in impact you can have as a teacher on students, especially when they are so young. Essentially, as educators for young students, you are setting up the foundation for their future, which is exactly what I want to do. I have concerns about teaching, but who doesn't? I am not sure anyone can honestly say that there fully prepared with no worry in mind. Teaching is not a job you can ever be fully prepared for, because each year brings new students, which means new strategies, a different pace, and a lot of your teaching depends on your student's. One of my major specific concerns is how well I can differentiate. As a special education teacher as well, I know it is more then very possible that I will be in an inclusion classroom, and I will have a wide variety of student's. This concerns me because teaching is a hard job in general, meeting all student's needs are hard in general, but it seems particularly hard to teach a lesson when student's are all over the learning spectrum, and every lesson could have to be modified. My concern, is that I will walk into the classroom and by the end of the year not meet all my student's needs. I know that teaching and differentiation takes practice, but I cannot imagine not understanding what is going on in class, or being so bored from not being challenged enough, I never want my student's to feel that way if I cannot even imagine feeling that way. As scary and concerning as teaching can be, I am truly more excited then anything else. I am scared that I will not meet the standards, or my student's will not meet the standards, but then when I think about how scared I am, I know I am not the only teacher that feels that way. I know that all educators have concerns, especially new educators such as I am concerned about how well off as a teacher I am going to be and will I be a teacher that is beneficial to my student's lives? In reality I am anxious, I have concerns mixed with excitement and I know when the day comes more and more thoughts and concerns will enter my head. What I know now, as we have just gotten into the core of our program even more, that I definitely picked the right path for me in becoming both an educator and special educator, because my goal is to make a change and be a positive impact in my student's lives just as my elementary school teachers were in mine.

Mild Cognitive Disabilities

  Mild cognitive disabilities are intellectually disabled disabilities such dyslexia, memory impairment, language impairment, attention deficit, and any other disability that is. Intellectual disability, or mild cognitive disabilities are seen when a child has a below average functioning level. A mild form of intellectual disabilities, which is why it is known as mild cognitive disabilities, is seen in students with an IQ of 50-70 where the average IQ is 100. It is hard to say if a student has one cognitive disability because usually student's who have a single cognitive disability, have many cognitive disabilities whether they are seen or not.
        Educators, parents and other people who come in contact or work with children who you may think has a cognitive disability, there are signs. Soem symptoms, or signs to finding out if a child has a mild cognitive disability are: short attention span, limited communication skills, confusion and problem behavior in new settings, delays in milestones for development and difficulty learning and retaining new information. These symptoms are just a few that you could look for in student's to see if they have any slight possibility of having a mild cognitive disability. One thing to remember though is whether or not a student has a mild cognitive disability, they can still fully succeed in school with help and facilitation from individualized strategies and skills. Some important skills or tools that will help student's with mild cognitive disabilities in the classroom is explicit modeling from the teacher, extra time on assignments and tests because it takes these student's longer to process and retain information, and repeated instruction, because their attention span is so short they may forget by the time they are told to go do the work on their own.
       Student's with mild cognitive disabilities could need help with social cues, which can also be achieved in the classroom through peer modeling. Student's with mild cognitive disabilities can watch peer behavior and try and model the behavior, just as the teacher models academic work for the class. The student can also improve social skills through groups and partners that the teacher can facilitate. The main goal is to have the student succeed in every aspect, but that means educators and parents have to be on board together to work towards this common goal. Student's always need support, but especially student's with mild cognitive disabilities, they need to know everyone is there for them, and everyone wants them to succeed. Parents and teachers can work together to find the common interests of the student to incorporate those interests in the classroom, to make learning as engaging as possible for the student to be able to focus on what is going on. Everyones goal should be to help the student succeed, and to set goals for the student to work towards attaining.

RTI and IDEA 2004

 According to IDEA, RTI should be implemented because it provides early intervention for student's with learning disabilities. IDEA 2004 is even allowing schools to spend more money for intervention activities because of the more student's identified and the more services that need to be provided by schools everywhere. IDEA 2004 sees RTI as a substitute for IQ achievement discrepancy because of how well it selects and monitors students at risk, and how multi tiered, problem solving and how well it provides treatment protocols. IDEA believes that one of the best strategies for identifying students is to screen all students to determine what there end of the year performance might be like to see if they should be monitored the following year, or now. Different ways that the IDEA thinks student's should be monitored, after identified, is through a standardized achievement test in only the area the child exhibits issues, a criterion referenced figure for week by week improvement and a local or national estimate for week by week improvement to see if student's are just behind or are in need of special services. The multi tiers is said to be used to increase intensity for students so the tiers start with teacher-centered instruction and continues to move up to relying on instructors who have expertise in special education students or RTI in general. Problem-solving, that IDEA discusses, is used by many teachers  in order to see how bad the problem is, analyze why or how the problem is where it is at, create goals for intervention, go through with the goals, monitor how well student's are doing with the goals, and see where intervention is still needed. Schools and teachers adopted this because it breaks down the problem into steps so each individual student is correctly identified and getting the help they need. This plan allows each student to be looked at and identified, and not groups of students identified together.
     The IDEA also feels very strongly about the idea that RTI is a better tool for determining LD then any other model. With other approaches students have been over identified and under identified and schools have had more costs of students with LD then ever. IDEA believes other models have led to inconsistencies in LD and who is identified which leads to a bigger problem with our nation. The reason IDEA feels that other approaches beside RTI are not even worth trying is being student's fall way behind before they even can be considered for LD, and poor teaching is mistaken for student's having a LD. RTI is the opposite, RTI encourages the use of evidence-based instruction in all tiers, before moving a student to a different tier, which essentially will lower the number of children who are not correctly identified. It is not fair to student's to be labeled as having a learning disability, if they do not because then they will be put down, and not challenged like they need to be to grow, whereas if student's go unidentified then they are set up for failure their whole lives. RTI has research and evidence supporting it, where most other methods do not. Why would we want student's to fall behind before we identify them, why not identify them in the process of tiers, where student's are observed while they participate in class? IDEA strongly encourages use of RTI because of its success rates and credibility, and they encourage others to do the same when identifying LD.

The Role of Special Educators in RTI

   The role of special education educators in RTI inclusion classrooms is critical. Teachers need to be available to provide intervention, as severe as it needs to be because it is so critical to the RTI process and the value of teachers within the RTI system. Educators must provide meaningful and and effective instruction regardless of how the student is identified because if educators cannot provide these attributes to students, then students are set up to fail even when diagnosed. This means educators need to be well rehearsed in all problem areas to support all student's needs and options to succeed. This also means that educators need to help others understand how to evaluate a student to see if the student is at a level of concern or an accepted standard of success. The help that educators can provide to other allows everyone that is working with the child to see why the student has problems where they do and find ways to successfully intervene. Educators are the source for others to find intervention strategies and goals for the student to monitor the student's progress. Not only does educators help with strategies, but also with modeling, supporting and providing feedback for the strategies that educators implement for students needing additional help in the RTI process. It is important that special educators are involved with formative assessments and summative assessments in order to keep track of what students know and what students still need assistance with. The assessments also help teachers to see what strategies are working for students and what strategies need to be changed in order to help students reach their goals and understanding.

         Different activities that educators can implement can help make the RTI process more helpful and have greater outcomes for students. These activities include identifying students needs for support, planning and implementing the support, evaluating and modifying the support and evaluating the student's outcome. Educators implement these steps along with activities in order to ensure student's succeed effectively. As special education teachers, you are viewed as a key consulted for the child's success and have the opportunity to focus on effective instruction for all student's, with the most severe disabilities and the least severe disabilities, they all matter.

SCUBA-D Learning Strategy

A learning strategy that is found very useful as a reading strategy and a comprehension of vocabulary strategy is SCUBA-D. Scuba-d stands for sound it out, check the clues in the sentence, use the main idea and the picture clues, break the word into parts, ask for help and dive into the dictionary. This benefits students who have trouble reading, and who have trouble with certain vocabulary words in particular. Scuba-d allows students to practice learning vocabulary and reading comprehension on their own by helping students sound out words first and then if that does not work, Scuba-d tells students to check the clues in the sentence and the main idea from the sentence or book to help students figure out the words meaning or how to say the word, then the strategy tells students to break the word into parts to help them, which is a good way for students to break down the word with different vowel sounds to see where the student is struggling with the word. I like how this strategy does not allow students to ask for help or look in a dictionary until they have exhausted trying to figure out the word on their own because this way student's are not just being told the word, they are learning how to find out a word on their own, and for future words they may struggle with. This benefits students the most who have reading and vocabulary struggles and it benefits them because they are learning a strategy that is not just available at the moment but for all words that the students may struggle with. The student's the strategy is benefiting, benefits them because they usually just skip over a word or ask someone to tell them what the word is because they have no idea where to start figuring out the word or how to begin saying the word to then understand it. Scuba-d allows students a place to start with understanding reading and vocabulary comprehension, and does not allow an escape for student's to run away from these problems. Scuba-d forces students to learn step-by-step how to dive into reading a word and understand a words meaning, and not just continue reading day by day with skipping over words or asking others to tell them the word. The reality is if student's that need help with reading and vocabulary comprehension keep skipping over words then they will never learn the basis of reading and vocabulary comprehension, which is why scuba-d is so important, because it benefits student's who need just that. To implement scuba-d for students that will benefit from scuba-d, as teachers we need to explicitly teach and model the strategy for our students before setting them free. To really benefit from scuba-d, student's need to know exactly what to do and when to do it, otherwise the strategy will be inaffective and not worth using to the student. keep reminding the student how to use it, even give the student a bookmark with the strategy written out on it, so that students are always reinforced to use the strategy when they come across words they do not know. The more teachers reinforce student's to use the strategy and give helpful reminders and ways to remember the strategy, the more beneficial the strategy will be to the student in their everyday life.

RTI

      RTI is response to intervention which provides intervention to children who could be at risk for failure. The R in RTI talks about different risk factors that are included such as selecting at-risk students, and monitoring at risk students. Selecting at-risk-students is how students are determined on whether or not they need response to intervention. The best idea is to test everyone and have a screen tool with a benchmark for all students so no student goes without being identified because they do not show early stages of needing intervention. Monitoring at-risk students has to do with responsiveness to general education once the students have been found needing intervention. From this monitoring teachers can see which students are unresponsive to general education to see which students need more intensive instruction at second tier or even in a separate classroom. The T in RTI is the tiers that students go through to see if special education services is needed which are discussed in the next paragraph. The I, intervention in RTI talks about focusing on different types of instruction such as reading and multitiered as well as problem- solving, standard treatment protocol and intervention as a test. The I in RTI really discusses how teachers start by focusing more on the academics of early intervention before behavior and how the multi tiers allows more explicit instruction and more guidance by teachers to make sure students succeed. Problem- solving helps start intervention, essentially where to start solving the problem, and where to go once the problem- solving starts and does not necessarily make matters increasingly better for all students.
       RTI includes three tiers. Tier 1 is the highest achievement tier meaning, students are still included in an inclusion classroom or a general education classroom. Most students are in tier one and then if teachers, parents or any other educators may see issues with the child then they might consider observing the child in the tier two stage. Tier 2 is when students are looked at for special education services, however students are still in the inclusion classroom. Student's are observed in their natural element to see what they are struggling with and what would be the best option for this student. If the student is found really struggling and needing extensive help and care, the student may be moved to tier 3. Tier 3 is when students qualify for special education services. If a student is placed here the student will get extra modifications and care based on their individual needs even more so then before, and will have an IEP developed for them (individualized education program).
         RTI is beneficial to all students because it helps them learn to the best of their ability, and their learning style. RTI helps all students concerns be met and helps teachers adjust the curriculum to make sure all students concerns and risks are met. Student's go over identified and under identified daily, so RTI helps see who really is at risk and who needs intervention, and what tier of intervention is needed. This is so important for all students because no student wants to not get the intervention they need if they are unresponsive in a general education classroom, and no student wants to be in a separate classroom and not feel challenged enough daily. Student's benefit more then anyone from RTI because it enables them to learn and understand the best way individually each of them can, because RTI helps diagnose every students needs, and requirements.

Differentiated Instruction

          Differentiation is an approach to teaching where teachers modify their curriculum, methods, resources and learning activities to make sure all diverse needs are met of all students, whether individual or in groups to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to maximize learning and make learning accessible for everyone. Some ways to meet the definition in the classroom is by having multiple ways to represent a concept so all students understand, multiple expressions and action, and multiple ways of engagement so all students can be involved and no student is left out of the learning process. Differentiation is one of the most important aspects of the classroom regardless how hard it is to incorporate for teachers. Meaningful differentiation instruction is actually what is being lacked in classrooms but is what needs to happen in classrooms. To incorporate meaningful differentiation teachers need to differentiate content, process and product based on students needs, interests and readiness to learn the material. This is important because teachers need to make sure that student's are engaged and lessons are modified for these student's, otherwise the differentiation will be set up to fail.
          Differentiation during the first stage is mostly where whole group instruction is taking place with modifications for students who need are present. In this tier teachers focus on general interests, and provide motivational needs as well as see the whole class's ability level with the content and the past content being taught. During tier one there are targeted outcomes such as more assessment,  and more time where both time and assessment is differentiated to each student. Students need more time and need to be assessed to see where they are so teachers can be beneficial in the learning process. Some strategies for differentiating is choice boards, tiered activities and learning contracts. Choice boards for example are menus, a tiered activity could be a persuasive essay and a learning contract talks about what the student learned. It is important to incorporate strategies into students learning, whether it be one of these three or other strategies that support the individual or group needs. You may only have to use a strategy for one child, but teach it to the class, differentiation is important regardless of how much you have to change your schedule around, or your lesson plan. Classrooms are more diverse, and have more diverse learners then ever, which is why differentiation needs to start now with all the teacher support it can.