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SPED - Critical Issues - Final Essays

 3100 Final Exam

Joshua Harke

How do you support students considering student mental health needs and the existence of bullying?

               I would support my students by having classroom activities that don’t single out students with mental health needs or that are being bullied. I like my clinical educator’s questions when they were talking about bullying awareness week. How many of you have been bullied or know someone who has been bullied? I like that she showed videos from YouTube, in homeroom, on bullying and how to be an advocate for others. I would get my guides from the Pacer website for antibullying. I believe strongly that the best advocates for students being bullied are their peers. I want to nip any early signs of bullying in the butt because I don’t want my students to develop trauma and I want a healthy classroom vibe.

               I would also want to talk about mental health separately. Maybe like my clinical educator did. They had a week devoted to it. Talk about what depression looks like. How it’s okay to be depressed and that it’s okay to ask for help to get out of it. I would show videos on depression and anxiety. I think I might even buy fidget toys for my classroom. If a student is having anxiety, they can just grab one for the period they are experiencing it. I wish fidget toys were around when I was in school. So, I believe that letting my students above all the conversations together, know that they can come to me about anything and as I get to know my students, I could pull them aside and ask them what’s going on today, just as a healthy check-in.

Tell me about the importance of and strategies used for collaborating with families.

               I think the highest form of communication and respect goes to collaborating with families. I think highly of my Clinical Educator, Ms. Heaphy, because she talks with her students’ families on the regular and some students get more emails, calls, or texts home than others. I like that she communicates with all the parents of her students. She is a good model of what a teacher should be doing. According to Joshua Hoppe in Featured Teacher, IDEA says that we are required to communicate with the parents of exceptional needs students. I feel that using translated materials and translators is important when exchanging information with the student’s families. They should be culturally respected in these regards. I feel that working with the parents on facilitating change for their children is important and they should learn to be advocates for their students. I know that it’s important networking with the parents of our students should be seen as a good thing. They might have resources I don’t have, that they could share. I would like to have age-appropriate guides for parents of the students in my classroom. I would send home information with the parents from open house meetings about how their siblings can help or what they need from the parent too. If it’s kindergartens I would send home materials on places their parents can get respite from so they can have time away from their child to recoup or just fun places that are appropriate for their child. It takes a lot of energy emotionally and physically to be the parent of a child with disabilities.

How would you use technology in your classroom to prepare students for standardized end-of-grade assessments?

               I would use the quiz sites such as Kahoots to analyze their knowledge as we’re getting ready for the standardized EOG’s. I would research engagement educational games that the students can use on their Chromebooks for learning content needed to prepare for their EOG assessments. I would even play with them, I’m very competitive. Side story, I played a quiz game with the students in my resource English Language Arts class and won but Ms. Heaphy didn’t count it. I think that engaging students where they are, i.e., video games and their love of media. I was reading the article Boyles and Kennedy (2019) I would use real-time performance data software that checks in with the students as were in lesson or preparation for EOG’s. I liken this technology to there would be metrics involved but also a simple check-in sent from my computer to their Chromebooks like a pop quiz or thumbs up or thumbs down sent back to me. My Professor in Child Psychology during everyone being online in the Spring Semester would often have a pop-up for us to check in with her, for mental health or even understanding the material. Overall, I would explain the importance of the assessment but work with the students to make the actual day less stressful when we got there.

Note. For this question, you are going to tell us the name of the school you want to teach at and if it is a public, private, or charter school.

Why do you want to teach here at ______________________, which is a public/private/charter school? Specifically, I’d like you to tell me about how you think IEPs work in this setting and how that has informed your decision to work here.

               The school I would like to teach at, at this moment, is Albemarle Rd Middle School, which is a public magnet school. I would like to work here because I like the 6th-grade teachers and the Exceptional Children’s Teachers are amazing at what they do. Ms. Perry the Principal is a good leader and has a great staff under her. I think that IEPs work there as a normal middle school. I was able to sit in on an IEP meeting with a parent. The psychologist and the special education teacher were present. The parent was sent a letter in advance in Spanish/English so they would know what to expect. They also had an interpreter available if needed. This meeting happened just as I thought it would. I also noticed that the Exceptional Children’s Teacher and Psychologist both had the IEP pulled up and shared between them on their computers. They recorded who was present, including me. IEP’s get updated every year or as needed during that year. I was also able to look through a student’s IEP. My CE told me that things get added to and the prior year’s information gets saved as a reference for the future teachers. I found this relaxing and less stressful than I had built up in my head.

               This information and the ability to look at an IEP plus sit in on an IEP meeting gave me a soft spot for Albemarle Rd Middle School. I think it takes good teachers as well as having the ability to listen to the parents during the IEP meeting. It’s important to be clear and concise but then let the parent(s) ask as many questions and talk as much as they need. This goes along with Joshua Hoppe when he says that be an active listener. This is a time to learn about my students from the parents about things I have an idea about but needed clarification on. I think getting to sit in the IEP meeting and being able to access an IEP was very important and pleasantly unexpected.

You are co-teaching using a variety of models and finding yourself in conflict with your co-teacher. Tell me about how you address this situation.

               This semester I have seen some great co-teaching between my CE and her co-teacher in the English Language Arts inclusion classroom. If I were facing conflict with my co-teacher, I might get discouraged about working with that teacher. I think that if I am being stepped on because I’m new I would have to use the I-model talked about by Wright, Echells, and Watson (2018) where I would say, “When you interrupt me when I’m correcting the students, I feel undermined. I would like you to support my judgment and after the class is over, we could discuss if I handled it wrong.” I think that structure is important to a classroom, and I know that I have a controlling tendency so I might be the one itching to talk sometimes, which is a thing I’m working on. I think that respect goes both ways to form a cohesive co-teaching bond. I feel that it’s a necessity to show a unified front all the time when in the presence of students.

It is common knowledge that students with disabilities are disproportionately identified when they come from diverse backgrounds. Tell me about how you, as an educator, can address the needs of diverse learners in your classroom?

As an educator, I can address the needs of the diverse learners in my classroom by understanding their home life. It is important to get to know my students and be culturally responsive. I need to be sensitive to the fact that in a title 1 school, most of my students will be at the poverty line or above it. Albemarle Rd Middle School is in the National School Lunch Plan that feeds 97% of its student population. The demographic information also said that 5% of the student population was white. In my resource classrooms, 100% of the students are minorities. I would push my students to believe in themselves because their motivation will drive them to succeed. I believe that I could advocate for students to be retested with mild learning disabilities to move them from Exceptional Needs classes or advocate that most of my students be in inclusion classrooms that would benefit them. I want my students to be the best versions of themselves at the end of the year. I believe in the saying leave something better than you found it.

I can relate to being a minority but not to a minority growing up in poverty. Understanding that I may look like my students but not be in their shoes completely is a step in addressing their needs. Some students like Dr. Wakeman said don’t have uniforms and she had to wash their uniforms and keep them for that student. I don’t know if I’m that responsible enough to wash one of my student’s uniforms for them every night, but I could gather information for my students’ families on services that are quick to respond so that my student doesn’t suffer at home or their siblings if they have them. I think that Salend and Duhaney (2015) used an excellent quote that says, “the perspectives of professionals that minimize the involvement of family and community members and view families as disinterested in their children’s school performance (Harry, Allen, & McLaughlin, 1995)”. As above I need to meet my students’ families and get them engaged in their student’s educational life because to believe that families are not interested is a disservice.

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