Insights gained from your interviews regarding
current advocacy efforts and needs in your area of interest within the field of
early childhood
I had the
opportunity to meet with two early childhood educators to discuss how they felt
about inclusion. The first interview was with a preschool teacher who has been
teaching for well over fifteen years. She stated that she has over twenty students
and only one child who was diagnose with autism. She stated that they child
have a teacher assistance assigned to assist in the meeting the child’s need. The
second professional I interviewed was a kindergarten teacher. She also stated
that what she as well as other colleagues is faced with current issues such as
class sizes and inclusion students. I
believe that these issues will be great for the research paper. However,
narrowing them down to three topics is a challenge for me.
How these interviews may have influenced your
decision about which area of interest and topics to choose for your research
paper
I retain a lot
of information regarding inclusion. There are also many topic of interests in
which I can do my research paper. The two teachers that I interviewed were of
great help. They were very passionate with their current issues of teaching
early childhood. The two also expressed their concerns with new laws that maybe
put into place regarding holding teacher accountable for their students test
scores. I really enjoyed interviewing the two professionals because of the
abundance of information they were willing to share with me.
Which area of interest you are thinking of focusing
on for your paper as well as the related three specific topics
My thoughts on
inclusion is that I think it is good for children who have special needs and
there are many benefits for them in a regular classroom. I think that the area
of focus that I am seriously thinking about doing for my research paper is
Inclusion in the classroom. I also believe that the specific topics of focus
will be the parent components/involvements, benefits of inclusion and resources
that is available for the students/family.
Questions you have for your colleagues related to
your area of interest and/or three topics
What are your
thoughts about inclusion? What are
others specific areas might I add to my research paper?
Is your topic - inclusion? What are some subtopics you can discuss in regards to inclusion. What and how did the teachers feel about inclusion? I have taught for 38 years and I have some definite thoughts about inclusion - did you teachers express any positive/negative thoughts?
ReplyDeleteBernice, first of all can I please ask that if your title is going to be about special needs please put the child first, "Children with special needs". Sorry, that is a huge pet peeve of mine.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, If you are doing inclusion as a topic, I have worked in an inclusion classroom, and ever since moving to a regular ed classroom I have still had children with special needs each year that the parents did not want to accept they had special needs and refused to send them to any special programs, so in a way I have been working inclusion for 5 years now. My mom has also been a special education teacher for 25 years so we bounce a lot of information and questions as well as complaints we have in regard to special education. So, if you have any specific questions or ideas I would be happy to bounce ideas with you.
I think a great subtopic of special education topics could be testing and meeting standards as one of your interviewees discussed. This is an issue my mom has in her classroom (6th grade special ed inclusion). The state wants her students to make a years progress in one year. She gets really frusterated about this because some of her students are at a first grade level, yet now it's on her shoulders to get them to make a year's progress in one year, yet they are already several years behind. Also, if they were capable of making a years progress in a year then they would be at grade level, so it just doesn't make sense. Also, another issue she has is the school wants her students to meet the same standards as other children their age. Well, in one case, she has a child with Autism, and for him it was a huge feat to get him to talk in class and to control his emotions. This was more important progress than his academic progress, as his emotional issues were holding him back from making adequate academic progress. But, the school doesn't measure his social-emotional progress, only his academic progress, then it looks like on paper that he made no progress that year, when really he has made a lot of progress, just not in the area the school district thinks is important. I think the state needs to realize with special education there is more to development than passing academic tests. For some of these children in special ed they may have completely different standards for what constitutes growth and success, and I feel these issues are important to consider. Now, the state is basing a teacher keeping her job on her students success, and this scares my mom because of these issues. In a way it makes her want to get out of special education because of it, but the school won't allow her to switch positions because not many teachers are certified in special education because most teachers don't want to take the extra time to get endorsements on their certificate, so most just have the basic teaching certificate.
I hadtomake 2 posts, my first comment was too long haha!!!
ReplyDeleteI haven't really faced any issues in preschool inclusion. There was a lot more support for my students (even the undiagnosed ECSE students) when I was in a labeled inclusion program because we had on sight speech, OT, PT, and ECSE teachers and aides. But, now I am left with my ECSE training to fend for myself the best I can because we have no ECSE support. We do get a speech therapist out once a week, but that is all. When I was in an inclusion program we used to be able to get a therapist to come and observe a child we had concerns about, and we used the ESI-R standardized test to refer children for special ed testing. Now where I am at we use Brigance, which I do not really like as much, and it doesn't really refer children for testing, it just says who is at risk. Plus, for parents it was much less scary to get their child tested when it was all on sight, and knowing if their child qualified they would still be in the same program and classroom. Where I am at now we are in the outskirts of a larger city, and the families in that area do not particularly like the "the city" as they refer to it as. They are in a high poverty area and the city is snobbish rich people. Well the ECSE program is "in the city" and most parents refuse to send their child there, whether they need it or not. I have had a child every year now whose parents have refused to get ECSE services because of it. So they were limited to speech once a week, and since the parents wouldn't go to "the city" they refused the extra services they could receive if they took their child an extra day a week to the main office where more therapies are offered. I do wish we had extra ECSE services on site besides speech once a week because I get some children with severe speech issues who need more than 10-15 minutes of help a week. We do the best we can, but we only have them 12 hours a week, and obviously it's not 1 on 1 all of that time. We do the best we can to individualize as much as possible.
I think inclusion is a good topic to discuss. It has pros and cons regarding the area. I state this because my sister-in-law worked at a CPS school and experienced difficulties with inclusion. She had 28 children enrolled in her class (2nd grade) with no assistant. She had a student in there that was diagnosed with ADHD. She discussed the challenges that she experienced with trying to teach her class as well as deal and provide activities for the student with a learning disability.
ReplyDelete