My First Reflection

Posted on February 2, 2008

Tim, the history of special education in Vermont you shared started me to think of my own experiences. I was teaching in the Burlington school system in the early 1980’s, soon after the Brandon Training School was closed. I taught in one of the regional programs that you talked about. I taught an older group of students with severe disabilities and we were located in a middle school. None of my students were from Burlington and they were all older than the other students in the school. All but one of the students had grown up in the Brandon Training School. At the training school they had received little physical contact. One student, I learned later, had spent much of his earlier life in a crib. He learned to walk later than he would have normally. I have often wondered what their lives would had been like if they had lived with loving families and had been able to stay in their local communities, attending school with their same aged peers. Only one student lived with his family in a neighboring town and he was bused to our program each day. People in their own communities never had the opportunity to know these young people. Their same aged peers in their own communities often didn’t even know that people with disabilities existed! We tried to integrate the special education students into the school, but the middle school students were younger and from a different community.

I am so glad changes were made and that students with disabilities where able to receive an education in their home schools through the Homecoming Project. The “inclusion” model has enabled students with severe disabilities and their non-disabled peers to learn so much more by being together.

Now that a new century has come it is important that I also change with the times. I love how this course is exposing me to the resources that are available on the internet to help me to better serve my students. It is also helpful to learn more about technology that could enable my students to be more successful when they graduate from high school. Teenagers are so comfortable with technology today. I need to make sure that the students I work with are also.

In all that we have read and explored on the internet for this class I keep one question in mind. How can this help the students I work with be more prepared for life after high school? In your paper, Student Centered Education, you wrote that the success of inclusion depends on the student’s strengths and interests. You also wrote that we need to make what they are learning relevant to them. This is very true. When I adapt curriculum for my students I try to keep in mind what their interests are. One student loves fashion and I used this interest when she was studying US History. I also keep this in mind when finding employment for the students I work with. When a student with special needs first enters high school I begin learning about their strengths and interests. I can use this information and information from their educational team and evaluations to help the student explore career possibilities.

Much of the reading this week has been about working with elementary and middle school children. I work in a high school and classes are more focused. Our school struggles to modify academics to meet the needs of students with severe disabilities. The inclusion model has introduced a wide variety of students with varying academic challenges into the mainstream classroom. My goal for this class is to learn to apply “best practices” in supporting academics and the need for functional skills so that each student’s learning and social experience is maximized, no matter what their learning level.