When researching education and its
approaches or strategies, one might be overwhelmed. What do best-practices actually mean? Although researchers strive to remove ambiguity
from their research, data, for the most part, reinforces the researcher’s
theory or approach. As an educator, how
does this affect your teaching and classroom’s environment? In this endeavor to propel to integrate
technology into K-12 curricula and classrooms, how do educators focus their
teaching?
At the end of the 2012 – 2013 school
year (the 4th 9 weeks), my students started using their learning
disability as their excuse for not learning the material and meeting
expectations. My students began quoting
their Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) modifications and
accommodations. Instead, they wanted to
complete simple worksheets and stop implementing their reading, research, and
writing skills. They believed that
because they received various levels of special education services, each one of
them was entitled to pass Resource English due to their disabilities and
because it was a special education class.
In my search for redirecting my students, I asked myself, “Is it wrong
for a special education student to fail a Resource class? And, when does his or her disability provide a
student free passage?” James Baldwin once
said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but
they have never failed to imitate them.”
As an educator, what behaviors were my students imitating?
In refocusing my teaching, there
were some key elements that I must not overlook in my journey to becoming a top
notch master educator. The key elements
are reflection of students’ performance, reflection of my performance, identify
specifically what the I need students to learn from each lesson, and the
students’ product to demonstrate higher Bloom’s Taxonomy.
My students and I had a “Real Talk”
discussion about their purpose for coming to school, the lack of or benefits
for coming to my classroom, and the level of expectations. We discussed the differences of being lazy
verses their learning disabilities and why their accommodations, disabilities,
and modifications are not excuses for them to use to get over in life.
In my final reflection of focusing
my teaching, I wonder if the special education services hinder students. I concur with anyone who states that students
who are multi-disabled, moderately to severely intellectually disabled, will
benefit from special education services.
But, I am speaking of the students who are developmentally delayed and
have difficulty catching up with their peers academically. And, is the current implementation of
Resource classrooms and Inclusion benefiting those students or embarrassing
them and causing them to be bullied?
These are few questions that districts, administrators, and educators
need to answer when designing the structure of the classrooms or implementing
Common Core Standards. The bottom line
is that Special Education should never be an afterthought when educating any
generations.
