The Teacher’s Role in an Inclusive Classroom

1. The Teacher’s Role in an Inclusive Classroom Week Three EPSE 177

2. Identifying needs of special learners

3. What do we need to know • To write an IEP • About the student? • About parents? • About teaching?

4. Identify low-incidence at early ages Teachers are usually informed before students enroll Developmental disabilities Blindness Deaf and Hard of Hearing Physical Disabilities Chronic health conditions Parents and Teachers: Observers

5. Difficult to identify Greater challenge to discern from diversity issues Teacher plays a key role Learning disabilities Attention deficit disorder giftedness High Incidence Disabilities

6. Making Classroom Adaptations and Keeping Records • Document student behavior, outcomes • Read student files • Talk with Resource Teacher • Get suggestions • Contact the parents • Make pre-referral adaptations • Analyze your records

7. Using the ADAPT strategy • Accounts of Students’ Strengths and Needs • Demands of the Classroom • Adaptations • Perspectives and Consequences • Teach and Assess the Match

8. Figure 2.2: Addressing the Demands of Your Classroom

9. Collaboration: Working with specialists • Joint planning • Decision making • Problem solving • Built-in support • Includes • Resource teachers, special educators, rehab therapists, social workers, psychologists

10. Research: Best Collaboration Practices • Plan thoroughly, be flexible • Use teaching methods that engage students • Use preventive and caring classroom management • Be positive • Work as a team

11. Classroom teacher and school-based team • Identifies student needs • Generates practical strategies • Determines course of action • Sets up evaluation plan • Puts plan in writing: IEP

12. IEP Process: Steps to take • Pre-referral • School-based team • Parents’ role • Tips for parents • Clarify your role • Preparing for and participating in an in-school team meeting

13. Teacher and the Individual Education Plan • Components of an IEP • Description of the child’s present level of functioning • Long-term goals • Short-term goals • Instructional strategies, materials and services • Dates for review • Identify case coordinator and participants’ responsibilities • Evaluation procedures

14. Terms and Concepts • Goals and objectives are statements of “intent” • goal • objective • aim • ends • outcomes • purposes

15. Three types of goals • Classroom: instructional/educational • learnings for the student to acquire • Resource/SPED support • services provided by consultants (eg: speech therapist) • Behavior management • planning, implementing, evaluating

16. Using goals to establish • The student’s needs • The teacher’s responsibility • Rely on Integrated Resource Package (IRP) • Learning activities • ADAPT • Ongoing evaluation

17. Four Required Components to Goals and Objectives • The student name • The conditions, • or givens in the lesson plan • Student Outcome • Criteria for successful completion

18. Student name • Always remember you goal is based on the • Description of the child’s present level of functioning

19. Conditions • Classroom Materials • Books, Art supplies, Recreational equipment • Group size • Small, large, individual • Mode of communication • Written, spoken, visual • Assistive devices • Brailer, FM System • Computer, Overhead projector

20. Outcomes Student Work • Paper, • drawing, • art project, • Behavior • Walk, run, jump • Verbal response • answers questions • Participates in discussion • Leads discussion • Follows discussion

21. Criteria • Duration • Time in an hour, period, etc • Percentage • 50% of the time • Increases over year • Trials • 9 times out of 10

22. Develop Annual Goals and Measurable Short Term Outcomes • Annual goals need to • Be measurable • Tell what the student can reasonably accomplish in a year • Relate to helping the student be successful in the general curriculum and/or address other educational needs resulting from the disability • Be accompanied by short-term objectives

23. The teacher and the parents

24. Parents and Teachers

25. Impact on family and friends • Diagnosis of disability is accompanied by feelings of loss; • Research indicates that • Parents go through stages of grief; • Stages are not clearly defined; and • They occur throughout the child’s years of development.

26. Adjustment periods involve: • Shock; • physical symptoms such as bodily distress, tightness in throat, empty feeling, weakness; • emotional release; • depression, sense of isolation; • Guilt; • panic or hostility; and • difficulty returning to normal affairs .

27. Feelings and purpose • Research indicates that family members have varying levels of response; • Some will work more for the individual’s needs; and • Others will need to withdraw. • Each set of feelings and responses has • A purpose and • Its own manner and duration.

28. Denial • Offers the individual time to • Integrate information; • Develop new expectations; • Explore old expectations; • Consider paths of action; • Acquire the skills and knowledge needed to support the disabled person; and • To gather inner emotional strength.

29. Guilt • Occurs while the family and support providers explore the causes and reasons for the disability; • Guilt relates to the question of: • What is my part in this? • Did I do something to cause it to happen? • Cultural and linguistic communities respond differently.

30. Depression • often called anger turned inwards; • Occurs while the parent redefines competence. • Parents have a basic need to • have an impact on their child, • a sense of ability to cope; and • often express helplessness during this period. • Ends when the parent finds that he/she has a way to take action.

31. Anger • Associated with the need to redefine one’s sense of internalized justice: • Why did this happen to me? • This question is turned to the outward world and the sense of fairness is disrupted. • Signs of anger are: • Frustration, • agitation, • aggravation, and • annoyance with others.

32. Professional Responses • Provide support to families when they • Explain and impart relevant information; • Are involved in the ongoing and unfolding nature of the loss; • Provide support at all critical stages of development; • Advocate for the individual’s strengths; and • Address their own grief response.

33. Stages of grief • Some researchers state that parents/family go through stages of grief; • Current views are that grief responses are intertwined with other responses throughout the individual’s life's. • Cultural; • Religious; • Social; and • Individual perspectives alter these responses.

34. Chronic sorrow • Parents and family need to grieve from time-to-time; • Can be at any stage of individual’s life; • Intensity varies according to situation; • Normal psychological reaction; and • Serves for the parent or family member to “regather” internal and external resources.

35. Critical stages include • Infancy • Pre-kindergarten • Birthdays • Elementary/Middle school transition • Middle school/high school transition • High school to adulthood • Stages of adulthood • Family celebrations: Marriages, Holidays, Holy Days

36. Adjustment and readjustment • Disability is not clear-cut; • “Too often earlier professional predictions are contradicted. • “not knowing what fate to mourn, parents face a thousand alternative scenarios. • “Parents looking for a diagnosis are frightened and immensely vulnerable.”