Students with Special Needs

1. Students with Special Needs CHAPTER 3 - COLLABORATION & MULTICULTURAL RESPONSIVENESS Karen Gatto & Roni Kramer Winter 2009

2. WHAT IS COLLABORATION? • A dynamic process in which all share their resources and strengths • Solve problems jointly and develop innovative solutions so that all students can progress in the general curriculum Who is involved? • Students • Teachers • Parents • Paras • Related service providers • Interpreters/Translators • Administrators

3. ADMINISTRATIVE QUALITIES • Self - directed risk takers-professional development involvement • Invested in relationships - collaborators • Accessible - addressed recurring changes • Reflective - much thought • Collaborative - promoted time for collab • Intentional - goals

4. What’s in a name? • Inclusion • Co-Teaching • Collaboration • A partnership in which two educators collaborate and plan in a coordinated fashion to jointly and directly teach students.

5. REFLECTION You are a general education classroom teacher. For the majority of your teaching career, you have only taught a few, selected special education students who were mainstreamed into your class. It was generally understood that these special education students earned an opportunity to be mainstreamed through their ability to “keep up” with the class. There were students who did well in your class and those who did not success at all. You have never really been opposed to mainstreaming a few, selected students, but couldn’t imagine teaching, on your own, many students with a variety of special needs. Think of what it will take to ensure that you and all you students succeed with inclusion

6. “Good schools, like good societies and good families, celebrate and cherish diversity.”Deborah Meier (1931- )American educator, writer andPrincipal of the Central Park Elementary School

7. MULTICULTURAL RESPONSIVENESS WHAT IS CULTURE? • The way in which each person is socialized from infancy to perceive and interpret what is happening and to determine the appropriate way to behave, initiate, and react. • Culture influences our rituals, language, emotions, ethics, etc. • Culture influences classroom behavior. • Multicultural responsiveness means taking into account a student’s cultural background in planning universally designed learning.

8. How do I interpret this student’s performance through a cultural lens? • What are the practices of the student’s cultural group? • What is the group’s history: forces shaping their relationship to mainstream culture; access to opportunities; societal status; legacy of discrimination? • How does student’s own history reflect the group’s traditions? • What are the cultural expectations, beliefs and biases of the educators and adults in the student’s life?

9. Local & Vernacular Literacies • The way in which each of us understands texts and language is grounded in our cultural, social, and historical backgrounds • A child with a different cultural background, with its own local language and knowledge, comes into our schools and is expected to jump right into our literacies and our way of learning. • How do we create bridges? Use local vernaculars and literacies as building blocks on which to construct our teaching. Ben-Yosef, E. (2003, Oct.) Respecting Student’s Cultural Literacies. Educational Leadership, 80-82

10. Prereferral ProcessReflection • Identify a puzzlement that you have related to teaching a student from a culturally and/or a linguistically diverse background. • What are some questions you need to ask that would enable you to better understand the student’s culture and family values and previous experiences?

11. Cultural and Linguistic DiversityVESID - 2002 • A student who is considered to be “culturally and linguistically diverse” is a student who comes from a home in which the primary language spoken is one other than English and who may be limited in his or her use of English • Any child who comes from a home in which a language other than English is spoken must be evaluated to determine if he/she is limited English proficient as defined in Part 154 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education (Home Language Survey and Language Proficiency Exam) • Culture and languages are inseparable from identity and social connectedness.

12. Children who are culturally and linguistically diverse also may have; • Come to the US after an extended stay in another country to which they were forced to imigrate from their homelands • Experienced traumatic events such as war and other civil disturbances • Been subjected to forced family separations • Had little or no formal schooling before arriving in the US • Lived in chronic poverty and disruption in the US

13. Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) Usually enter US school after 2nd grade and two fewer years of school than peers and function two years below grade level in reading and math. They may also be preliterate in their native language • Poor education records, no education records or education records with significant gaps • Self-reports or parental reports of absence from school for extended periods of time • Poor attendance records from previous schools • Poor grades • Very weak grasp of academic content • Poor performance on standardized tests.

14. Students with Special Needs CHAPTER 4 - Families and partnerships with professionals Karen Gatto & Roni Kramer Winter 2009

15. Definition of family • 2 or more people who regard themselves as a family and carry out the functions that a family typically perform • US census – people who “reside” together • Your students’ family compositions will vary greatly • We interact primarily with mothers

16. Families of students with disabilities are different in many ways from those w/o disabilities • Disproportionately from racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse populations • From lower socio economic subclasses • 35% SWD income less than $25,000 • Poverty and race correlate • 22% SWD come from family where head of household has less than HS diploma • Poverty and single parent correlate

17. Partnerships • CSE attempts to strengthen partnership • Schools that foster partnerships in general are more likely to have high levels of trust • Student achievement increase when parents are partners • “walk in their shoes” – how do children with disabilities affect their families?

18. Building Partnerships with Parents • Parents needs support and information • Complexities of English remain a barrier • Cultural Differences can deter involvement • Find the leaders in the immigrant community • Outreach must be cultural specific • Personal relationships are key • Create a parent resource center Annandale Parent Leadership Initiative

19. Emotional well being • Parent want their kids to have friends • Teachers report that they need to know more about fostering positive interactions among children with and w/o disabilities • Parents feel isolated oftentimes • Families often feel embarrassed in public • Many parents appreciate teachers being available after school hours • The “caring” quality of the teacher is important

20. Quality of life issues for the family • Physical/material well being – poverty affects many • Family interactions • Parenting • Disability related support (see page 91)

21. Form relationships with families • HOW????

22. Communication Professional competence Commitment Equality Advocacy Trust