Special Needs Students in Mainstream Classrooms?

Are you challenging the learning of your special needs student, or are you being challenged?

I’ve recently spent some time working on a proposal to identify barriers for Māori students with special needs.  The reading I did threw shadows across some of my approaches to work, and the people who worked alongside me to build this understanding, threw even more shadows.  I thank them profusely.

Teaching special needs students has long been something mainstream teachers politely attend to.  This year, we are all being challenged to do more.  I’ve had the real pleasure of working in depth with principals, teachers and children who are in special schools over the past several years.  Believe me, the individual education plans for those children would leave a mainstream teacher gasping.  I accept that there is additional training and their class sizes are small.  But every child in each class is an individual, with very different needs (I’ve yet to see a reading group).  And each child is totally included in the classroom activities, which are designed to allow them access to learning.  They learn – in a real educational context, and their progress is monitored and plans adapted daily.  The progress may not be the milestones we are used to, but it is trackable progress nonetheless.  Parents are actively included in the child’s learning with a real open door approach. 

How does this feel for the mainstream teacher of a special needs student?  I’m guessing a little scary.  What are you doing about it?  Even scarier?  

ERO recently produced a report Including students with high needs that looked at how mainstream schools around the country included their special needs students and families.  On the basis of their report, ERO recommended that school staff should:

       ·     review the extent to which students with high needs are included across the school

       ·     implement a plan to extend the effective practice already in the school.

Now here’s the kicker.  ERO also recommended that the Ministry of Education:

       ·     build school-wide capability to support effective teaching for all students by extending effective evidence-based whole-of-school professional development programmes

       ·     review how well principal training and support fosters leadership for inclusive schools

       ·     consider, as part of the special education review, how effective mainstream schools, special schools, Group Special Education and Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour can work together to improve the level of inclusion in New Zealand schools.

So maybe help will be on its way shortly.  But if you are sick of waiting, give me a call J

they are different

I was at home this week when the phone rang ...
Hello
Hi Mum
...
Do you know which son this is?
Of course, I'm just picking my jaw up off the floor ...
hehe
You never phone me, in fact I don't think you have ever used a phone to call me!  What's wrong?

Well, nothing of course.  But our distance conversations since he left home 5 years ago had been purely Skype or text - or me ringing him.  So why the old fashioned phone call?  Ah, he had just got a VOIP account so he could use a generation friendly technology.  HE wasn't using a phone, it just rang MY phone.

At ULearn, one presenter talked about how this generation's brains ARE different. They can multi task (yes they can study with the music on, text and play video games), and therefore we need to adapt our methods to hook them in.  Layers need to be used to let them sift through the data and collaborate to ensure the learning is engaging and effective.  My son is a perfect example.  Phones are boring, but skype (chat, so he can multi task), text, voip, wave - different matter.  Did you notice that email was NOT on that list? It's too slow!  Anything that adds a bit of challenge and interest, and multiple points of entry and he'll use it.  So where's the twist in the approaches we are using to educate this generation?  Think about the courses or classes you run; what level of reliance on traditional resources do you have?  Are you expecting multi tasking or assuming that they are all like you?  We do tend to paint the world as we see it, how is that affecting the learning of those in your care?

The phone call? Oh, he was just going to pop up from Wellington with a mate in a helicopter and wanted to know which paddock was best to land in.  I think that phone call was worth the wait :)

Taking advantage of our past to inform our future

How to hold up a brick wall

I recently attended the ULearn conference in Christchurch and got to see some amazing feats of post-quake engineering.  It's really incredible what we can do today to ensure the delights of bygone days are not lost for future generations. On the other side, such a conference is focused not on what we did in the past, but what we can do now and potentially in the future.  This blend of desperation to sustain heritage while embracing the need for future focussing technology made me really sit up an think.  These wonderful buildings are part of what makes Christchurch what it is, but without the technology that has evolved from our past disasters (I'm in Napier - we know about such things), this earthquake would have been significantly more serious and lives would have been lost.  As it is, there are sad gaps in the landscape and in family function, but the buildings that were earthquake designed or proofed and families that had disaster plans in place, mostly suffered very little damage.

Christ's College steeple repairs

My question is, what are WE doing to 'earthquake proof' our children so they survive what the world will throw at them?  If we don't play a strong role in this, the cracks will prove to big to plaster over.

Oh, and by the way ... I won an i-pad at the conference.  How cool is that!!!