There is too much water in this soup.
By now almost everyone knows
about the shortage of teachers.
However, the shortage of special education teachers is dire. What makes matters worse is that the
attrition rate of special education teachers is twice that of general
education teachers. It is estimated
that between 82% - 99% of special education teachers are not ideally qualified
to be in serving in their present capacity.
As special education teachers are increasingly put into general
education classes the preparedness gap becomes even wider.
Then there is that pesky
special education student. Is she
academically challenged or is he very bright academically. Are there behavioral issues or is the student
very well socialized and/or docile? What about
the child with sensory challenges? These
challenges can be with acuity of the senses or with the perceptual organization
of the incoming stimuli so the child is dyslexic. Then there are the kids with orthopedic
issues. How is it that one special
education teacher is qualified to meet the needs of all these differing types
of challenges? More concerning is the
notion that there is ONE description of a student with special needs. Each administrator who plans for the special
ed kids in the school or system has a mental image of the needs of special ed
kids. That mental image can only fit a
minority of the children.
You cannot generalize special
education students. A child acting out
in a class may do so because the child is very smart and the work is very
boring. Or there can be processing
issues or sensory issues. Only a
trained person can sort out just what the particular challenges are for each
student. Yet increasingly there are no
specially trained personnel. No one
intervention will work all the time nor with all the kids.
We don’t even begin to pay attention to the
social emotional needs of the children.
The children need to learn about identifying their emotions, taking the
perspective of others, accepting responsibility for their own behaviors and
their roles and responsibilities in the larger community. There is no time in the general classroom to
address these needs and even if there were, there aren’t trainded personnel to
do the job. We need to put energy and
time into getting to know the child and her family. Families can tell us about their children
outside of school if we care enough to ask and have the time to follow up.
Special education has been
getting a very bad rap since the days of full inclusion and the need for
standardized testing to make sure kids in special ed are learning. But the truth is we haven’t had special
education in our schools for many years.
There is so much water in the soup, we might as well add the stones and
call it stone soup. There isn’t any
chicken in it so you know nothing is going to get better.
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