Friday, January 27, 2012

HIgh-Incidence Disabilities

        In my twelve years of teaching I have taught many students with a high-incident disability. I am constantly searching for new practices to try with all of my students, but especially for a student with a disability. Two things that consistently work with students is providing accessible instructional materials and providing extra time to complete assignments. Technology promotes and engages learning, which is why I attempt to incorporate it throughout lessons. By regularly using technology, I provide many visual and auditory representations of the information. I want learning to be authentic and meaningful so I avoid assigning meaningless activities, such as copying spelling words three times each. In addition, I provide repeated opportunities for students to grasp the concepts or skills. Working closely with the family members, since they know the child the best, reduces some of the time it takes to figure out what practices will be most effective. In addition, I have learned that rules and procedures may have to be adjusted for some students.

       I admit that I do not implement RTI (reading) as aggressively as I should. Since the classroom teachers are responsible for teaching this, it is hard to always dedicate the allotted amount of time for only three students. Currently, I am working with a set of parents who refuse to medicate their child for ADHD and any resource services. They feel that he will be able to catch up to his peers and "rise above this challenge". His previous teachers have tried to retain this child for the past two years, but the parents refuse this, as well. It has been a frustrating struggle for me to respect their point of view since I see how hard school is for their child, academically and socially. Deciding when a student should be referred for screening can be a difficult decision. One thing I want to try and avoid is over-identifying students for referral services.


       Determining the appropriate strategy for each individual student is a trial-and-error process. Patience and understanding are crucial when teaching high-incidence disabled students. Collaboration is so important for a student's success in school. I need to make a better effort to communicate with the resource, speech, and behavioral specialists at my school. This course is helping me to see the value in RTI, so that students are not being overly referred for services. When dealing with parents, I must practice humility and empathize with their choices. I have to accept that it is not my position to change a parent's mind about the well-being of their child.

2 comments:

  1. Abbey, I can only imagine how frustrating it has been for you to work with parents who refuse to seek options to help their child! That is almost unfathomable to me as a Mommy!
    It has been several years since I was in the classroom, but I am pretty sure that you do an informal RtI with all of your teaching practices. The idea of responding to the success or failures of the methods of teaching skills is such a basic core of good teaching. Classrooms that are so academically diverse are making this much more difficult, and makes formal RtI that much more necessary. It would be nice to be able to have the additional staffing needed to carry out this important task. Maybe our state and federal government will realize that education without proper funding will only hurt our nation in the long run!

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  2. I feel fortunate that at my school, our related arts teachers and our principal teach our third grade RtI math class once a week. The students we send miss their related arts class that day for the entire nine weeks. Parents have given permission. I honestly don't know how the classroom teacher would be able to provide a formal RtI class. Of course, we reteach lessons almost daily for all students.

    On another note, I also have a student this year that was diagnosed with ADHD when he was in kindergarten, and the parents refuse to medicate until he's in fourth grade! (They feel that fourth grade is when it will make a difference.) This child is so impulsive, and he struggles academically and socially. I respect their wishes, but I see daily how this student struggles with simple choices.

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