Personal Narrative: My Experience Of Working With Special Students

As a paraprofessional, it can at difficult, stressful, and complicating at times. The reason why I say this is because our duties vary from day to day activities, as I can relate to it. One of the major objectives during a day is that I have to remind the general education teacher that inclusion is the best way for my students to learn. It is essential to have a structured system of order, and this means that all students should receive the same expectations in a classroom regardless of a disability. My personal thoughts of inclusion are very similar to majority of teachers. It means to me that students with disabilities will be enrolled in general education classrooms, not just that, but the individual expectations should be similar to other

I had no professional experience dealing with special need children. However, my aunt had Down Syndrome and watching her mother dealt with issues relating to her Syndrome allowed me to understand the challenges she faced.

My first goal was to learn more about how to work with, support, and help people with disabilities. Along with this goal, I wanted to become more familiar with the experience of working with this population. I am studying to become an occupational therapist and am currently interested in working mainly with disabled children. I am also interested in the elderly population, but through this experience at Windsong Equitherapy and some shadowing at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, I am leaning towards working with disabled children. Aside from this goal, I also wanted to learn how parents and families with disabilities cope with having a child with special needs and the effect this has on the

I interviewed several service providers in my school, Stephen Knight Center for Early Education, that included the psychologist, special education teacher and a general education teacher. I interviewed Ms. Iris, the school psychologist, Ms. Kathy, the special education teacher, and Ms. Hilary, a general education teacher. Ms. Iris’ responsibilities include working with students who have social emotional needs. This can include behavior challenges, learning new social skills, managing grief, etc. She works directly with parents and teachers to provide resources regarding the child’s well-being, and ensure good attendance by setting up plans. Ms. Iris works with children in general education, counseling groups, and one-on-one situations, including special education minutes. Ms. Hilary is a general education classroom teacher. She is responsible for the well-being of her students academically, socially, physically and developmentally. Ms. Hilary also advocates for families and students to receive the support that they need to feel successful in their first years of school. Finally, Ms. Kathy is the staffing

After one year's work experience as a case manager, I want to return to academic study and undertake my graduate degree with The University of Texas- Pan American Master of Education in Special Education. As stated above, I work as a case manager with Aim, LLC, providing case management and mentoring by using intensive supervision services incorporating GPS monitoring to keep at-risk youth in school within the San Antonio and Judson Independent School Districts. Working with at-risk youth has made me come to the realization of a rapidly growing population, the special needs students. Many students with learning disabilities who lack proper evaluation skip school or at times even drop out due to not receiving the help they need to stay in school.

Working with those with special needs has given me a greater appreciation of the barriers they face on a daily basis and has allowed me to improve my patience and observation

Special Education is something that has been close to my heart for many years. Having two adult nephews with ASD has given me the unique experience of witnessing what the transition to adulthood is like for our students and their families and to see the struggles and challenges that they face along the way.

“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”, Buddha

As teachers we need to understand the stress that families can encounter with a child that has disabilities. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration. As teachers we need to encourage the parents or guardian to be involved with their child in side school just as well outside of school. When I am a teacher and I notice that one of my culturally diverse students with disabilities is dealing with behavioral issues that their parents must be as well. As a teacher I would need to first start in the classroom by implementing multicultural activities in the curriculum. I would also get in contact with the parents of the child and try to build a relationship with them and their child. The parents and I could then come up with similar discipline

I have had numerous opportunities to volunteer and work with children of all abilities. Many of these children had independent or concurrent learning disabilities, emotional problems, and/or behavioural problems. I met these individuals through organizations I volunteered or worked for, programs I organized, and through summer camps where I was a counsellor that all catered children with disabilities. I also have personal relationships with children of family friends.

I first would like to start off by saying, how lucky am I, for the opportunity to attend Colorado Christian University. I think some things in your life you were truly meant to do, and this truly being one of mine. I love working with children, and to have the ability to teach and invest in future lives is phenomenal. I always thought I would go into nursing fulltime as this was definitely one of my passions. I can remember being three years old saying “I want to be a pediatrician and help sick kids, Momma.” My Mom would say in return you can be whatever you put your mind to. And so from my youngest memories, I wanted to take care of children. In the future my biggest accomplishment would to be a Mother some day. I still believe it will happen.

1 in 45 people within the ages of 3 and 17 are diagnosed with autism. My brother and cousin are a few of the children that were. I love them very much and i will always be thankful for them because they made me who i am. They make me a better person in many ways and i will never be able the thank them, and my other family members enough for that. I love my family and friends and they make me who i am, but i was born with all of my characteristics and i would never change them.

I think that both knowing the subject and knowing the skills is important. In regards to special educator I believe it is more important to know skills because that is the area students in special education struggle with. As a secondary special educator I was assigned to teach science content with only have one course of science during college. I felt so lost when I first started, but when I focused on the unit I was teaching and how to teach it too my students things got easier. I collaborated with general science educators to help me learn the content and now in the middle of my second year I feel very confident teaching the material. It is more important for me to teach the skills of how to learn the material than it is to help the material

When I was asked to reflect on my experiences in EDSE 316 and the fieldwork, I had to think long and hard on how I would sum up four months of classes and fieldwork into four pages. I have learned so much about the various disabilities and how it has change the world of special education. I think a better term would be the “endless possibilities of education”. It wasn’t too long ago when children with disabilities would be stuck in a room in the back of school only to be seen in the beginning and end of the school day. They were the ones who rode the other buses and no one really talked about. This class has allowed me to speak of my own family and how special education impacted my life. I have a brother whose whole life was spent in the special education class, and my own sons with speech and learning disabilities who are now receiving special education services. It also allowed me to reflect on my own participation in the special education program in my early elementary years when I was struggling with my own speech disability. This class gave me the chance to see the timeline of special education, from its earliest beginnings to what it is now.

Special need students, like any other students interact with several people at school. However due to their disabilities, they are usually more disadvantaged because they need more assistance as compared to other students and when this is not taken seriously, they end up dropping out of school or graduating without acquiring the necessary career skills for them.