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If you follow my blog you know I have huge issues with placing an adult into a Special Education classroom with no Special Education Training. As we know Georgia allows a person to teach SPED if they can just pass the test or if they go through the controversial "Teach For America" program. I am sorry to all you TFAs out there but I am no fan. My school has gained a special ed teacher through the Teach for America program and she is already extremely overwhelmed. She came into the school and immediately put the TFA ideas into implementation, surprisingly they did not work. She is doing a few inclusion classes and the teachers she work with are having a real hard time. So the question is "Was she adequately prepared for the job?" In my opinion NO! How could someone with only a summer's worth of training be prepared to take on the role of a special educator. I mean how many IEP's has she actually seen or how many kids did she actually get to work with before starting. I am not saying that the TFA program is always bad, we do have two science teachers who are doing a banging job.
Also at the high school my school feeds into, they placed a TFA in an MOID classroom! Now how can anyone validate that this is ok? There are so many issues that go on day to day how can this TFA ever be ready? Does he truly understand mental retardation? When i spoke with him at the beginning of the year he said all he was told was that he would be teaching special ed, not MOID. So where is the justification? Please show me! ALL SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO COMPLETE A DEGREE IN THE FIELD OR HAVE ADEQUATE EXPERIENCE! I am sorry if you disagree with me, but it is how I feel. Would you trust your child to a nurse or doctor who only had a summers worth of training or one who just passed a test? I definitely would not! Please leave you comments and thoughts!
Addendum!!!!
I want to clarify that I do not think that there are any teachers who are excluded from my above post. There are some people out there who do have a knack and can pick up quickly, I just do not feel that it is the majority.Of course someone who is familiar with special ed by way of teaching experience, having a child who is disabled etc, would have an easier time. I am talking about the people who are completely new without exposure.
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New Activity Board Templates added in right column, look for the orange type!
I phone Apps for special needs click here
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Georgia Special Education Teacher Preparedness
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2 comments:
I'm one of those teachers that do not have any formal training in special education. I am now going in to my 18th year of teaching overall and my 4th year of teaching in a self-contained classroom for students with profound multiple disabilities. The learning curve has been steep but I would never say that I was anymore unprepared for this job than someone with formal training would be. Each of my students is so unique in their needs that there just would not be a course that is specifically about any of them. I came to this job with 14 years of junior/seniour high teaching experience, 7 years of experience parenting a child with Down syndrome (by the way, I also feel that I'm doing a good job of parenting him despite the fact that I had no training in parenting children with disabilities before he became my son), a couple of years experience volunteering for Special Olympics, six years of having very close friends with children with disabilities, and three years of sitting on a committee to implement adaptive technology in to all IEPs in our school division. By the way, before that, I also ended up teaching high school computers right up to the grade 12 level simply because I personally cultivated my interest in it. I have probably spent less than half of my teaching career actually teaching the subject that I was trained to teach (mathematics).
One of the key things that I feel all educators should be aware of is the fact that everybody will have their own unique learning style. Sometimes we are going to come across people who can learn more from doing independent research then they will ever learn from sitting in a traditional classrooom (be it grade school, high school, college or grad school).
And as we all know, training does not always guarentee that someone is going to be able to do it. I've had some of those trained nurses you talk of and believe you me having papers did not make them any better!
There are going to be exceptions to every rule. I'm just very glad that when I applied for this job the people who hired me believed that if someone has a true passion for it, they will learn what they need to learn to do it right.
It's nice that you have such a passion for teaching students with disabilities. They deserve a proper education, just as every child does.
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