Special+Education+Teacher+Interview

Special Education Teacher Interview

 I interviewed Joan Sykora, who is a 5th, 6th, and 7th grade special education teacher. She has a pullout class for her students and also offers supplemental assistance. She teaches in Alexandria, Mn. She said that she thinks special education is the most rewarding field of education and she really enjoys having her students for 2-3 years. She feels like that gives her a lot of time to get to know the students and really understand their needs. I also interview Liz Reynolds, who is a special education teacher in the Blue Valley School District.

 When Joan starts to deal with lesson planning, she plans the whole year out. She looks at each student’s IEP and determines how many days and hours she needs to be with them. Student by students she marks in a calendar when she will be with the children. She also has a three-ring binder for each student to keep all their work, study guides, and assignments in it. Joan said that many times lesson plans are changed at the last minute or don’t get finished, so she keeps track of what she intended to do, and what she actually did every day. This gives her an idea of what is too much and what isn’t enough to keep her students busy. She uses these notes from year to year to plan her lessons.  Liz said that she has teachers that are great to collaborate with. She said she co-teaches a 5th grade math and reading class or collaboration and lesson planning has to take place every week. For her own students, she has a few scripted programs that she can use. Since all the students are different, she uses different programs or even parts of programs for each student.

 As for data collecting, Joan said it was hard to narrow it down to one way because all the students are different and are assessed differently. For her supplemental students, the ones she doesn’t pull out, she uses their online grades as a way to check that they are getting their work done and are staying on top of things. For her pull out students she keeps individual charts to track their organization, behavior, work completion and effort for the day. She likes to have data on all those things because it helps to quickly see if the child is having a rough day and try to focus on the problem as fast as she can. Their district does testing called “Great Leaps” and “AIMS”. The results from these tests also go into her data collections on each student.  Liz said that data collection was extremely important, and couldn’t stress it enough. She said that it is constantly happening in her classroom. She usually sets aside Fridays for data collection for their IEP goals. She wants to be sure that she has enough data for the students IEP goals progress monitoring reports. A lot of times she has to make collect data for new student referrals. She said this happens most in the elementary setting because most special education students are identified in the elementary setting.

 Joan said there are many modifications she makes with her students. She said she reads tests and quizzes to most of her students. This helps to ensure that the student understands the questions and a social studies test isn’t turning into a reading test for them. When students have writing assignments, she usually helps them get started by using “spider webs” (organizational charts). She said the students really enjoy using them and it helps them to clearly get on paper what they want to say. She also has a list that she will print off for students that have transition words for paragraphs. This allows the students to quickly find a different word to transition to the next thought. Her students use Accelerated Reader, but she doesn’t use the test on the computer. She will either make up her our questions, or simply have the students talk to her about the book. On tests that are multiple choice, she will reduce the choices from 4 to 3. For matching questions, she will cut the columns in half so the top 4 go together and the bottom 4 go together, as opposed to 8 words and 8 definitions all together. When there is an essay question on a test, she will be sure to go over the questions thoroughly with the students and help them organize their ideas, again with a spider web.  Liz said she uses many different modifications in her classroom and tries to help her students in other classrooms as well. Many times she has students that will use “break cards” when they are overwhelmed or need a sensory break. This helps the students stay in the regular education classroom longer and helps reduce behavioral problems.

 Joan said she absolutely loves collaborating with the regular education teachers. She said they have a great relationship and she couldn’t do her job without their help. She gets their lesson plans at the beginning of every week and then they usually sit down and visit about upcoming projects or big papers the students will be assignment soon. She said finding time that there are both on planning periods is difficult, so meetings usually happen before school, after school, or a few minutes here and there between classes. At the beginning of every year, Joan will give the teachers a list of modification for each one of her students. This way they have something to refer to and try before they come find her for more assistance. She also has one paraprofessional with her that she loves. She said that they sat down at the beginning of the year and figured out times of where and who she would be with. Joan and the Para are both flexible and she said that is a very important key. They also talked about expectations and what each student would need. She suggested having that meeting right away so there was no questions what role they were going to play in the cla ssroom and with each student.