Who is Special Needs?

Who Is Special Need?

My question to you today is WHO IS SPECIAL NEED, meaning when you hear that question what is the first and possibility only thing that comes to mind.  Well I typed in Special needs LOGO'S in a search engine and this and many more pictures came up. Out of those pictures this one was one of the only ones that did not feature a image of a person with a physical or mental disability. Why is that? When a teacher goes to school to become a special educator or even a general educator they are taught that when you say special needs this means not only students with learning delays but also students that are way about there fellow peers academically. They need special help to be able to reach there full ability as well. 

 This image in my opinion shows many children that look similar (normal) and then one in a wheel chair (different). Where is my student with a degree at age 15 or the one with the stack of text books in there hand. I don't know but we have got to have something to point out the over achievers to. 

How about the one to the right with what looks like parents of a child with a physical disability and a baby. Nice picture but are they also there to help with the struggles that students and families having to deal with when children are so bored in class that they are acting out and getting in trouble or labeled as the BAD kid. Students have special need in education when you have to make accommodations for them to learn at there academic level. This does not always mean they are below. Accommodations need to be made to help students that are above there current grade level continue you strive for excellence and push themselves to do more or they will be board and board children tend to get in trouble.

    

Strategies to help your child in the classroom

My Special Needs Network

Added by PAM BROGDON on September 26, 2012 at 11:30am 

http://www.myspecialneedsnetwork.com/profiles/blogs/let-s-focus-on-successful-strategies-during-adhd-awareness-week

FOCUS on Successful Strategies for ADHD!

Below is a portion of the blog that I read and completely agree with. I think that if we could have more educators like Pam Brogdon or at least taught by Pam Brogdon there would be a whole lot less kids with issues in side an inclusive classroom. 

Throughout the years, I cannot tell you how many parents and teachers have come to me almost begging for suggestions to help children with ADHD be more focused in the classroom. I have several strategies that I am going to share with you today.Before I share a few proven strategies, allow me to add a “side note” on ADHD and medication. Whether or not you decide to put your child on medication is an issue for you and your child’s pediatrician. I am certainly not advocating one way or the other. However, if your child is on medication for ADHD, please do not think that the medication is the answer or cure all. Medication without a behavior plan is only masking the problem. The medication helps your child to “slow” down enough to be able to work with a behavior plan. The medication alone is not the answer. So, PLEASE, if your child is on medication, make sure the school’s counselor, resource teacher, or someone who has knowledge of developing positive behavior intervention plans, sits down with you and your child to develop a plan that will help your child replace the inappropriate behaviors with appropriate behaviors. This is critical to your child’s success academically and socially. If you have questions about developing positive behavior plans, I will be happy to answer them!
Okay, let’s get back to strategies to help your child in the classroom!
Often, a child with ADHD will focus on something other than the lesson activity; such as the eraser on his/her pencil or a bug crawling up the wall, or a tiny piece of paper, etc.. When this happens, have the teacher walk by his desk and discreetly place a small note saying, “Pay attention”, or “Stop Talking”, etc. These can be designed and then printed so the teacher has them available all of the time. This does not stop instruction and it does not bring all of the attention to your child; yet, the child is re-focused. It is very effective.Does your child have a difficult time keeping his/her bottom in the seat? He is either sitting on his knees or turned sideways, etc. (Sound familiar?) . Have him hold both arms straight out by his sides and turn around. The area that is covered by his arms is called his “personal space”. Suggest that the teacher use masking tape and mark off his personal space around his desk. Tell him that he can stand, lean sideways out of his desk, anything that helps his concentrate…..as long as he does not go outside of his personal space. At first, teachers are very hesitant because of the other children. But once they try it, they realize that keeping the child contained within his personal space, keeps him from getting up and walking around or falling out of his desk, etc. It works! Another option: there are seats available on which the child can sit and freely move around in his seat. These also are very effective !For teachers: If the child is having a lot of difficulty focusing…..do a very quick gathering of data. Determine how many times within an hour, he interrupts or has to be redirected. (A simple way for doing this without interruption of instructional time is to put 15+ rubber bands on one wrist. Every time the child exhibits the behavior being measured, just switch one of the rubber bands to the other wrist. At the end of the time frame, count how many rubber bands were moved. That tells you the frequency of the behavior.) Once the frequency is known, you can start the process of reducing the behavior. If the child needs refocusing 5 times per hour, make it a goal to refocus him 4 times per hour (you can keep reducing the goal until the behavior is down to an acceptable number). Give him 4 pennies to put in his pocket or a cup on his desk, set the timer for one hour (or whatever time frame ), each time the child exhibits the targeted behavior, have a signal for him to go put one of the pennies in a jar/cup on the teacher’s desk. If at the end of the time frame, he still has pennies left in his pocket, then he gets a reward which was agreed upon before the plan began. The children love it and it is very effective in reducing unacceptable behaviors and refocusing ADHD children!Even on medication, children with ADHD MUST move. If a student is getting fidgety, have him take a note to another teacher. (You have already established this plan with another teacher who is next door or on the same hall) Have the teacher tell him to wait just a minute and she will give him an answer. Have the teacher wait a few minutes, then write something on the piece of paper and give it back to the child. This will give him the opportunity to move and then refocus.Another way to get the need for movement out, is to have a box containing some books or something that has weight. Tell the child that you need his help in sliding this box to a different spot within the room. In moving the box, the child will spend extra energy and be ready to refocus! 

I wrote a post not that long ago with some of these same suggestions but she just explains them so well and I thought that it would be good to share them again from someone else's perspective. Remember that most of these strategies can work with most kids not just ADHA kids. Students will loss focus for all kind of reasons and if some of these strategies are already embedded in  your classroom then use them.  

Don't forget to click on the link above and read more of what Pam has to say. Also please contact her with any questions she is amazing. 

The Hard Decisions

The Hard Decision 

As we all try to raise are children to the best of ability there are always hard decision that have to be made. I feel that if they were not hard to some degree then they were not all that important.   

Being a parent is not an easy job for anyone but it is the most rewarding one that you will ever have. Being a parent of a child with special needs is that, times 100. I don't care if your child is severely disable or is so far advanced from there peers they have a special need and that just adds to the everyday challenge of raising your child to be the best person THEY can be when they grow up.  If we sit back and let society dictate what is right and wrong for our children then we are not doing the best for them. Society is based on the average or basic person and that is not who I am raising, I don't know about you. 

I think that there is a find line when it comes to inclusion in the classroom of a standard public school / Charter school to a all in inclusive classroom in a specialized school. As much as I want to help my child grow up to the best person THEY can be and reach there full ability level, I also think that in order to so they need to be able to survive in the real world. With inclusion, students of all ability levels get to work together and I think that the public school system has come a long why over the years. With that being said I also think there is still a long way to go and this is where it gets HARD to make the right decision. I know my child is getting a good education in his current standard inclusive classroom but is he getting the best educations? I also know I could pull him and place him is a specialized school where he could easily reach his full potential academically but what about all the other great skills he is learning in the setting he is in now? Skills I feel are vital to being able to live a full and productive life in the real world. 

Medication vs. other forms of treatment plans for special needs. Another HARD decision we have to make for our children. I know personally I am still undecided with this one, I am currently doing both for my son. I also believe that there is never one right answer for every child.

This is why I think that making the decision for your child's treatment is so hard, because you can only lesson to other people's advice or opinions but ultimately you know your child best. Education is never over as a parent or at least should not ever be over because if you do not stay educated on what is available or harmful for your child no one else will. Medication changes daily and so does your child's body, no matter how often you take them to the doctors for check ups you see them daily and so you need to know all you can about the medication YOU chose to have your child take. Doctors can only make suggestions we as parents have the final say. When it come to psychology therapy / behavior therapy or any other kinds of therapy you also need to educate yourself on the person providing the services as well as the services themselves. Children can not be helped with an hour visit once a week so if you are not in there learning what is being taught and how to teach it yourself then it will never work to its fullest potential. You are with you child daily so you need to be the one helping your child.  

Just remember Education is the best help we can give ourselves in making hard decision.                     

Special Education Charters schools vs.General Charters schools Inclusion Debate

In the Education Weekly  

December 13.2014 

Special Education Charters Renew Inclusion Debate

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/09/17/04specialneedscharters.h34.html

In this article it talks allot about the difference between a Specialized Charter School vs. General Charter Schools. After reading this I think I had more questions then I did when I started, I think for me the questions stem more about the inclusion debate. As I have shared in past posts I am all about giving each student what THEY need to became a better student. I have always been a strong believer in the inclusion component over segregation. As I read through this article I find parts such as the quote  "The worry is that we will move back into a separate environment, and there's a fear that separate is not equal," Ms. Jones said. "It's a complicated discussion because parents are choosing it [the special charter school] where it exists." that is shared in this article that scares me.  A small portion of the article:

Parents go to great lengths to meet the special and often demanding needs of children with disabilities. In Diana Diaz-Harrison's case, that meant opening a charter school in Phoenix for her son, who has autism—and for other students like him—when she felt his needs weren't being met in regular district-run schools."For my typical daughter, we chose a charter school that specializes in the arts … that meets her needs," said Ms. Diaz-Harrison. "So for my little boy with autism, what can meet his needs? A school that can help him with his communication, ease his anxieties, help him move forward and make academic progress. We didn't have a school like that—now we do."The school that Ms. Diaz-Harrison opened this year—the 90-student Arizona Autism Charter School—is among dozens of charters nationwide that focus on serving students with disabilities. Such schools help counter the long-running criticism that charters don't serve enough of those students.But they also renew questions about the best educational environment for students with disabilities: Is it a specialized school or a more mainstream setting with general education students?While parents of students with disabilities often push for special charter schools, some experts call those efforts misguided. They point to federal law and related research that prescribe that such students be integrated as much as possible with typically developing peers."Within the special education community, there's a concern about these schools—a worry that they're concentrating kids with learning disabilities into one school, and they're not interacting enough with other kids," said Paul T. O'Neill, the co-founder of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, in New York.

After reading this I think you will have a lot more questions as well and this is not a bad thing. The more questions we have the more we will do to seek out the answers and then we will be able to help more people / families.  

How easy accommodation can be, yet we still don't use them

How easy can Accommodations Be to use in the classroom? As easy as a post-it note or a as complex as a full blown student lead checklist. 

When a student that seems to know the material that is being taught to them but does not do well on test or larger assignments  there might be a problem. This problem for the most part can be avoided or at lease lessoned with a simple accommodation of the teacher part. When they are handed a front and back packet of information or 3 and 4 pages stapled together most students that are low reader or that have problems with writing will shut down with out even giving the information on the packet a chance. With something called chunking this can be avoided with little effort. Simply separate the assignment / test into smaller sections and only hand then one section at a time.  This every easy method can be used to also help students that need to move around during longer assignments by allowing them to get up after completing each section  and pick up the next section.

With a simple post it note you can give a child a positive message or even a warning without engaging with them or calling attention to them. Post it notes are also a great way for students to interact with the teacher with out interrupting the class discussion. You can use different colors to represent different questions. You can also have them write down what they would like to say and place it at the top of there desk so the teacher can walk by and glance over to make the decision whether to engage or not.

Checklist can take a few more minutes to create and explain how to use them. Once you put in the time to make one there is not much else a teacher would need to do other then a few verbal reminder to have the student us them.

This is a great idea to have for students that might need to take a few minute break. They could learn to start understanding when they are getting upset and use it as a way to calm down or avoid get to the anger stage. Students can also use this when the teacher says I think you might need a minute to yourself or even just because sitting in a classroom chair for to long can just be to much for some student. This is every easy to use, you print out a few and fill them out with the students name and the teacher information and then give it a cool name like HOT PASS and make sure that the staff in the building are aware of this pass and then laminate them and hand them to the students to use a needed thought out the year. For younger students teacher my want to find a place in the classroom for the passes tome located as to not have them lost as often.

 Ok I could go on for days with items that would make life easier for students. With just little bit of creativity and thinking out of the box you can help so many students be successful in school.



Reblog post - Accommodations in the classroom

“Nothing is so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals”. Quote by Thomas Jefferson!


I read this quote on a special education blog tonight and I wanted to share it with you. The blogger's name is Pam Brogdon and she has some really great points and strategies for getting general education students and teachers to better understand how accommodation for learning disabled (LD) students are Not an unfair advantage that they are missing out on. The Blog I am referring to is Classroom Accommodations?!? THAT IS NOT FAIR !!!!. Please take a minute and read what she has to say. I really recommend reading more of her blogs on special education because she has a lot of really good information.One thing I have to say is that when you read her stuff you have to remember that she is coming from the school prospective. As a school employee in the special education department and as a parent of a student with special needs I try to always see both sides before I truly say I agree or disagree with people. I can see where she is coming from and it would have been nice to have read her blog a long time ago for me because I could have used some of her strategies in my IEP meetings. As a parent it would have been nice to have had someone like her in my son's IEP meetings to help both sides (school and parents) better understand the accommodation process and reasoning for each accommodation.  

From the Sociological prospective I have to say that Pam shares a lot of points that would work with the four dimenstions of McDonaldization (Rational Action). It sounds like the IEP meetings that Pam has been involved in she has a lot of Control as well as the meetings run with Efficiency to help keep the team on topic. I also gather from this blog that it is important for classrooms with LD students to have a strong amount of predictability built in to them to help all the students not just the LD students.      

Test Post

My first post ever, I am new to blogging so please bear with me until I get the hang of this. I'll be writing this blog on the fight that parents have to go though to get what their children deserve in the way of special services in school for my SOC 111 course that I'm taking this fall, 2014, with Dr. Y."
I will be trying to help parents like myself, find out what we can do to get what our kids not only need but deserve in the way of services in the schools. I am not only talking about kids that have problems with learning but also the kids that are advanced in areas and deserve to be taught at their level not at the grade level they are currently enrolled. I will be talking about the twice exceptional rule that applies to our children and much much more. I hope to get lots of great input and knowledge though this blogging experience and be able to continue even after my class is over.
Just as a heads up I do have required posts that I have to make for class purposes so if some post are more from the sociological perspective that is why. Thanks so much for reading.