Marty's Weekly Reflection: A non-teacher's view

I found this week’s topic and readings both provocative and somewhat surprising. I have not taught in the US public school system and am quite surprised in a very pleasant way that we are treating our special needs students with such good care. At least public law says we must treat these students with proper care and handling.

I learned much from the discussions with the current educators in this class. It seems that the caring I talked of above is more of a pipe dream than reality. Problems such as a lack of resources and lack of teacher training suggest that many school administrations need to address the possible problems of teaching our special needs students in an LRE. I’m not sure I have the answer but the frustrations that I read about in our posts suggest this LRE process is not working very well.

I visited a middle school in Virginia as an assignment for a previous class and saw a special needs student, with his special needs teacher, in an hour-long class. The student seemed to relate well in the class even though he used the same tools as all the others. The special needs teacher, though, was quite disruptive and seemed to be behind the rest of the class. I assume she was relearning this lesson as she would be expected to help the special needs student with the homework. The math teacher said this LRE kind of environment could be good for the special needs students, but didn’t seem to be controlled as well as it could have been. A general lack of background and training on both the instructors’ sides lessened the effectiveness of the learning environment for all students.