June 20^th, 2014

            One of this week’s topics was on preparing a classroom and accommodating for students with visual impairments.  I found this fairly interesting, but also hard to take in, because I have not yet worked with a student with a visual impairment.  I found that the module had lots of great suggestions to teach a child with this type of disability.  I have not yet seen a TVI in a Canadian school, so I wonder how many there are, and at what rate are students with visual impairments included in Canadian schools. I wonder if most visually impaired students in my province go to a particular school for the blind.  I know there is one in my city.  I would be curious to see how many students with visual impairments are actually included here.

            As I read about inclusion, and am asked to examine my own attitude towards inclusion, I am finding that although I fundamentally agree with inclusion, I am also harboring amounts of anger towards inclusion in general.  I am a teacher in a private Christian school that receives a greater percentage of students with special needs than your average population.  Through inclusion, I have experienced great joys and successes through seeing my students grow and achieve, but the other side of the story is that it sometimes feels like many students with special needs take up the same amount of time as ten “regular” students.  With all the IEP review meetings, special report card writing, accommodations and modifications to learning material, and especially the amount of time it takes to communicated with your Special Educational Assistant, I often end up feeling frustrated and tired.  While I believe that these students deserve to be included in the classroom like all other students, my attitude demonstrates that I often feel begrudging towards have to do the extra work and effort it takes, to make their inclusion really successful. This does not feel good to admit.

            The instructions for this week’s journal state that I should write about inclusion from a biblical perspective.  We have yet to talk about a biblical perspective in this course.  I very much look forward to that, when we do.

            I guess my biggest take away so far is that fact that all students in the classroom benefit from changes made in the classroom to accommodate students with special needs. Good teaching practices for a student with a disability, will most likely be helpful to all students.  It is time to stop whining about the extra work for the few children, and remember that all will benefit. I am thinking, for example about my three autistic boys I had in my classroom this year.  None of them where capable of taking notes (of any kind). I would sometimes forget to photocopy notes for these three boys.  I need to remember that it will be beneficial for all my students to do these kinds of accommodations.  For example, I could give the photocopied notes to my ELL student, as well as the two students who were away that day.

Truthfully, I am feeling a little frustrated by this week’s topic.  Chapter two in the text concentrates fully on American Law to do with people with disabilities, especially pertaining to education.  While I fully understand the need to know about the legal processes, as a Canadian, it is difficult to see the usefulness and applicability of knowing these laws for my future career.  While I fully understand that I have chosen to take an American program, I wish that I could learn more about Canadian laws.  I tried to do a little research on my own, just using the internet as a resource, but quickly got bogged down.  I hope at some other point in this course I will have the time and ability to answer these questions about Canadian Laws that are still left unanswered.