7A: Courtney Cruz Response to Karen Pavlansky

7A-Courtney Cruz- Response to Karen Pavlansky

Dear Karen,

I enjoyed reading your research paper entitled Educating the Exceptional Student: Personnel Challenges.  I very much appreciate your take on this topic.  Often, it’s the teachers’ voices that do not get heard.  I am sure that all teachers can relate to the challenges that you addressed. 

As stated on page 6, “Education is changing everyday…”  This statement rings so true in the ears of educators.  Just when we think we have things figured out or we have been “professionally developed” something changes.  It’s one of the challenges.  Too many changes in a short amount of time, causes for frustration levels to rise and most importantly, students are not able to reach their full potential. 

In response to the part about Ohio’s Report Card: I work in a special education school for students with learning disabilities.  Year after year, our school falls short and we get a failing grade according to this report card.  Our OAA scores fall short every year.  I understand that the state needs to hold schools like ours accountable; however, it is disheartening when teachers at this school pour all their time, energy, resources, and love into these struggling students and they are looked down upon as poor educators at the state level.  These students have been taken out of the general education setting, because their parents felt their needs weren’t being met not only academically but most importantly, emotionally and socially.  The beast we have to overcome is the disability.  What the state doesn’t see is the “realness of the disability” and expects that somehow these students are going to enter our school 2 or more grades behind in a given subject and within 6 months be able to take an on-grade level assessment.  Often many of the ideas coming from a government level such as Obama’s Blueprint for Reform look really great on paper, but it’s the implementation as you have pointed out that are really challenging. 

Inclusion proves to have “good outcomes for children with disabilities: reaching individualized education program goals, improving communication and social skills, increasing positive peer interactions”. 

Key Points:

95% of disabled children are educated in inclusive classrooms.

96% of classrooms are inclusive

UDL: Universal Design for Learning will ensure that all students can access academic content information.  The 3 elements of UDL are as follows:

1^st: multiple means of representation

2^nd: multiple means of action and expression

3^rd: multiple means of engagement

RTI: multilayered system for struggling learners which provides increased intense levels of academic interventions and assessment

PBS: systems-level, problem solving, data-based approach to reducing problems with behavior

“Classroom teachers are required to teach a more diverse student population than ever before, while also being held accountable for meeting the individualized needs of special education students placed in their classrooms.  Most of this is done with little or no input from special education administrators.”

I think you hit a very important point here.  There is a lack of collaboration for many reasons among gen. education and special education educators.  If these forces were able to combine more how much more could the community of learners be positively influenced? 

“Having a positive school climate can counteract some of the stress associated with teaching students with disabilities.” 

This was my favorite quote from your paper, because this positive climate radiates throughout my school building every single day.  Something I learned that also influences this climate: “Be flexible”… in your teaching, in your thinking, and in your perspective.  

                                                                      Thank you again for sharing!

                                                                      Courtney