Jim's response to Danielle Hackett's Special Education Preperation

Looking over the presentation, questions and paper I believe that teacher preparation for Special Education as well as regular education is very weak in our colleges and university.  I haven't had much experience with Special Education training having just started it myself.  I do however, believe that the teacher training I received from YSU was, for a lack of a better word, adequate.  First off, as an undergraduate student my first experience with anything having to do with education didn't come until I was in Upper Division. this is the time when a students starts to get into classes that deal with education and SOME fieldwork.  During this time, I recall having 1 special education class, which was primarily an overview class and no real help.  Unlike my Special Education Masters classes, my undergraduate classes prepared me for a 1950s type of utopian classroom setting.  in this setting every child is very well behaved, says yes sir and mam, has no disabilities, and is ready to soak up any tidbit of information the teacher presents that day.  there was no classes on how to handle behaviors, motivation, disabilities, etc.  there were, however, plenty of opportunities to write 12 page lesson plans because that is how real teachers write lesson plans. 
When I got my first teaching position in Florida, I felt like a fish out of water.  Very little of what I learned, was of any use to me in that setting.  When I moved back to Ohio and accepted a position at a charter school, I was placed in a multiple disabilities classroom.  Again, my teacher training did not prepare me for what I faced.  Everything I learned and dealt with came from the aid of other teachers or my own learning and research.  The research you did on in-service trainings jarred my memory of one particular training I attended.  After sitting for most of the day in a training on motivating the students, the CEO of our school took the stage and told us teachers that we were not permitted to incorporate anything we just learned in our classrooms.  That made me think and feel like they just wasted our time and needed something to feel the mandatory in-service day.  Alternative licensing was huge in Florida when I taught there.  I cant tell you how many people I met that were going after an alternative license because they wanted a change in career or were recruited from other countries.  one would think that colleges and universities that have been training teachers for decades would have it down to a science but, alas, no.  We are still fumbling around like the chips used for the Plinko game on The Price is Right,

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