Michelle Koop - Chapter 2

Chapter Two

            Something that really stood out to me after reading this chapter is the organizational skills that teachers need to have when striving for inclusive teaching. I found myself becoming quite overwhelmed thinking of the amount of information I will have to keep straight in my future classroom. If I want to become the kind of teacher that I intend on becoming I am going to have to take time to get to know my students personally and academically. If they are not thriving in my classroom, like Ms. Sauvé, I am going to have to figure out why. I was shocked at the amount of work Ms. Sauvé needed to go through to discover what Andy needed. Lucky for us, there are so many resources to aid us in this organization. This chapter touches on the role of resource teachers, principals, parents, in-school teams, psychologists etcetera. I also found it very helpful to see a situation in which the ADAPT strategy became very useful. I still feel that meeting my student’s academic needs is going to pose a huge challenge in my career as a teacher, but I am thankful for the systems and strategies that this chapter highlights to help me meet those challenges with more confidence.

            Another highlighted theme of this chapter is communication and its important role in the education system today. From kindergarten to graduation, students go on an educational journey through many different teachers as well as multiple schools (depending on the area). To ensure that all students are properly cared for I would assume that healthy communication needs to be established between teachers, parents and even schools. If an exceptional student is constantly having to be re-evaluated each time that they walk into a new classroom, I think that some changes need to occur. Of course re-evaluations are necessary to an extent, but there should be a level of understanding towards their needs as they move up from grade to grade. That is why I love the systems that this chapter discusses, such as the in-school team. With a group of people all communicating, an assembly of people is created who know a student specifically. Information is than recorded about how to create an educational environment where a specific individual can thrive. Recording information is a part of teaching that I never had really thought about before reading this chapter. I have thought about teaching strategies, different students, challenges I will face, but not recording information about what works with my students and what does not. It seems after reading this chapter that keeping a detailed of my student’s challenges and needs would be very helpful. That way I can remember what is specifically working with a student and I can pass on this information to the next teacher that will have that specific individual in their classroom the next year. All of this would of course be done in confidence for the purpose of creating a continued environment of inclusivity and progress for that child.   

            The section that mentions specific challenges for secondary school teachers really caught my attention. As a high-school teacher, my role in inclusive education will be different compared to an early-years educator. In the early-years of a child’s education the teacher is more on the look-out for potential exceptionalities that their students may have. By the time these students are in high-school, those who are in need of an IEP will already have one. My challenge is to adapt and accommodate for every student in my classroom, no matter the curriculum. My challenge is to take the complex curriculum of my grade 12 English class or my grade 11 drama class and make it applicable to everyone. Once students get to high-school, the goals are more concrete and rigid, this creates a greater responsibility on the teacher to make sure that each student is faced with an academic challenge, but a fair academic challenge. These issues are also brought up when talking about Barbara’s academic challenges and SMART IEP’s.

Discussion Question: In your experience have you found that schools communicate with each other when passing along an exceptional student? Should they or Should they not? Why or why not?

Jessica McCorrister - Chapter 1

After reading Chapter 1 of the text I am more informed of the terminology used in Canada’s inclusive society. The UDL and DI models are going to very useful for the students in this class especially when we think about lesson plans. It was nice to see an overview on what each province and territory has, that administers the needs for exceptional students within their school system. I learned a lot about all the students with different types of disabilities that are considered exceptional learners Like the introduction I am more aware that is a lot of hard work to teach exceptional students. I was not aware of how the classroom views the adaptions teachers make for exceptional students. I liked that they ended the chapter with the ADAPT Strategy that will be very helpful when teaching in an inclusive classroom and I am very excited to use this strategy one day.

Jessica McCorrister - So you want to be a Teacher

Throughout my education experience I’ve noticed that all teachers do teach differently to each student. No student is the same learner. Everyone thinks and understands differently from one another. So I understand when the author is telling the reader of how using different teaching methods for inclusive classrooms is effective for all students. Inclusion allows for students to be taught everything everyone else is being taught but in a way in which they will understand. Before reading this introduction I did not know the problems teachers face while teaching an inclusive class but I believe that all students have the right to learn no matter the struggles teachers go through to teach them. I like that the author shows the reader an exercise on how to make it a little bit easier and better for the teacher to teach an inclusive classroom. After reading this introduction I feel so much more aware of inclusive classrooms and how it might be to teach in one.

Discussion Question:

How else can teachers make it easier on themselves to teach in an inclusive classroom?

Is this the correct place to post it?

Michelle Koop - Chapter One

Chapter One

Something new that I learned from this chapter was really quite basic: I did not realize that the definition of an exceptional student included gifted children as well as children who are struggling academically or physically. This new information gave me a much broader definition of what this course will contain as well as what my job expectation will require of me when I step into my own classroom.

            Similarly to the Introduction I became increasingly thankful for the country that I live in while reading this chapter. I am thankful that inclusion is a law. I am thankful that it is considered ‘Canadian-like’ to do everything that we can to help exceptional individuals live their life to the fullest. That is a great goal to strive for. This chapter opened up my eyes to the needs that schools have for exceptional students. There are more simple issues to take care of involving complete accessibility to more complex issues to think about involving academic and emotional care. It is our job as educators to keep our eyes open to any way that we can break down any barriers that our exceptional students may have in the schools that we teach in.

            I found the UDL and DI models very informative. Thinking about modeling lesson plans in comparison to designing a building I found helpful to think about. I want my lesson plans to be accessible to all, just as an architect designs a building to be accessible to all. The use of various teaching methods, group work being heterogeneous, regular feedback and encouraging students to connect what they know to what they are learning are all things that I gleaned from the UDL as well as from the DI. I also believe that it is important to know the students that you are teaching, their interests, their lives and their academic levels. This way you can approach your classroom with a more educated idea of how to teach in an inclusive way. I found this chapter very informative and full of very helpful statistics and ideas to think about.

  

Kaylee Colter "So you want to be a teacher"

Reading the introduction to the text book has already got me thinking about all the different students that I will get to teach when I become a teacher, I haven’t really thought about teaching exceptional students before and all the unique challenges that will come with teaching. It is clear that we as teacher will have to be very opened to different ways and rates of learning that will change with each individual student. In the classroom that I am in this year there is an autistic student and she requires a little bit more help when all the students are doing individual work, but she is still leaning the same things that all the other students are. Sometimes she is a little bit slower at completing her work and she has a lot harder time staying focused but it is great to see her being involved in all the same activities as the rest of her class, so that she feels included and no different from any of the other students.

After reading the four steps to fallow on how to improve the quality of learning, step two is still a little bit unclear to me, it seems too broad. Decide what you will do about the concern, I guess once we are further into the class I will have more ideas about what to do at this step.

How can we make sure that our exceptional students are getting the extra help they need without neglecting the other students in the classroom?

Michelle Koop - So You Want to be a Teacher

I really appreciated the way that this beginning chapter of the text introduced the subject matter. Yes, I want to be a teacher. I have wanted to be a teacher for a very long time, but I find that the more you want something, the rosier your glasses become and the harder it is to see the challenges that may lie within those desires. Teaching inclusively is a challenge. It is a necessary and rewarding challenge, but a challenge none the less. This introduction addresses this challenge, the reality as well as the necessity.

Even though I know that teaching is a profession I would thrive in, I still want to be as prepared as possible when I enter my own classroom for the first time. On the first page of this introduction it describes the author’s goal: helping educators to be confident and competent when teaching in an inclusive classroom. This is what I desire: confidence and competence. I want a deeper pool of knowledge when it comes to teaching inclusively.

This introduction also reminded me of how fortunate we are to live in Canada. I am proud to live in a country where inclusivity is prized. I am excited to walk into a career where I am going to be expected to strive to make my classroom a safe haven for each and every student. In fact, it is our legal responsibility as future educators! I confess that the pressure of succeeding does make me nervous, but even that issue to brought up in this introduction. We are not the cause of every problem that arises in our classroom, nor are we the solution to every issue that arises in our classroom. This is a fact that I think I will need to remember as I continue on in the faculty of education.   

This introduction also reminded me of my practicum last semester. The classroom that I was in only had 15 students, but within those 15 students were 15 very different brains and very different learning styles. I think the largest lesson that I learned during my time there was the challenge that different academic needs bring to a classroom and that my job as an educator is to meet those different needs. My cooperating teacher and I usually split the class into groups to cater to the different levels that they were at. I remember sometimes my CT would be perplexed thinking about how she could motivate one student, challenge another student and help another student catch up to the rest of the class all at the same time. Desiring an inclusive classroom, we too will need to face challenges like these in our future classrooms and even today in our practicums. I am thankful for a class like this where we have the opportunity to learn how to face those challenges, confidently and competently. 

Discussion Question: What are some ways that we can start the year off inclusively in our classrooms?