1/28/07 Update
We did start our special ed. labs, and this already helped to clear up a lot of the questions I had. For example, special education students will have an IEP, so I will obviously know about their situation and what my job is as the student's teacher. We were given a handout that explained IDEA, so now I understand the legal aspect much better as well. (Actually, before I had never really considered this as a prospective legal issue.) We also read an article about inclusion and discussed benefits and drawbacks as a class, which gave me a better view of the feelings I had before about my experience with inclusion. One of our assignments is to do some observations of a particular student in the classroom we do our field work in, so I talked to my mentor teacher about this as well. She said she really doesn't have many special ed. students, but there is a student who is mildly autistic in one of the classes I observe. If there was any question about my lack of experience here, I had no idea this student was in special ed. My mentor is looking into school policy about what she can disclose as far as his case, so I will be able to find out a little more soon, but it will be interesting to begin my observations and field teaching with this in mind.

1/21/07 My experience with "special needs"
In eight grade we had an inclusion program, so that special education students were in the same class as the other students. I understand why this is great for them because they go through their lives feeling stigmatized and maybe resenting being left out, but I hated it. I was already probably on the "gifted" end of the spectrum, since there weren't honors classes yet, so it drove me crazy when we had to go slower so the other students could get extra attention. I especially hated it when the special education teacher, who co-taught in all of these inclusion classes, taught, because she was more experienced at teaching to their level, (I thought she treated us like we were in kindergarten) so for me it meant we would go even slower than usual. It also didn't help that I had "inclusion" classes for 4 out of 7 classes each day, which meant I had the same peers in all of my classes, and the special education teacher that I really didn't like, was impossible to avoid. (Of course, she was also my homeroom teacher!) So that's a little background on my own experience, (or lack thereof) with "special needs" students in school. In high school for the most part everyone was kept seperate, there were several different tiers of "special needs" classes. I never really understood the difference between them, and never was very interested in finding out. Now that I am going to be a teacher, I am realizing how inadequate my experience with this topic is, and hope to change this so that I know how to best interact with all of my future students. Our special education labs start this week, so hopefully that will be a start for me in this project!

For my inquiry project I will be researching and learning about special needs students in the classroom. Some (obviously not all) of the things I would like to look at are: which students are "special needs" in the classes I observe? (I will then pay closer attention to how they interact with their peers, the teacher, etc.), how do teachers know about these special needs- is it common knowledge in the school, do parents or counselors tell them?, what are different levels of "special needs," why are they classified like this, etc. (I am especially interested in emotionally impaired.) Basically I just don't know very much about the topic so I am interested in learning whatever I can get my hands on.