2/22 ASD

I have been doing some research on Autism Spectrum Disorder, since that is what the only special ed. student in the classes I observe has. At first my research was not very productive because I kept finding articles and books that described diagnosis and treatment and didn't have much about adolescents with the disorder, since this is usually diagnosed in toddlers. Melissa was researching the topic too, since we field teach together, and she reminded me that I should search include "Teaching" in the search, and I found better results. (Obviously.) I did learn a lot about ASD from reading the general description and all the information about diagnosis, etc. which helps me understand the disorder in general. For example, now I know that I really don't have to worry about an un-diagnosed ASD student in my classroom, because it's pretty much impossible to miss in infants/toddlers, so it's not likely something a student would have developed later on and therefore had missed having been diagnosed. I also understand better why the name was recently changed to Autism Spectrum Disorder, since the student in the class I observe obviously has a very mild case. (He really only has one indicator or symptom off the lists I found.) I also learned that 1 in 4 with ASD experience seizures, which is a little scary, but if there was a possibility of that happening, I'm sure the IEP would mention it and I as a teacher would be informed of what to do in that situation. The websites/articles that I looked at that dealt specifically with teaching students with ASD were really interesting, and they reinforced the idea we've been talking about in our special ed labs that any accommodation you make for a special ed student will be helpful for any student. Many of the items on the list were things we've talked about in our methods course, like give an opportunity for choice, gage pacing and processing, and use activity-based instruction. Many of these things take no extra consideration because most teachers (hopefully) do them anyway since they know their students have varying interests. It was nice to have what we're learning reinforced by these articles. The one question I had involves the environment aspect of ASD, since these students may be extremely sensitive to sensory experiences. I guess this would again depend on the student and the IEP, but some of those sorts of things seem out of my control as a teacher. I can't force every student to sit still in silence so as not to bother their peer. I guess what I can do is ask the student what I can do to help him/her deal with such distractions.

On another note, I had my first response to my post on the a to z teaching page! It was from a early childhood special educator who works with 2-5 year olds, and she said her advice is to never view these students as kids I don't want in my classroom. It's heartbreaking to her to hear her little students referred to as "those kids." So my lesson learned here is the attitude part. I don't think I will have a problem teaching special ed. students in my class because I will have a good attitude about it, this is something I'm finding I really care about and I want to provide the best education possible to all of my students.

Another question I'm having is, with the new language graduation requirements, are more bilingual special educators coming up? It seems necessary, because even the kids that are in pull-out classes will have to take a language in order to graduate.

Here are the links to a few ASD websites that are pretty good:
http://chileda.org/resources/strategies.htm
http://www.education.gov/ab.ca/k_12specialneeds/autism.asp
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/autism.cfm

2/20-- Last week in our special ed. segment of class, our teacher told us to check out the michigan.gov website for special education; that it had a lot of great resources, such as descriptions of different types of learning disabilities. I was very excited about this, but when I got to the website I was disappointed. I don't know if I was looking in the wrong places, but all I could find were articles about the political aspect of special education, law suits and annual yearly progress, etc. I know this is an important part, but the special ed. teacher will handle most of those issues (right?) so as a general educator it wasn't very helpful. If I'm wrong feel free to inform me, but I feel that knowing about IDEA and the fact that I need to follow IEP plans is enough information for me as far as the legal issues go. I did find one fact sheet that I thought was interesting, as it was specific to Michigan. It compared the percentage of special ed students in Michigan to other states and explained IDEA. There was also a section titled "how is the impact of special education measured" that I thought was interesting, but it was only a few bulleted points. Then there were some statistics, which I found the most interesting--it stated the percent of MI students with an IEP that take the MEAP, and the trends were surprising. From 4th to 8th grade the percentage goes up, but it falls again in 11th grade in both math and ELA. (Does ELA mean English Language Arts?) I would have thought the percentages would be continuous, so I'm wondering why it is that more 8th graders with IEP's take the MEAPs. Also interesting was the rise in graduation rate for students with IEP's: in 1999 the number was 5,027, and in 2004 it was 8,358. This could mean anything though because they don't give the number of students with IEP's each year, so it might be that the program is getting better, but it could also be that there were just more students with IEP's, or just that schools are passing more of these students with lower standards to push them through the system. I just thought it was interesting that the information on the government website, which came recommended by an actual special ed. teacher, was so vague and inconclusive. I think it reflects the situation of the special ed. preparation that teachers receive--inconclusive in my opinion. How, after 6 class sessions, are we supposed to be prepared to really do the best we can to meet all of our students needs? (Okay, my dissatisfaction is a side note, back to the topic...) The link to that fact sheet is: http://www.mi.gov/documents/05-01FactSheet_123888_7.pdf
I think I'm done with that website, it seemed to be generally a waste of time. Another thing I did today is return to the AZ teacher forum (the link to that is in my last post) and create an account. I then posted a message about my inquiry project asking experienced teachers to leave any advice they feel is crucial for a teacher starting out, since I feel like our program leaves us unprepared. I was a little nervous about this since I'm not very into exchanging information on the Internet and I didn't know what was okay to say, etc. but I'm excited about hopefully getting some responses!
the link to my post is: http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=32427

2/13: A to Z Teacher Stuff Discussion Forum
Today I read a discussion forum on this website about special education programs from a teacher's perspective. It was really interesting to see general educators and special educators take sides. A special educator had had an experience in which a general ed teacher was rude to her because she missed class time to catch up on paperwork, and a whole discussion follows. I hadn't even really considered this aspect of special ed yet, but there seems to be some tension between the two groups, like both are ready to blame the other for not providing the best possible education for the student. This is why I want to find out more about special ed through this project so I can avoid being a teacher like that. It's sad that the two sides would push against each other instead of working together. I found this forum on Jessica's inquiry project page, so thanks Jessica- there was a lot of great Special ed. discourse between real teachers that will help me gain some insight into my project.
(The website is http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/ and the link to this discussion is here.