8 pages due in a few hours

In reference to Chapter 1 of the text, how do you envision special education having an impact on your teaching based upon individual planning, Specialized instruction, Intensive teaching, or Goal-directed curriculum design? You may want to reflect on pages 36-37 of the text.

An educator’s primary responsibility is designing and implementing instruction that helps students with special needs learn useful academic, social, vocational, and personal skills. A teacher should not wait patiently for an exceptional student to learn, attributing lack of progress to some inherent attribute or faulty process within the child, such as intellectual disabilities, learning disability, attention-deficit disorder, or emotional disturbance. Instead, the teacher should select evidence-based practices and then use direct and frequent measures of the student’s performance as the primary guide for modifying those methods as needed to improve their effectiveness. This, I believe, is the real work of the special educator. I find that overcorrecting students does not get the behavior to stop, but that encouraging those who are doing the right thing usually leads the others to follow suit.

All children exhibit differences from one another in terms of their physical attributes (e.g., some are shorter, some are stronger) and learning abilities (e.g., some learn quickly and use what they have learned in new situations; others need intensive instruction and have difficulty maintaining and generalizing new knowledge and skills).

The term exceptional children includes children who experience difficulties in learning as well as those whose performance is so advanced that modifications in curriculum and instruction are necessary to help them fulfill their potential. Thus, exceptional children is an inclusive term that refers to children with learning and/or behavior problems, children with physical disabilities or sensory impairments, and children with superior intellectual abilities and/or special talents. The term students with disabilities is more restrictive than exceptional children because it does not include gifted and talented children.

Impairment refers to the loss or reduced function of a particular body part or organ (e.g., a missing limb). A disability exists when an impairment limits a person’s ability to perform certain tasks (e.g., walk, see, add a row of numbers). A person with a disability is not handicapped , however, unless the disability leads to educational, personal, social, vocational, or other problems. For example, if a child who has lost a leg learns to use a prosthetic limb and functions in and out of school without problems, she is not handicapped, at least in terms of her functioning in the physical environment. Handicap refers to a problem or a disadvantage that a person with a disability or an impairment encounters when interacting with the environment. A disability may pose a handicap in one environment but not in another. The child with a prosthetic limb may be handicapped (i.e., disadvantaged) when competing against nondisabled peers on the basketball court but experience no disadvantage in the classroom. The term at risk refers to children who, although not currently identified as having a disability, are considered to have a greater than usual chance of developing one. The term is also used to refer to students who are experiencing significant learning or behavioral problems in the general education classroom and are therefore at risk of being diagnosed with a disability.

Although the pros and cons of using disability category labels have been widely debated for several decades (Hobbs, 1976a, 1976b), neither conceptual arguments nor research has produced a conclusive case for the total acceptance or absolute rejection of labeling practices.

Labeling is bad because it focuses on the child’s deficits, labeling makes it more likely that others will expect poor performance or bad behavior from the child, and labels may damage the child’s self-esteem.

Schools must use nonbiased, multifactored methods of evaluation to determine whether a child has a disability and, if so, whether the child needs specially designed instruction to benefit from education.

An individualized education program (IEP) must be developed and implemented to meet the unique needs of each student with a disability. The IEP specifies the child’s present levels of performance, identifies measurable annual goals, and describes the specific special education and related services that will be provided to help the child attain those goals and benefit from education.

Fluency is the combination of accuracy and speed that characterizes competent performance. A person who is fluent performs a skill automatically, without hesitations, as if by second nature. Whereas two students might each complete a page of math problems with 100% accuracy, the one who finishes in 2 minutes is much more accomplished than the one who needs 7 minutes to answer the same problems.

Employers with 15 or more workers may not discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability in the application and hiring process or in opportunities for advancement.

The ultimate goal of NCLB was that all children would be proficient in reading and math by 2014 and be taught by qualified teachers highly trained in their subjects.

Special education is, first of all, purposeful intervention designed to prevent, eliminate, and/or overcome the obstacles that might keep a child with disabilities from learning and from full and active participation in school and society. Special education provides three basic types of intervention: preventive, remedial, and compensatory.

PREVENTIVE INTERVENTION Special educators design preventive intervention to keep a potential or minor problem from becoming a disability. Preventive interventions include actions that stop an event from happening and those that reduce the negative outcomes of a disability or condition that has already been identified. Prevention can occur at three levels:

Primary prevention- designed to reduce the number of new cases ( incidence ) of a disability;

Secondary prevention- is aimed at individuals who have already been exposed to or are displaying specific risk factors and is intended to eliminate or counteract the effects of those risk factors.

Tertiary prevention- is aimed at individuals with a disability and intended to prevent the effects of the disability from worsening.

REMEDIAL INTERVENTION Remediation attempts to eliminate specific effects of a disability. The word remediation is primarily an educational term; to teach the person with disabilities skills for independent and successful functioning.

COMPENSATORY INTERVENTION Compensatory intervention involves teaching a substitute (i.e., compensatory) skill that enables a person to engage in an activity or perform a task in spite of a disability.

WHO We have already identified the most important who in special education: exceptional children whose educational needs necessitate an individually planned program of instruction.

WHAT Special education can sometimes be differentiated from general education by its curriculum—that is, by what is taught. Educators often use the term functional curriculum to describe the knowledge and skills that some students with disabilities need in order to achieve as much success and independence as they can in school, home, community, and work settings.

HOW Special education also differs from general education by its use of specialized, or adapted, materials and methods.

WHERE Special education can sometimes be identified (but not defined) by where it takes place. Although the majority of children with disabilities spend most of the school day in general education classrooms, others are in separate classrooms or separate residential and day schools. And many of the students in general education classrooms spend a portion of each day in a resource room, where they receive individualized instruction.

General education is an entitlement for all students; it is the universal, basic, compulsory, and free education developed in the United State to offer opportunity to all, regardless of race, class, or social standing. Special education, on the other hand, is reserved for students with disabilities who need a unique, different, and special education.

The focus of general and special education is different. General education is oriented to the group. Students are placed in classes and grades and, while there continue to be lively debates about optimal class size, these debates do not question the basic premise that general education is delivered to groups. In contrast, special education is directed to the individual. The right to a special education is based on individualized decision making and involves individualized educational programming.

General education is a place. It is the “normal” educational setting. It is where everyone goes to school. Special education is not a place; it is a service. The service can be delivered in any number of places from mainstream classroom to residential school. And no matter the place, students with disabilities in need of a special education should be receiving instruction that is specialized, individualized, and intensive.

SUMMARY

Who Are Exceptional Children?

• Exceptional children are those whose physical attributes and/or learning abilities differ from the norm, either above or below, to such an extent that an individualized program of special education is necessary.

• Impairment refers to the reduced function or loss of a particular body part or organ.

• A disability exists when an impairment limits a person’s ability to perform certain tasks in the same way that most people do.

• Handicap refers to the problems a person with a disability encounters when interacting with the environment.

• A child who is at risk is not currently identified as having a disability but is considered to have a greater than usual chance of developing one if intervention is not provided. How Many Exceptional Children Are There?

• About 6 million children with disabilities, birth through age 21, received special education services in 2009–2010.

• Children in special education represent approximately 12% of the school-age population.

• Children receiving special education under the two largest disability categories, learning disabilities and speech or language impairments, make up 60% of all school-age special education students.

Why Do We Label and Classify Exceptional Children?

• Some educators believe that disability labels have negative effects on the child and on others’ perceptions of her and can lead to exclusion; others believe that labeling is a necessary first step to providing needed intervention and is important for comparing and communicating about research findings.

As a future counselor, my focus is to form plans based on individuals, rather than groups, which is similar to special education. I agree with Naomi Zigmond saying, “General Education and Special Education are (and Should be) Different” because every person has their own way of learning, but the general educators gives options to their students to receive the information versus forming a plan for each individual student. “Special education” is viewed as negative, but why? I coach high school baseball and one my players is in special education, but I wouldn’t have guessed it because he