Special Needs Student example essay topic

I interviewed two professionals for my paper, one being a Guidance Counselor and the other being a second grade teacher. I have found the two teachers to be somewhat different in the way they think and react to different situations. The differences in the years of experience, and the reasons for taking the job were greatly different. Of the two professionals, the primary teacher had a career before becoming a teacher, his career before this one was a jeweler. He liked this job but it did not give him what he wanted, and he was a little jealous of his wife's career and security. The primary teacher has been a teacher for four years, and feels sometimes it gets better with time, but he has been though many grades of teaching, he has gone from grade three to grade two and than to grade four.

He told me that with all the changing of grades he could not come up with lesson plans that he can say this worked well or to eliminate the lessons if it did not teach the children. He has to teach to the children according to the AP. When asked about having a choice of what grade you want to teach he told me, "You can put in a preference choice of which grade you want but you do not always get what you want". The techniques used are more or less given to you by the school as a guide for you to teach accordingly, programs for different courses are given to you and you must follow them. Classroom techniques is something you need to develop, like starting the class with vocabulary words on the board, knowing this starts the class, when the children see this they know class has begun, but he best techniques to use is to be loving and funny. As for taking suggestions from other teachers, he says yes, without a doubt because without input from a teacher with more experience you may not learn the different techniques used to teach and keep young minds involved.

Keeping teaching exciting and fulfilling he told me being such a new teacher is a problem because you want to bond with the children but too much is being forced on you to comply with, there is no bonding because you are told to keep up with the grade. Changing the teaching strategies, for him was hard because he did not always teach the same grade. Has your philosophy changed since college, yes it has, a great deal, he went on to explain. College is book learning, how can you figure out your own philosophy when you are told and influenced by many others, that tell you what to think and what you should do. Your philosophy comes from being there, with hands on and it is always changing.

Getting the parents involved is sometimes complicated, we send home letters and we can talk to the parents when they come to pick up their children. When asked about how much extra time is involved outside school, he told me a lot, he has been spending one to three hours at night preparing for the next day lessons, everything is new, plus there are about 32 kids. You need to bring work home because of all the subjects that have to be gone over plus the grading of tests. To handle children that have disciplinary problems the primary teacher said you need to pick and choice what is worth fighting over. If someone is acting out sometimes not giving the attention is best, than later ask the child what was upsetting them so much that they needed to have such an outburst. Then try to build their ego, speak to the parents, and try to come up with the appropriate method to use on the child so that no further incidents will accrue.

With disciplinary problems the principal and guidance counselors do not get involved until the matter has become violent or the words are inappropriate, than the matter goes to the principal. As far as assigning extra work, for students that are misbehaving you are not aloud. What are the signs to look for when dealing with children that may have outside or home issues, we need to look at how they are dressed, are they clean or dirty, do they sleep during class, are they withdrawn, starting fights, these are the things you look for in a child. When there is expected child abuse there is a hand out that you, as a teacher must follow. When I asked if he had taken any seminars that would help deal with school related stress, he said he has been to many seminars that deal with subject matter or improving teaching techniques. To conclude there was no seminars given to him to handle stress through the distract or union.

In the subject matter and teaching techniques there was a lot to learn. To keep school and home life separate he says its very hard to do because sometimes when your out with your friends (which most of his friends consist of teachers) you start talking about school, even when you change the subject something brings you back to that subject again. The primary teacher stated that he brings home worries, worries about how good is my teaching do I make the grade, can I do better, but there is no feed back. The only place the feed back can come from is the children. Once you learn that all the worries you felt seem to disappear. Do you feel you had a dramatic impact on your student's lives, the primary teacher told me he did not have enough time on the job to give an answer.

You are still trying to find out where you belong and what grade you will be suited to stay with, where you can capture your children's minds and keep it there. The best class room moment was when a student says they understand, and the light goes off in their minds and you say to yourself, look they got it. That is the greatest moment in teaching because you know they are going to keep that with them forever. His worst moment in his career was when he had to attend the funeral of a former student. It sadden him very much, that a beautiful young person never had the chance to fulfill their dreams. Than I had my interview with the guidance counselor.

She told me this was her first job and she has been working here for seven years. She wanted to help students who were having difficulty with school issues or family issues and who were not meeting their potentials in elementary school. She told me she had a choice of what grades she wanted to counsel, she choose to work with students in grades three to six and in the special needs unit. She felt they would have the maturity to express their needs in words instead of acted out behaviors. When asked about her techniques she said it comes from the behaviorist school children identify with their own needs. Children discuss situations where they need to improve and then they formulate their own plan of action and try to stick by it.

To keep it exciting she surfs the Internet for new techniques and activities. Fulfillment for her comes from watching the students grow, mature, and succeed. Her philosophy of teaching has changed since she was in college. She used to believe that she could save the world, help all children heal and have all parents address the needs of their children. Now she believes she can help students achieve their goals if they are willing to put their efforts into it. She also believes now that every child can not be helped but be thankful for the ones that you could help.

To get the parents involved, she asks them to provide direct skills that will be beneficial to the needs of their child. She shares issues that she believes parents need to work on at home. She spends at least one to two hours outside school catching up on paper work, student notes, phone calls with parents, ACS, therapists and preparing lessons. Handling children with disciplinary problems is what she does during most of the day. Teachers report children's bad behavior and than they are sent to her. Students than discuss the situation and identify how the situation could be solved in a more positive way.

Parents are contacted, if a crucial issue come up or if the student has caused physical or verbal harm to other students, teachers, or themselves. She does not assign extra work but she must fill out complete incident reports for destruction of property or harm to others. Behaviors that signal possible outside issues are extreme verbal abuse to students and adults. Physical violence to students and adults, running out of classroom without permission, hiding under desk of closet, withdrawal from students, and adults, extreme anger directed at self and others.

The guidance counselor said the steps to take involve ask questions about home issues and family problems. If a child indicates that he / she is being harmed at home in excess of what is considered to be normal ACS is contacted immediately. Parents are contacted if ACS is not called and are asked why their child is having trouble. The child would continue to be seen by her in order to track the source of misbehavior and to generate alternate responses to stress.

Does she attend seminars to relieve stress that was the next question she said there is at least one seminar per year for guidance counselors, to help the counselor deal with school related stresses. They are helpful to her but sometimes the stress of knowing a child is in danger is harder for her to deal with. She tries to keep home and school live separate but forcing herself to realize that at school she can only offer tools for change. When she gets home and her schoolwork is finished she only focus on the needs of her family. When she was asked do you feel you make a dramatic impact on your students her reply was that she hoped it had some positive impact on her students. But unfortunately family environment with major stress's do more impact than one guidance counselor can do.

Her best moment as a guidance counselor was helping a classified "emotionally disturbed" girl student become declassified as a special needs student and be accepted into the gifted and talented junior high tract. Her worst moment as a counselor was her second year of teaching. A student with behavioral difficulties was called to her office, he started to cry hysterically and cling to her. She told him she would see him the next day, but social services removed him from his home and school because of abuse. After concluding the interviews I found that there are different responsibility on the behaviors of the primary teacher and the guidance counselor. The primary teacher has to teach subjects that are given to them by a support team, their teaching involves math, science, reading, words, and social science.

It is more the educational end of the spectrum that they must influence whereas the Guidance Counselors have to teach appropriate behaviors and without reinforcement from home this is like an up hill climb. I feel that no matter what your job is in school you are still working for the children and their future. Anyway you look at it you can reach a child if that child is reachable..