Chapter 3 Part 1 (in Friend)

-As schools increase inclusive practices, the working relationships among all the adults involved in the education of students with disabilities becomes critical.

-Professionals in inclusive schools usually assert that collaboration is the key to their success in meeting the needs of all students.

-Collaboration is how people work together, is a style professionals choose to accomplish a goal they share

-True collaboration exists only on teams when all members feel their contributions are valued and the goal is clear, when they share decision making, and when they sense they are respected.

-Key attributes to defining collaboration:

 is voluntary

 based on parity (individual contributions are equally valued)

 requires a shared goal

 includes shared responsibility for key decisions

 shared accountability for the outcomes (whether positive or negative)

  based on shared resources (each teacher participating in a collaborative effort contributes some type of resource. This contribution increases commitment and reinforces each professional’s sense of parity)

 its emergent (want participants to have shared decision making, trust, and respect among participants)

 prerequisites for collaboration:

 reflecting in your own personal belief system (for collaboration to occur, all the people participating need to feel that their shared effort will result in an outcome that is better than could be accomplished by any one participant, even if the outcome is some what different from what each person envisioned at the outset.)

refining your interaction skills (you need effective skills for interacting, 2 major interaction skills: communication skills and steps to productive interactions, *the most needed interaction process for you as a teacher is shared problem solving*)

contributing to s supportive environment (administrative support is important especially principals, these people can raise staff awareness of collaboration by making it a school goal and distributing information about it to staff.

Chapter 2 (in Friend)

Chapter 2                                                                                                                                               Kaylan Penland

-          Special education teachers are the professionals with whom you are most likely to have ongoing contact in teaching students with disabilities. They are responsible for managing and coordinating services a student receives, including writing and implementing the individualized education program (IEP).

-          Types of other special education help: consulting teacher, resource teacher, inclusive specialist/ support facilitator, itinerant teacher, transition specialist, job coach, special education teachers/special services teachers/intervention specialists.

-          A teacher will also have contact with many other types of services and specialists: school psychologists, counselors, speech/language therapists, social workers, physical therapists and occupational therapists, adaptive physical educators, nurses, administrators, paraprofessionals.

-          Whenever appropriate, students with disabilities also should be active participants in decision making about their own education. Self-determination – they (the student or a special need child) can directly state their needs and goals and learn to advocate for themselves.

-          The teacher (you) play a key role in deciding whether a students should be evaluated for the presence of a disability.

-          The teacher needs to have a clear concern for the child to seek help or begin a process.

-          There needs to be a chronic pattern negatively affecting learning. And keep in mind that child do go through things that will knock them off balance for a while.

-          Watch to see if the situation gets worse over time

-          Compare the child you have a concern for to the other children

-          Communicate your own observations and try your own interventions:

                        Contact the parents (you can find out what the child is like at home and have the parents become monitors as well)

                       Contact colleagues (if you’re unsure get another professional to sit in and observe)

                       Try simple interventions ( move students seats, different teaching strategies, make tests easier for students to follow, give the student one part of the assignment at a time to not overwhelm them, see how much help the child needs)

-          Intervention assistance team – group of professionals, including general education teachers, that analyzes the strengths and problems of referred students to identify strategies to address the problem. If not successful this team may recommend that a student be assessed to determine special education eligibility.

-          Response to intervention (RTI)- an approach for the identification of learning disabilities based on whether student learning progress improves or fails to improve after the student receives increasingly intense, research-based interventions; the latter may be an indication of a learning disability.

-          P.g. 51

-          Multidisciplinary plan – team including teachers, specialists, administrators, and parents who assess a student’s individual needs, determine eligibility for special education, and develop the IEP .

Chapter 1 (in Friend)

Chapter 1

-          When talking about Thomas, his grades were not mentioned. His acting out could have been from boredom. He seems pretty smart when it comes to terminology. I feel like they should have done more observations on him and record keeping before going to autism as the reason.

-          I think that Angel’s story goes to show how much a child with such a disability, can accomplish. Due to the fact that Angela had support at home and at the school, she was able to be successful. Also, the guardian and school professionals were able to build a relationship that a loud them to work together = teamwork.  http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/resource_infoBrief/nichcy_org_pubs_factshe_fs4_pdf.html This website has a really good and quick explanation of down syndrome. IT also talks a little bit about how the school system deals with these situations, especially as soon as the children are diagnosed.

-          When I was in one of my field experiences I saw some mainstreaming. The special needs children would join the regular class for a certain period, and were buddied up with someone. The immediate positive thing I saw was how responsible the non-special needs children became once they received their buddy for the time. I think that it also teaches them respect for one another even though they are different, and this is something they will defiantly need outside of school.

-          Whenever I think about or a professor is discussing the Brown v. Board of Education case, the topic is colored children integrating. Reading about it further in this book has made me realize that it affected other diverse groups including special needs children.  http://www.nichcy.com/ - when I went to this site I saw how there were still many lawyers out there that are here to protect the disabled of all ages, which is good.  However, these days people unfortunately abuse the system.

-          As  I’m thinking and reading about all of the different court cases that deal with special needs children going to school, I am reminded of my aunt. She has cerebral palsy and is either in a wheel chair or on crutched.  So back then, before all of these acts were brought up she probably wouldn’t have been allowed to go to a regular school. She went to college and then continued with a master’s and now she is a speech pathologist, helping children with special needs.

-          When dealing with special needs children I think that the cross-categorical approach has a good point to it. This is “where more attention is paid to students’ learning needs than to their labels” (Friends pg 2). I think this is so important because if you pay attention to what they needs then they might do better than they were ever expected. 

-          http://www.kidstogether.org/disability-respect.htm I thought that this link helped give some good quick tips about how to approach or more easily be around a person with special needs. Of course it doesn’t cover most things, but just a few tips for a person that has never really approached a person with special needs. I have never dealt with a deaf person so it was neat to read those tips. These tips are called the 10 commandments of etiquette for communicating with people with disabilities.