I need help ASAP from LD collaborative high school teachers

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

I am at my witts end. I teach collaborative LD students in 9th grade. It’s similliar to Co-Teaching except we don’t stay in the classroom the entire time, we float from 2-3 classes a bell and support the kids and teachers. We back it up with additional help in their resource bell. We don’t plan with the content teachers, but they will talk to us about their plans and what the kids will be doing.

My question is this - does anyone out there work in a similiar situation and finds success. I feel, as well as several of my collegues, that we are sticking our finger in a dyke that’s about to burst. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I’m so tired and ready to throw in the towel.

:shock: kdougher

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 01/08/2004 - 4:40 PM

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Well, I’m afraid I”ll be no help. I left when the trend headed that way because basically the idea of teachign the students was being abdicated. My kids, at least, didn’t have the reading and writing skills to meet the demands in regular classes and there was no bridge to get them to taht point, and the material was being presented via reading and writing; an awful lot of “read chapter 3, answer the questions, inscrutable multiple guess test at the end of the unit” stuff.
I went to a school where the content area stuff was taught really, really well (college prep LD school) without the utter dependence on memorizing 500 terms each week. There are some great ideas in teh For Teachers section that include a lot of the types of things that were done — look for “watering up the curriculum.”
the “only” trouble is, it takes rather major changes and time to plan and basically rewrite the curriculum. IMO it’s worth doing for all concerned — an awful lot of students who “pass” only do so because they managed to cram 250 definitions briefly into short term memory and there was a bit of a curve.
I’ve also got — for a bit of a band-aid, but it couldn’t hurt — a handout on “using the technology you’ve got to reduce langauge barriers in middle and secondary school” or something like that from
http://www.resourceroom.net/older/index.asp

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 01/08/2004 - 4:42 PM

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Oh, and do try… especially now when you just might be a little bit rested from the break… consider that it *might* just be possible to get big changes going. Sounds like you’re not the only frustrated soul. Just *insist* on planning time from the Big Shots and something to hold yourselves accountable (timelines, and ways to figure out whether what you’re doing is actually working). Imagine if you could work with the students and believe that what you were doing was really teaching… it’s a scary thought but it’s wonderful when it happens.

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 01/10/2004 - 9:36 PM

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How long are your classes? How much can anyone accomplish when you have to float from 2-3 classes every period?

Sometimes help can come from within as your current setup doesn’t seem like it could work. Are any modifications made for the LD students? That needs to happen.

Has anyone talked to the principal about this system and what it’s not accomplishing? If you have to, let your feelings slip to some influential parents. Likely there are already parents who are upset about the help their children can’t get in this arrangement and they’d only need a little encouragement to lend their efforts to get the situation changed.

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 01/12/2004 - 4:05 AM

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I did it with my school, only not collaborative. It was supposed to be cooperative but wasn’t really. IMO there are a couple of things that must happen for it to work:
1. the other teacher has to want to work with you not just be agreeable to allowing you in his classroom
2. you and the other teacher will need a shared planning time to discuss how the curriculum can be taught that allows for the needs of special education students (and which can benefit all students)
3. a real change has to occur from typical high school classroom requirements—instruction that is centered around lecturing, notetaking, reading and answering questions in the textbook won’t work (If it did work we wouldn’t be needed in the classroom in the first place.)

In my experience, there are few teachers who are willing to embrace new ways to cover the concepts/skills and depart from the more traditional approaches. I liked Kathie Nunley’s Layered Curriculum ideas http://help4teachers.com/ but never got the opportunity to try it out.

After three years and many classrooms/subjects, our special ed department elected to support students in a “resource studyhall” that keeps students in the regular classroom yet gives us a way to help them without calling a lot of attention to them and disruption in the regular classroom. It still involves trying to put square kids in round holes but we have found it to be more effective than putting special ed teachers in regular ed teachers’ classrooms.

Good luck to you.

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