quest for insight

My experience tells me we sadly have a long way to go in our schools before we will do the right things for exceptional children. We are as a society too caught up in the details and have lost our way on the road to the idea that helping children, exceptional or not, is what school should be about. Our schools are places of judgement and those judgements fall most hard on the exceptional children.

I agree with Sara.

The public schools often do not provide adequate services as the class size is too large to realistically do a good job. The time it takes to remediate students is just not there.

There are many regular educators who do not want to take the time to help and there are also many who do not have a clue what to do on their own.

Teachers need to continue with training - after they have secured their job! The school staff development funds run out and the teacher needs to look at trying to pay for additional methods out of pocket. This may mean going to conferences and training in the summer. It seems grim, but to help students, specific stratgies need to be in the teacher basket of ideas. These can’t be taught with intensity at the college levels (or haven’t been). I would suggest that the Kansas Strategies, Project Read, mulitsensory approaches to reading and math, Cooperative Learning training,Graphic Organizers, etc. to name a few. Unfortunately, the teacher his/herself has to search out the resources. Keep your eye out. Ask the spcial educators for brochures on training opportunites and conferences. Go to the principal, reading specialist, dept. chair and plead your case if you see training that you wnat, or a conference to attend - even if you are not a special educator they would love that a mainstream teacher is interested in skill development to reach the needs of exceptional students. Plus it is amazing how “they” can find funds for certain people to go certain places - even though the money is gone!!! Good luck!