Musings: Reflecting on working in a SPED classroom

In the education front this week has been interesting, I subbed for the same teacher all week, a SPED teacher out in Creswell. It was a reading/writing SPED class and it was a fascinating experience. Some SPED teachers are horrible, they're impatient, they say things to kids that I don't think is appropriate for SPED kids ("If you were smart, you would do this..."). They jump to conclusions about what students are doing, and why they are doing it. And most of the curriculum is BORING. I don't really blame them in some ways. The kids can be infuriating, and it's really frustrating when you tell a kid what a word means, and he asks again what the same word means in less the five minutes. And you can't know if he's being lazy, if it's part of his disability, or if it's something that has been conditioned into him because of ineffective educational procedures. I do feel like I've gained a greater understanding for students who are learning disabled. I have one friend who is pretty much the only person (that I know of) that is learning disabled in a more severe way then just being dyslexic, so interacting with these students gave me a new insight. Also fascinating, and challenging, was the variety of levels within the class. They may all be at the same level of reading (or nearly the same) but the who gambit was there from highly intelligent otherwise (think Eli) to kids who are developmentally not all there, to kids who are just plain dumb. I would never pick SPED to teach. Never be my first choice, but I'm not nearly as afraid of it as I was before.

Where do you draw the line?

Each student is an individual. As a teacher, your expectations for each student are not the same. This is especially true when dealing with SPED students.

In my math support class, called Math 360, I have to boys in particular who have special expectations. They both have IEPs (I think), and probably ADD or ADHD, although I haven't actually had access to their files. These boys are always out of their seat, talking, and they both seem to want to slap themselves, hit their heads against things, over react etc. They're both fairly bright, but can't focus for long periods of time.

So where do I draw the line with these students as far as sending them out of the room and to their advisers, rather then just dealing with the discipline issues in classroom. I don't like to take things out of the classroom if I can help it. I don't want to escalate things for the students, I don't want the paper work, and there is probably a little bit of ego that tells me that I can deal with it myself.

Today I should have sent both of them to their advisers. My co-op teacher for that class, Zach, interjected on my behalf a couple of times, and separated one of the boys at one point, but he wanted to allow me to retain the power of sending them out of the room, rather then taking over, which I appreciate.

My problem I think was that I was so involved with trying to keep them doing something, and trying to keep the other students engaged that I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until only a minute or two were left in the period. At that point it was too late to send the student out.

So when you have students with behavior problems like that, how do you make the call about when their behavior has crossed the line. I would never tolerate their behavior today from a "normal" student, but how bad do you let it get in the interest of compassion for the student?