subject: Responsibilities and Experience of Special Educators [print this page] Responsibilities and Experience of Special Educators
Disability is something which is beyond man's control since it is either acquired before birth or in the process of human system development in an irreversible manner. These people are either physically, cognitively, sensorial or emotionally incapacitated. These disablities really affect their education process thus the need to use trained special teachers in improving the quality and meaning of learning to these them. The special teachers therefore aim at reducing the effect of the retarded, disordered or delayed development in reading, speech, language, writing, mathematics and any other subject.
This essay will therefore present responsibilities and experiences, in accordance with an interview of four special teachers; Collins Tines, Mandolin Colenso, Thomas Judie and Kennedy Fibrin.
According to the response from all interviewers was that it is vision that makes them succeed in executing their responsibilities. This vision is what spells out explicitly what teachers should do to promote students learning process .Generally their responsibility here is to indicate the specific data to be gathered to make resolutions about instructional improvement. In addition, this would also help in identifying how best learners benefit from such instructions. So in their teaching methodology, there are three elementary responsibilities which would make students with disability succeed in education. To start with, special teachers normally plan their duties. The plan helps them outline the day's activities which in turn help to identify certain crucial situations when the experience and opinion of the teacher would positively contribute to the student achievement and development. Secondly, these teachers are responsible for delivery of information as they are in the plan. Here, regardless of the content, they consider the use of various instructional approaches in order to meet the requirements of every individual in the class in accordance with his or her disability. Thirdly, they are responsible for monitoring the academic and non-academic progress in his students through the use of questions. These questions may be oriented to a lesson, class work, home work or tests to ascertain the understanding levels of the objectives by the students. Since these teachers are handling those with abnormal features, they normally avail them the necessary requirements so as to make learning a success. They normally provide easy means of movement to students with physical disabilities on their legs so as to facilitate mobility from one point to another. Similarly, they avail and inspect support materials to students with deformed hands to enable them gain support and balance during motion. However, it is required of them that they minimize the movements of the students by providing and ensuring easy access of the academic and non academic materials within or outside the class. On the other hand, the visually impaired students need to have full time support from their teachers to exactly access the required materials and locations within and outside the class. Special teachers, in this context, take it their responsibility to provide the guiding stick and guide them during their movements. In addition teachers should offer both periodic and regular counseling to their students. This would help the students to revive their self esteem which might have been lost due to their low status or problems encountered as a result of their disability status. On the other hand, since the disabled students are more prone to dangers and injuries due to less body balance, poor sight or low sensory activity, special teachers normally take it their responsibility to monitor the school environment so as to remove the possible causes of injuries. In this context, the ground should be friendly to mobility with seen holes and obstacles filled and eliminated respectively. Moreover, special teachers are normally responsible for providing means of communication, especially between them and deaf or mentally retarded students.. So it is their responsibility to communicate with students in a language which is interpretable to his students.
However, most of the interviewers reported much challenges as their main experience in this profession. These challenges are related to planning, instructions, monitoring of the students progress and job design. To begin with, special teachers not only find it difficult to make instructions clear and specific but controlling of task's complexities also presents much challenge to them. The claim here is that the composition of students in a class may need different instructions. So in trying to make it clear, its focus may be lost. In addition these teachers have squeezed planning time due to disability changes of yearly class composition, which in turn dictates change on strategies for handling the new class.
On the other hand, these teachers face much challenge in the use of instructions. In this context, the diverse field of instructional strategies and adaptations used to meet the varying students' requirements make it difficult for them to master. This is made worse considering the fact that the disabled students require substantial and dedicated adaptations to handle reasoning, behaviors and styles of learning. In this effect they lack enough time and support from other colleagues. When this effect is put together with their assumptions of used practices, it normally reduces the quality of education they give to the students. Moreover, special teachers tend to fail following the curriculum that in turn makes it difficult to carry out student assessments. Here a student may be present during lessons but then fail to cognitively get the access to the subject of discussion. However, in several attempts to evaluate the performance of these students, keen interests are cast on their behaviors. In this setting, an unsatisfied student will grow cruel and repellant spends most of the time in isolation. To reduce challenges in performance monitoring, interviewers greatly support the use of CBM system which analyzes and display the progress in a non tedious manner.
On the other hand, these special teachers experience a lot of related role problems such as role ambiguity, role conflict, role dissonance, and role over load. In role ambiguity, they complain that at times when they need some information to help them have effective instrumentation, what is available proves to be very irrelevant. In addition the disabled students tend to exhibit dynamic behaviors which at times make it difficult for them to correctly interpret students' motives and feelings. Similarly, special educators claim that the teaching outcomes normally differ from one teacher to the other with a lot of work than one can effectively handle. Therefore as a result of the prolonged and tasking roles in special education, the interviewers reported a lot of boredom, lack on interest, daily stress, reduced job satisfaction and strong desire to quit the job. In this context, they complained of less vibrant classes where participation is loaded on one side. On the other hand, the rampant physical and emotional support needed, at times force teachers to evade some, something which normally cause them a lot of prosecutions in courts. This experience is negatively viewed by special teachers since they do not contribute to the injuries of such students who have abnormal behaviors due to cognitive and sensorial impairment. Finally, not only change in the education delivery system which has complicated their task in ensuring meeting their objectives but also the nature of classroom settings and resource allocations.
