I have been working with Special Education for the past 4 years. I began my Special Education path in the summer of 2015 volunteering at Camp Inclusion, a sports themed camp for ages 12 to 21 with disabilities. The camper's disabilities varied with most of the campers being on the Autism Spectrum. The camp allowed the once campers with down syndrome and autism who could display independence and the ability to help others to be volunteer counselors. This helped them to learn leadership, responsibility, and social skills needed for a successful life. I would work with them to help the campers, as well as work 1-on-1 at times with those that required it. The camp would have activities such as water balloon fights, kickball, floor hockey, basketball (basically any sport possible), and even Zumba classes for campers. Every Friday during the camp season, campers would go on a field trip to places like the Zoo, Chesapeake Bay, and many other places. During camp, it was my job to make sure that I aided the campers in a way that they could learn to deal with things like emotions and becoming more independent. I was lucky enough to work at this camp up until the summer of 2017.
In the fall of 2015, I also began working as a respite counselor for the League for People with Disabilities. Since, I worked a full-time job, I would work the overnight respite camp weekends working with 1 to 3 campers. The needs of the campers ranged heavily from an 81 year old camper with cerebral palsy, who needed to be bathed, clothed, fed, and turned throughout the night. Other campers included those with autism and down syndrome who were both very low functioning and nonverbal to the high functioning and mostly independent. I would assist those that needed help showering, brushing teeth, getting dressed, and many other daily activities. Campers would participate in activities such as making rice crispy treats, arts and crafts, and playing sports. Though these weekends were some times exhausting, I enjoyed being able to help those to have the best time possible while they were at camp for the weekend.
In the summer of 2016, I volunteered at Cedar Lane School in Howard County. There I would work with students with autism during the summer school session. Most of the students I aided were on the lower end of the spectrum, mainly nonverbal. I would also aid those with high difficulty dealing with emotions and aggression. I spent a lot of time in the sensory room trying to calm students and redirect their attentions. When we were not in the sensory room, we were doing activities such as creating art work or going outside and playing on the playground. The students really enjoyed choosing their favorite YouTube videos to show the class. The main thing we wanted students to get out of being at summer school, was to at least enjoy themselves because a lot of them need the consistency of going to school everyday, so they cannot fully enjoy having the summer months off.
In the Fall on 2017, I began my teaching career at Woodlawn High School. Not knowing what to expect, I ended up teaching College Algebra, Algebra 2, and Geometry. Across those three classes, I had over 50 IEPs and 504s. This caused me to have to create various variations of lessons with a variety of scaffolded versions, so the IEPs and 504s could be effectively addressed and students all had a fair opportunity to learn. This first year helped me greatly into my second year, 2018. In my second year, I co-taught a self-contained course, Sets, Functions, and Probabilities. This course was designed for upper classmen who struggled with math and needed to fulfill their 4th math requirement for graduation. I felt very prepared for this class because I had a lot of outside the box activities and scaffolding ideas from the previous year. A lot of the students in this class did best with one-on-one guidance, which was not at times always possible. To combat this, my co-teacher and I formed groups based on level of understanding and assisted the students in groups rather than individually. We did a lot more collaborative activities, which also helped students gain comprehension of different topics.
In the Winter of 2017, I began working for Trellis Services. Trellis Services is an Autism waiver service that provides one-to-one aid to families with children with Autism. At Trellis, I worked with an 11 year old, who knew everything there was to know about all of the US presidents and her favorite was JFK. She enjoyed watching YouTube videos of some of his speeches and tributes to him. She also love the Littlest Pet Shop and would repaint her pets and make YouTube videos of their adventures. My student mainly had difficulties dealing with her emotions and being independent. She lacked some social abilities, but after a few sessions she began to open up more to me. To combat some of her mood swings, I had to be a couple steps ahead of her at all times. If she began to change moods, I would redirect her by talking about some of her favorite things, like JFK, or getting her to play Pokemon or the Little Pet Shop. To promote independence, I would have her do more things on her own even though her parents did a lot of things for her. I would make she get dressed on her own and do things like brush her teeth and clean up some of her messes to start to her to do them without mom and dad. My student made great improvements during my 6 months with her and continues to make steps to being more independent and have more control over her emotions.
In my time of working with children with disabilities, it has helped me a lot in being able to help the students that I teach in the high school classroom setting. It has taught me how to address different emotional issues my students may face, how to break down information, how important it is to incorporate physical activity in some of my lessons, and how to be more patient. I think that though I may not have as much experience teaching Special Education in the classroom, I do have a lot of experience with understanding where a lot of my students are coming from and having compassion for their needs. I hope that in this course, I can further my knowledge in Special Education because though I teach math now, I would like to end up teaching Special Education in more of a FALS setting. I would like to learn more about how to create the most effective lessons for my students and what are the most beneficial approaches to take when dealing with certain IEPs, 504s, and various other learning disabilities.
