Group Differences Forum Reflection

I enjoyed the group differences forum. I feel as if it allowed me to consider possible differences in my classroom that I have not encountered before. I think that there was great classroom discussion that allowed me to see different points of views on controversial issues. I really enjoyed discussing the issues of poverty and race. I have lived near an urban, poor environment for all my life, but I have always been in the suburb point of view. This suburban point of view has really made me create stereotypes and opinions about city schools and the surrounding communities. It was nice to experience people who have a different point of view, and I feel as if it has helped start a change in my own opinions. These children do not ask to be provided a lack-luster education in a poor, corrupt school district. It has really inspired me to possibly work in one of these schools and make a difference for these children.
However, I feel as if my groups portion of the group forum was seen as sort of non-important. We worked on providing thought provoking questions that would cause the class to consider how they felt about the education of students who have disabilities. We were only provided with less than ten minutes to discuss our topic. I feel as if the lack of focus on students with disabilities is evident in the teacher education program. While students do participate in a special education class, is it enough knowledge to go out into the classroom and provide individualized instruction that maximizes the education of students who have disabilities? I highly doubt so. I feel it is important for general education teachers to reflect upon their strengths, weaknesses, and opinions about working with students who have disabilities. I wish that my group would have had more time to offer valuable reflection opportunities. The amount of students who have disabilities present in the general education classroom are rapidly increasing. It is highly likely that issues aligned with ableism will be encountered. Like you had mentioned before, the forum came across as busy work.
Also, I think it's very interesting that each chapter we covered had a section on the content's application to students who have disabilities, but they were never mentioned in class. I think that this ableism topic was the only time, besides Kalee and I's teacher projects, that special education was ever mentioned. It would have been nice to have more time to discuss it.

Ableism

For the group differences forum, my group read an article entitled Confronting Ableism. Throughout the article, the author was urging that people need to accept people who have disabilities as they are instead of trying to change them. The author uses examples and testimonies from individuals who have disabilities to argue that society spends too much time trying to make these individuals ignore their disabilities. For example, the author urges that instead of attempting to teach a child who has visual impairments to read, braille should be instructed. Instead of forcing people who have disabilities to adapt to how people without disabilities live, we should instead focus on how to best educate the children in reference to their disabilities.  The argument for me was a little shaky. The author urges that children with disabilities should have individualized educations that focus on their needs and build upon their abilities; however, in the same argument he is urging that these students need to learn in the least restrictive environment, which he deems a general education classroom. It seems to me that if the education system focuses on providing what these students need to succeed that placement in learning environments outside of the general education classroom will be necessary. However despite this misunderstanding of motives, I do agree that people who have disabilities should not be educated solely based on making them the same as people who do not have disabilities. It is important to take a student's disability into consideration when providing them with their educations. What comes to mind when I am thinking about this issue is assistive technology. People with disabilities are provided with these accommodations so they can access the curriculum. Their individual needs are being considered; however, they are participating in the same instructional activities as their peers. This article did surprise me because I had never heard of this issue before in any of my special education courses. To me, it just seems like common sense that a child's disability is considered when educating them. However, after reading this article it seems like my assumption was incorrect. Reading this article has made me realize that in my future career I may have to urge teachers and parents to accept the disability instead of ignoring it. Children who have disability deserve a better chance at an education, and expecting them to learn the same way as children who do not have disabilities is cheating them out of a proper education and future life.

Ladson-Billings Article

The summation of this article is that the achievement gap is a superficial topic; instead, the issue is about the economic debt that has impeded the education of minority groups. The author insist that historical issues, moral dilemmas, and economic unfairness have accumulated throughout the years and has caused students of minority groups to have a less than a par shot at an equal education. The author seems to assume that if in the past an equal education would have been implemented, there would not be such a gap between white and colored students today. I do agree that students of minority groups have less opportunities available for success in their education. I, however, do not wholly agree with this concept of past endeavors causing the issue. I believe that the students of today are too far removed from historical educational deficits for it to be a major cause. For example, my family came over from Europe in the late 1800s with absolutely nothing. Members of my family were subjugated to becoming indentured servants in order to enter the country. My family continued to be uneducated and poor until my parents generation. However even with a lack of societal prestige and education, determination and vigor have caused an exponential growth in successful educations and lives of my immigrant family. That is a reason why I feel that historical inequalities are not a logical cause of the gap that exists in today's world. I am aware, however, of the fact that other students from minority groups are not as lucky as I was to live in a safe community with good schools. I do feel as if the economic discrepancies have a huge effect on the quality of education for minority groups. Growing up near a poor, urban area, I have seen the gross inequality of funds plaguing city schools. Students are not provided with adequate books, supplies, or effective teachers. However, I do not agree with the author stating that these economic discrepancies are possibly due to the amount of minorities that attend the schools.  I think that these economic differences are due to the wages and taxes of the neighboring communities. It is very unfortunate that students of minority groups do not have the opportunity to attend schools in affluent areas that receive a lot of high taxes. It is also unfair that better teachers and resources are not provided to these students.  However, I don't think funds are allocated based on race alone. The author concludes with the fact that the two issues that need to be changed to allow for the closing of the achievement gap are school desegregation and fund allocation. These are two difficult concepts that will only see a change if the whole societal structure were to change. In the Memphis City Schools, a lot of theses issues have been challenged. The Memphis City School absorbed the surrounding, rich Shelby County Schools. There goal was to increase tax flow into the city schools and also to end the engraved line between minorities in city schools and white students in county schools. This was a huge flop. The affluent cities of the county were enraged, and have now voted to leave the system to create their own school system. This breaking off will begin next year. Seeing this all play out, it seems to me that these concepts the author offers as solutions can not and will not be able to effect the country's education until drastic societal changes are made. Is this what she is referring to as historical debt? Probably so; however, does this really effect possible success of students of minority groups? I feel as if it does not. I think the solution is to provide these students with teachers who are intelligent, hard working, and care about seeing their students succeed. I also think that the community and family lives of students need to show improvements for them to succeed. If no one at home or in the community is rooting for them to get a good education, what is their motivation.   As for the economic issue of resource allocation, I think this is a city government issue. When Memphis City Schools received a lump sum from the Bill Gates foundation, they decided to put air conditioning in the city's school buses. This same year the start of school was delayed for several weeks due to insufficient funds. It's time to look at the people who control the allocation of the money for schools with a high number of minority students. The author enforces the idea that the issue of the achievement gap is a long standing issue that has no easy solution. I agree, but I think it's time to look at what can be done now instead of focusing on possible causes that have already passed.

Field Trippin' with Josh Justice

I really enjoyed listening to Josh speak about his experiences with children who have EBD. Even though I am a special education major, I feel as if I have not had a lot of experiences with children who have this type of disability. The thing that I found most interesting was that the children are weened from all of their medications when they enter the program. I have always though that physicians were way too quick in labeling a child with a disorder and putting them on numerous medicines for it. I think that starting from baseline and seeing how the child acts without medication is a great idea. It allows you to start fresh and get the child what they really need to have a successful life. I also really enjoyed the inventive ideas he had for stopping behaviors, such as when he took the girl's shoes away. It is something that is small and not harmful, but it can have a big impact. I hope that with my future students I can find little tricks such as this to help extinguish their behaviors. I also really liked how Josh determines the function of behaviors and stops the behavior from reaching the function. This is an important aspect of behavior that a lot of educators and parents do no focus on. If a child knows that a behavior will not get them what they want, they will eventually stop exhibiting the behavior. For example when the boy acted up and got sent home from school every day, that was an easy way for him to get out of doing his schoolwork. Why wouldn't he continue misbehaving? Overall, I really enjoyed the different perspective that Josh provided on working with these children and their parents. Sometimes as teachers, we forget that a personal connection can make all the difference.

Chapter 3 Generated Questions

1. How would you teach/ model/ encourage morality and pro-social development in a special education classroom setting. (Applying)

2. Do you agree with the underlying factors (p84) that Ormrod gives for why a student may exhibit aggressive behavior?  Do you think that factors for aggression may be different in students that have an EBD or other disabilities? (Evaluating)

Chapter 2 Generated Questions

1. How would you use components of Vygotsky's theory in your classroom?(Applying)

This is applying because you are required to use information that you have read and apply it to an outside situation.

2. Provide some real life examples of accommodation and assimilation that you have experienced.

I think that this is a creating problem because you are creating real life,concrete examples of an abstract theory.

Chapter 5 Generated Questions

1. How do you feel about ability grouping based on IQ scores? Do you think this would benefit/harm the education of children who have disabilities?

I feel that this is an understanding question due to the fact that you are explaining your opinion on the topic and inferring about the topic's affect on student performance.

2. Why is collaboration with parents critical, especially in a special education setting.

I think that this is a synthesizing question due to the fact that you are required to hypothesize about the affects of collaboration.

Chapter 8 Generated Questions

1. Explain the techniques Ormrod provides for promoting advanced thinking skills in students with special needs.

This is an understanding question according to Bloom's taxonomy due to the fact that it is necessary to explain the information in your own words.


2. How do you think students would react to the candle problem? Do you think most students would be confined in a mental set?

This is an evaluating question according to Bloom's taxonomy due to the fact that it is necessary to analyze the information in order to make your own conclusions about the information.

Willard and Behaviorism 10/7

In my special education courses, I have learned mostly behaviorist ways to deal with student behavior. Due to that fact, there is probably a lot of behaviorist theory in my behavioral intervention. For example, I am a believer in positive and negative reinforcement, which are behaviorist concepts. In regards to the case study I have chosen, reinforcement can be easily used in the intervention. For example, every time Willard acts in an appropriate manner, give him positive verbal reinforcement such as “Great Job, Willard!” You can also create a behavior intervention plan that involves reinforcement. Such as, you tell Willard that you will be monitoring his behavior in regards to following classroom rules and procedures, and if he shows positive behavior you will give him a point. Dependent on the number of points he earns, hierarchies of reinforcers, chosen by Willard, will be provided. This will be done every afternoon. According to behaviorist theories, Willard will eventually make this positive behavior part of his repertoire regardless of the presence of reinforces. However, I see a lot of validity in the use of social cognitive concepts such as self-regulation. I think that students can really benefit from monitoring their own behavior if appropriate, which I studied in Vaughn and Bos Teaching Children with Learning and Behavior problems. For example, Willard can give himself a smiley face or a sad face based on his perception of his behavior. He can share his results with the teacher, and she can give him the necessary reinforcement.  This allows Willard to feel responsible for his behavior intervention, which in turn may have a positive effect on his behavior. I think for my CSEL paper on Willard, I am going to use the social cognitive theory due to the fact that there are some behaviorist concepts with modifications. I think that the concepts in this theory will have the most positive impact on Willard’s behavior.

Classroom Management 9/19

Classroom management was the topic I was most excited to learn about in this class. Being able to teach content to students is impossible without a successful classroom management plan. I have previously read Wong's First Days of School, and I absolutely loved it. I will be using a lot of components that I learned from this text in my blog today. I feel as if I am going to be a pro-classroom manager, but of course my belief will most likely crumble the first time I enter my classroom. I think that the most important part of classroom management is your knowledge of behavior and why a behavior is occurring, but that is another topic that Kalee and I are doing our teacher projects on.
The first necessary component in creating classroom management is deciding what rules and regulations you would like to see carried out in your classroom. The next phase is to write three or four (less is best) procedures that you would like your class to follow. For example, come prepared to class, treat other students with respect, and pay attention during instruction. The next step is to come up with the consequences for disobeying these regulations. It is best if you create a hierarchy of responses to each rule infraction such as a warning cue, verbal warning, points deducted off of conduct grade, note to parents, and write up. You also need to establish rules that result in immediate write ups if they are broken such as swearing, bullying, and destruction of property.
The next phase in classroom management is to make sure that you fully explain all of the procedures, rules, and consequences to students on the first day of school. I know that you want to dive into the material right away, but if you do not cover these fully and immediately you will be reteaching them throughout the whole year. When students walk into a classroom and immediately know what is expected of them, there is a greater chance that they will comply.
It is so important to keep the rules and consequences the same throughout the year. If you are constantly making up rules and consequences, students will not know what to expect from you day to day. I have seen this first hand in the practicum I am in right now. The teacher is constantly making up different infractions based on her mood that day. Her consequences change, as well, according to which student she is disciplining. For example, a student she likes is on his cell phone, she just tells him to put it away and ignores it; however if a student she does not like is on his phone, the phone is taken up and the student is sent to the office. Student behavior is absolutely out of control and the teacher spends more time working on their behavior than actually teaching.
Having the confidence that you can create a well-managed classroom is rather difficult, but if you keep the management plan simple and stagnant throughout the year students will respond positively.
For the CLE, I have decided to do the early education scenario about Willard the wanderer.
The first thing I would do is objectively define the behavior, what exact, observable behaviors is Willard exhibiting. The next thing I would do is collect data, and lots of it. Data collection will let you see things such as what happens immediately before the behavior, how often and for how long does the behavior occur, and what are the consequences of his behavior. After you have collected, graphed, and analyzed the behavior, you notice that Willard misbehaves when he is given seat work. You also notice that Willard is receiving positive reinforcement from his peers when they react to his behavior. This is when you, possible tier one, evaluate your own instruction. Are you providing engaging activities? After you have provided more interactive and engaging work to Willard you notice that while his behavior has decreased it is still a problem. Also during this phase, you should explain to the class that they should ignore Willard's behavior and focus on their work. The other students should soon learn to not reinforce the negative behavior. The next step is to create a behavior intervention plan. You talk with Willard and come up with a secret cue for when he needs to return to his seat and his work. If that does not ameliorate the situation, you begin a reinforcement plan with Willard. Tell him you will look up at him every ten minutes and if he is in his seat working he will receive a check mark. Tell him that if he receives ten smiley faces throughout the day, he will receive ten minutes of free time at the end of class.  As he meets his goal of ten smiley faces a day, gradually increase the amount of smiley faces he will require for free time. Hopefully, his behavior will be exterminated after working through this intervention. If no progress is made throughout all of these tiers, I would recommend meeting with a special education teacher to decide on other interventions or if an evaluation needs to be made.
Creating a learning environment with minimal behavioral distractions is ideal; however, we do not live in an ideal world. I was a great student in school, but occasionally I would partake in misbehavior. As a teacher, behavior issues will always emerge, but it is your job to create a plan to deal with each individual situation.

Motivation-9/12

In the special education classroom, motivation is crucial to the success of your students. Most of these students have been ridiculed and estimated to not have the skills to achieve. As their teacher, you need to make them excited to learn and help them believe that they can learn. 
Although the use of reinforcements are highly argued in the educational field, in special education instruction the use of reinforcement to motivate students is widely used. In my special education textbook, Strategies for teaching students with learning and behavior problems by Vaughn and Bos, the use of reinforcements is recommended. However, reinforcement can be as simple as giving a student positive, descriptive feedback. Programs for more tangible reinforcements are also discussed. It is important to keep your students motivated in succeeding by offering a variety of reinforcements for their choosing (reinforcer menu). Positive reinforcement will make the child feel successful when they are learning. This in turn will motivate children to keep succeeding. Extrinsic motivation can be somewhat superficial, but if used correctly a student can benefit greatly.
Children in special education usually enter the classroom with the idea that they are going to fail. Due to this thinking, it is imperative for the teacher to build up a child's self worth. This can be done by setting higher goals for the student to achieve, believing that the student will achieve these goals, and motivating children to reach your high expectations. It is very important that a child does not create a negative self fulfilling prophecy due to their disabilities. If students are taught to expect more out of themselves, intrinsic motivation will begin to rise.
Due to the experiences that I have had in special education classrooms, I have concluded that reinforcement, or extrinsic motivation, needs to occur to get students motivated to work. While this is not ideal, it is much more practical to motivate children by tangible rewards than it is to mold their self worth. However, teaching students to be intrinsically motivated will still have a place in my classroom. I plan on using a token reward system. This means that a student will receive a check mark every time they show improvement or working hard. At the end of each day, students can trade in their points for a variety of reinforcement options spanning from lesson homework questions, free time, and tinker toys.
It is time to get students who have disabilities excited about school. No longer are the days where these children are told they will never achieve close to what their peers will. A lot of people in this class are general education teachers, and I hope they take the knowledge that all children can succeed in their own ways with them into their careers. Motivate them appropriately, and you will be amazed.

Assessment-9/3

We have been learning a lot about assessment the last couple of classes. I have received a lot of assessment training in my previous education courses, but it was interesting to see it from another point of view. However, I feel like high school assessments were more focused on, so in this blog I'm going to focus the assessments more on a elementary, special education stand point.

Going off of the chart in Omrod's text, I will provide an example of an assessment along with how it will be used in the classroom.

1. Informal assessment vs. formal assessment- Both of these are crucially important in the classroom in order to track the progress your student is making. In a special education environment, data is everything. Data allows for more comprehensive IEP goals and objective, provides examples of student's work to show parents, and provides a clear look into the child's abilities. An example of an informal assessment would be asking students comprehension questions about the lesson. This provides an easy way to gauge student understanding throughout your lessons in order to allow changes in planning so mastery is achieved. A informal assessment could also be as simple as tracking a student with autism's performance on discrete trial testing.  An example of a formal assessment would be a portfolio of the students work at the end of the unit. Students would collect the work they have been completed, and data would be collected on the conceptual knowledge of the child. This type of assessment allows for end of unit data collection without the traditional exam that students with disabilities may struggle with.

2. Paper-pencil assessment vs. performance assessment- As a special educator, it is preferable to err on the side of performance assessments based on your students' abilities. Although this is not as practical as paper-pencil exams, it can be more a reliable assessment for students who may struggle with reading and writing. A performance assessment can be a lot simpler than it was shown to be in class. A good example of this is that students independently read an informational text, on their reading level, about a species of animal. The students then pretend to be zoologist and present what their animal eats, where they live, and interesting facts. This activity will clearly show the level of comprehension achieved.

3. Standardized test vs. teacher-developed assessment- Due to the differing levels of student mastery, teacher-developed assessment is more valid in a special education setting. Although it may more impracticable to spend time creating the assessment, it allows for greater accommodation and modification for your individual students. An example of teacher-developed assessment would be a small quiz given after a lesson on clouds. Since you have created the assessment, you can create it catering to most of your classroom while providing accommodations to individual student's quiz. This allows for greater teacher intervention in the assessment rather than giving the students the same generated quiz.

4. Criterion referenced vs. norm referenced assessment- In the special education environment, criterion referenced  assessments are used more frequently due to the fact that each student may be at a different level or stage in mastery than another student. It is important to use criterion referenced in order to document the students goals and successes according to the curriculum provided by the school instead. A criterion referenced assessment could be a set of questions delivered to the student after their completion of two digit addition. A student can show how they have succeeded in an area of study rather than how they are doing in comparison to their peers.

5. Traditional assessment vs. authentic assessment- Both of these assessments are important in special education. Traditional assessments are of course given to see how the student is doing academically, but authentic assessments are given frequently to help the student socially. A traditional assessment could be a student completing a performance assessment on George Washington. This assessment could be given after the student has read books and studied the historical figure. This assessment is measuring only classroom objectives and is not pertinent to the other aspects of the student's lives. An authentic assessment can be documenting the student's use of manners after a lesson of how to behave in a well mannered way. This can increase the social lives of students outside of the classroom, but their progress can be monitored in the classroom. For a summative assessment of this, students can complete a performance assessment where they use their new social skills in a mock social setting. Authentic assessments seem to be more crucial to a student with disabilities due to the fact that they may struggle with different  aspects of life outside of the classroom that students without disabilities may be accustomed to already.

It is much easier to come up with assessments during the lesson planning process. It is important that you begin with the assessment and what you want the student to achieve before you begin planning the body of the assessment, this allows for a valid assessment that will truly measure your student's progress. Although my examples of assessments may seem vague and impractical, the same string of thinking can be applied to real lesson planning which will lead to more valid and reliable assessment.

Welcome to 401

The first class was surprisingly pleasant. I enjoyed the true/ false activity because it showed me that there is still a lot that I have to learn about my future profession as a whole. My peers in the class also seem very engaging and I am excited to learn from teachers in fields other than my own. I am looking forward to all of the assignments this year because I think they will be beneficial. I am very interested in learning about the different ways to present material to children in order for them to gain the most knowledge. Learning about the different educational theories will allow me to create better research based lessons and practices, which is something that is so crucial to my career. From this class, I want to gain the knowledge of how to teach students. Being a future special education teacher, the understanding of a child's psychology is critical to being successful. I am prepared to work hard in this course in order to become a better teacher.