An Experience With Special Education at Horizon Elementary

I was privileged to observe the Special Education department at Horizon Elementary. Overall, it was a lot more moving around than the high school was. The first hour, I got to observe a Sth grade class along with Josh Green. Most of the students seemed disciplined and willing to listen to the teacher. They made it look easy for the teacher, at least from what I observed, I am also aware it was only the first hour, so I did not get to see if that was how they were all day.

I understand the first hour usually is not the rowdiest. After that hour, 1 got moved to an office where they were actually assisting special education students. They had no severe. Mostly the students were dyslexic, ADI—ID, or had temper struggles. The students would read books one on one, They tried various ideas to help the kid read. One moment they would have the teacher read one page, and then the student would read the next.

Another was simply the student reading, and the teacher would read along and correct if the student mispronounced anything. After about 30 minutes, the students would return back to their classes and a new student or two would come in Later, I got moved into the actual special education classroomt lam guessing they are only in there for about 1 hour so they seem really big on inclusion having the students in regular education classrooms for the majority of the day. Talking about the teachers, they were definitely different than observing Holub’s class at Pine Viewt One of the paraprofessionals was quite into herjob and seemed to be trying to convince me to change my mind about going into high school special education, She would point out stuff like a student being super sweet, or being really happy when they would get a question right, The head teacher, 1 do not remember her name, was a little harder to ask questions to, She had a lot on her shoulders but didn’t seem quite as patient as Holub.

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I feel partly though that was my fault because when she asked me if I was interested in special education, I told her “Yes. Specifically severe in secondary education“. That was a mistake because she probably felt more like I was there only because I was required to be and it made it difficult for her to enthusiastically teach me how it all ran, Lesson learnedi Next time I go into an observation, I am going to try to keep the details out and just say I am interested in the program I am observing at the moments She did write on my observation sheet that I was very enthusiastic so I could easily be wrong. All in all, I am still firm that severe special education is what I want for a career and secondary education is my preference I enjoyed the students at the elementary schoolt They were very sweet and kind to me. There was one that even seemed to be star struck by me and wanted me to read everything with her. However, I just felt personally it was easier to feel excited about getting into high school.