As a student, have your peers/classmates had any disabilities? How did you and the teacher relate to students with these disabilities? In what ways did teachers help all students with the inclusion process?
Lamakū
Hawaii Campus Teacher Cadet Program
As a student, have your peers/classmates had any disabilities? How did you and the teacher relate to students with these disabilities? In what ways did teachers help all students with the inclusion process?
I have had classmates with disabilities in my class before in elementarty school. All the other students were relatively supportive of eachother. The teachers were supported and adressed them like they would any other student. . The problems actually came from the students with the disabilities. They would often act out and demote their own capabilities. I assume that these tendancies come from the frustration that may come from the classroom and learning.
The teachers had a system of working with these students in a smaller group and more often one on one. The days were broken into lesson time and work time. After the lesson was taught and all the students were set on individual work. The teacher would then conference with the students with disabilities. The teacher would work individually wiith them and help them to understand and complete the worksheets. The process seemed to work to me but there were many cases where the students frustration caused a larger issue often disrupting the entire class.
I’ve attended Kamehameha Schools since kindergarten, and due to the fact that they don’t usually admit students with disabilities because they don’t have the resources and accommodations that public schools provide, I haven’t had any classmates with disabilities. Through my four years in our private high school though, there has been two kids from other grade levels that I’ve seen around campus with disabilities/dysfunctions/special needs. One of those kids so happened to be my older brother who has the highest functioning type of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. Since he was a high functioning and an exceptionally smart kid with “disabilities” he was admitted to Kamehameha in middle school after rejection in the lower grades.
I related well with my brother even though he had autism because he was my brother and therefore I was accustom to his little quirks and differences, but I could see how his differences stood out among typical students. Some of his noticeable autistic traits were hand-flapping, lack of eye contact, and awkward social and communication skills. This made relating with other students a bit difficult, but students were almost always patient and accepting. He connected well with teachers as he was academically inclined and therefore asked the questions that teachers hope to get out of their students. Being included wasn’t a problem because he didn’t mind working alone since he had his own process and organization of things, but you could sometimes see the division between him and the other students. In elementary school the teachers really stipulated the classroom and made sure he and other special needs kids were active and mingling in the classroom, but in Kamehameha Schools as he entered in middle school and continued through high school there was a lack of teacher enforced inclusion as he was older and it was no longer as appropriate.
Before attending Kamehameha in the 6th grade, I have been going to Keaʻau Elementary School. I remember having three classmates with disabilities. One of the students was deaf, and I had no idea what was wrong with the other two students. Being in second grade was hard for me because I had two of the students in my class. My teacher had the both of them sitting in the front of the class in the right corner. It was really hard for my classmates and I to focus in class because majority of the time my teacher was tending to the disability students because they were being loud. Just as I read inside the textbook, we had the two students for half of the day. The second half of the day, the students would have to go to the EA while the rest of us continues with our learning.
Now that I take a look at the way my second grade teacher taught her class. I feel like it was a really bad teaching style. Throughout the entire class she would have to stop the lesson and tend to the two students with disabilities while the rest of us played around. Sometimes she would get grouchy at the two students because of their behavior. You could just tell that my teacher didn’t have the patience to deal with that. But it’s not the students fault for being the way they are. If I had the opportunity to be my teacher I would change up a few things. First of all I would talk to the office and ask for an EA in my class to help with the two students. Second, I would incorporate more activities for the students to do as a class and individuals. I remember doing a few arts and craft activities for the holiday. But because the holidays were so far apart, we got over the way our teacher taught and us as kids new exactly how to block her out and have fun. Last, I would separate the two disability students and have them sit around their other classmates. The fact that she made the disability students sit in the corner made them feel like they had a label while the rest of us didn’t. Making them feel just as the same as everyone else means including them in the class making them feel comfortable.
Seeing as I’ve had a lot of experiences with this coming from Nawahi in middle school, and transferring to Hilo High school in 9th grade, then finally going to Kamehameha in 11th grade… I’d like to say that my perspective of the way things were taught in the public school system is different because I appreciate things a whole lot more here at Kamehameha. I don’t remember having any class mates with disabilities back at Nawahi, yet at Hilo High there were a few in my algebra 1 class, which was an inclusion class, with and EA (Educational Assistant). The teacher that I had for Algebra tried her best to teach us all in an equal and good way, while at the same time giving the attention to the students with disabilities when needed, yet most of the time the EA would give them hands on attention to try and help them process what was going on in a more understandable way from their perspective. Some ways that the teacher helped all students in the inclusion process was by going at a rate where she wasn’t going to fast and by making things clear to the students instead of moving on and not allowing the students to fully grasp a certain concept. Overall, by my experience with having an inclusion class, it is very different yet at the same time very helpful to those students with special needs.