Special Needs
What does it take to be successful when teaching students who have Special needs? Ittakes patience and professionalism, consistency, caring, and a sense of humor. There is not doubt about it, special needs students can be frustrating, infuriating,rude, disrespectful, and even dangerous. That is why it is important to be patient andprofessional when working with them. Teachers must always keep in mind why thestudents acts that way. Teachers do not need to take verbal attacks personally, but realizethat they respect authority, and that a special needs student may not. Teachers must winspecial needs children's trust over time, and it will take a lot of time. It is very important to be consistent with special needs children, and to create apredictable environment for them. Structure is very important to them because theirout-of-school environment is usually very chaotic. When the teacher creates a predictable,structured environment, the special needs students can relax. An anonymous teacher once said," The systems are useful for keeping records andhelping students see their behavioral progress, but that it meant nothing unless the teachercould 'hook' the student." She meant that all the techniques in t
To a child who misses these cues, "Come here," alwaysmeans the same thing, whether the speaker is smiling and extending her arms for a hug or squinting and planting her fists on her hips. Some teachers have found that spending at least one half-hour away fromeveryone in the family when going home after school and doing something that gets theirminds off of work helps them to relax and "shift gears" from professional to familymember. Teachers have a real opportunity to make changes in students' lives. Toregular education teachers it seems that special education teachers are "coddling" kidswho have problems. However, you do not have to facethese challenges alone; teachers work as part of a team that includes administrators,special educators, school psychologists, healthcare professionals, and the parents. There arefour main reasons for burnout: losing professionalism, caring too much about the students,letting work interfere with homelike, and attitudes of other teacher and administrators. Teachers will alsolose their temper from time to time. Children with autism also take longer to learn to interpretwhat others are thinking and feeling. It is possible for a teacher to care too much for theirstudents. Losing professionalism occurs when a teacher steps out of the role ofteacher/authority figure and takes verbal attacks personally. Without the ability to interpret gestures andfacial expressions, the social world may seem bewildering. Think about what is going throughtheir heads at any time of the day. Like other children with disabilities, students withADD are helped best when the teacher understands the students' special problems andmakes some modifications to the instructional program. Mostproblems in the special needs classroom can be avoided through humor. Working with students that try to hurt your feelings all day can sometimes causeteachers a lot of quite a bit of internal anger.
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