• Knowing and understanding students:  Building relationships with children and parents, and understanding their strengths, interests, and needs, provides a powerful foundation for teaching all children.  Instruction will provide suggestions and strategies for building these relationships.  The pespective of  the course is that all children in the classroom have special needs, all have strengths and gifts and all are the primary responsibility of the regular classroom teacher.
• Responding to students' needs: The course will address philosophy and methods related to providing instruction in the regular classroom which will meet the needs of all children.  This will be relevant and useful, with the current emphasis on intervention in the regular classroom.  Students will discuss and practice varied strategies for differentiating time, space, and resources during a lesson.  The importance of creating a learning environment where strengths and special needs of all children are recognized, and where all children can be successful, will be stressed.
• Accessing resources for students and their families: Students will learn to locate and collaborated with various school and community resource persons or agencies advocating for children and families.  Training in building relationships with parents and making positive home visits will be provided.  Students will become familiar with special needs programs and services, and the legal guidelines and procedures for children, parents, and teachers to utilize these services.
  

Practicum:

I arranged with a classroom teacher to tutor two students with different strengths and needs, in a specific subject area, for at least an hour each week for the semester.  I met with two girls in first grade, each with different strengths and needs.  Each had an interest that were different from each other.  One student was outgoing and talkative and the other was quiet.  The outgoing student would persuade the quiet one to be silly and giggle during the tutoring session.  The quiet one would listen and would pick up the lesson while the outgoing had a struggle.  She would get frustrated while trying to pronounce the spelling words.  I worked on their spelling with sounds of each letter.  The quiet one understood a lot more than the outgoing girl. 

The other experience was meeting with a family that had a child with special needs.  At the first meeting, I could not tell which child had the needs.  There were two children in the family.  The boy was the one with the needs; he was very active and friendly.  He was in Special Education classroom all of the time he spent at school.  The father wanted his son to be in a regular classroom which would be inclusion of the regular classroom.  The parents were very supportive of their son especially the love they shared with him.  The little sister helped her big brother by helping him with spelling words and she would get after him and he would not get upset. 

The last experience was to look for community resources for families.  I had a difficult time looking for resources.  I found that looking in the phone book did not help.  I wondered how families were suppose to receive assistance when I couldn't even find a resource!  It was very frustrating.  I finally found a resource from my piano teacher; the last place I looked or even thought about.  She works at the high school and she knew who to ask for help for resources.  I found two different places; one was close to home and I read about in the newspaper. I always wondered what organization they were.  I finally found out who they were and what they offered to families. 

Reflections:

I found this class to be very useful and it's good to have your eyes opened to children that have special needs.  To actually meet and talk to a special needs child has been a choice experience.  He just seemed "normal", but  after further observation, I could tell he was in need.  We all have needs and we all need help.  To be able to tutor the two girls were speical because they both had special strengths, needs and interests.  They both wanted to learn and they were important part of their classroom.