Responsibilities And Experience Of Special Educators

By Author: Henry Ford
Total Articles: 189
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Disability is something which is beyond man’s control since it is either acquired before birth or in the process of human system development in an irreversible manner. These people are either physically, mentally, sensorial or emotionally incapacitated. These disablities really affect their education process thus the need to use trained ad qualified special teachers in improving the quality and meaning of learning to them. The special teachers therefore aim at reducing the effect of the retarded, disordered or delayed developments which may hamper learning.
This essay would therefore present responsibilities and experiences, in accordance with an interview of four special teachers; Collins Tines, Mandolin Colenso, Thomas Judie and Kennedy Fibrin.
According to the response from all interviewers, it is vision that makes them succeed in executing their responsibilities. This vision is what spells out explicitly what teachers should do to promote students learning process .Generally their responsibility here is to indicate the specific data to be gathered to make resolutions about instructional improvement. In addition, ...
... this would also help in identifying how best learners benefit from such instructions. So in their teaching methodology, there are three straightforward responsibilities which would make students with disability succeed in education. To start with, special teachers normally map out their duties. The plan adopted helps them outline the day’s activities which in turn help to identify some needy situations when the skills and attitude of the teacher would constructively contribute to the success and progress of the student. Secondly, these teachers are responsible for release of information as they are in the plan. Here, regardless of the content, they normally consider the use of various instructional criteria in order to meet up the requirements of every individual in the class in accordance with his or her state. Thirdly, they are responsible for keeping an eye on the academic and non-academic progress in his students through the use of questions. These questions may be relevant to the curriculum topics to ascertain the understanding levels of the students. Since these teachers are handling those with abnormal features, they normally avail them the necessary requirements so as to make learning a success. They normally provide easy means of movement to students with physical disabilities on their legs so as to facilitate mobility from one point to another. Similarly, they normally avail and inspect support materials to students with deformed hands to enable them gain support and balance during motion. However, it is required of them that they minimize the movements of the students by providing and ensuring easy access of the academic and non academic materials within or outside the class. On the other hand, the blind students need to have full time support from their teachers to exactly access the required materials and locations within and outside the class. Special teachers, in this context, take it as their responsibility to provide the guiding stick and guide them during their movements. In addition these teachers normally offer both periodic and regular counseling to their students to alleviate their emotions and hope which is really degraded by their normal counterparts. On the other hand, since the disabled students are more prone to environmental physical injuries due to less body balance, poor sight or low sensory activity, special teachers normally take it as their responsibility to inspect the school environment so as to remove the possible causes of injuries. In this context, the ground should be friendly to mobility with seen holes and obstacles filled and eliminated respectively. Moreover, special teachers are normally responsible for providing means of communication, especially between them and deaf or mentally retarded students. So it is their responsibility to communicate with students in a language and style which is interpretable to his students.
However, most of the interviewers reported much challenges as their main experience in this profession. These challenges are related to task planning, formulation and use of instructions, students’ development and work design. To begin with, special teachers not only find it difficult to clearly present the instructions but controlling of task’s complexities also presents much challenge to them. The claim here is that the students in a class may need different commands since they possess various disabilities. So in trying to make it clear, its focus may be lost. In addition these teachers have squeezed planning time due to disability changes of yearly class composition, which in turn dictates change on strategies for handling the new class.
On the other hand, these teachers face much challenge in the use of instructions. In this context, the diverse field of instructional strategies and adaptations used to meet the varying students’ requirements make it difficult for them to master all the strategies and versions. This is made worse considering the fact that the disabled students require substantial and dedicated adaptations to handle various body processes which facilitate learning in them. In this effect they may lack enough time and support from other colleagues. Lack of support from their fellow teachers when put together with the assumption that they are used to the normal and known teaching patterns, quality of education given to the students is compromised. Moreover, special teachers tend not to follow the curriculum which in turn makes it difficult to carry out student assessments. Here a student may be present during lessons but then fail to get the mental appreciation on how to get access to the subject of discussion. However, much has been on behavior patterns to reveal the students satisfaction level. In this setting, an unsatisfied student will grow cruel, repellant and spends most of the time in isolation. On the other hand, these special teachers experience a lot of role problems. For instance, they complain that at times when they need some information to help them have effective instrumentation, what is available proves to be very irrelevant thus ambiguity. In addition the disabled students tend to exhibit dynamic behaviors which at times make it difficult for them to correctly interpret students’ motives and feelings. Similarly, special educators claim that the teaching outcomes normally differ from one teacher to the other with a lot of work than one can comprehensively handle (overload). Therefore as a result of role dilemma in special education, the interviewers reported a lot of world-weariness, lack on attention, daily nervousness, reduced career fulfillment and hard desire to drop the teaching profession in special schools. In this context, they complained of dull classes where participation is loaded on one side. On the other hand, the rampant physical and emotional support needed, at times, force teachers to evade some requests and attentions from student; something which normally cause them a lot of prosecutions in courts. However, special teachers really hate this court experience since they do not, in any way; contribute to the physical injury of such students who have abnormal behaviors due to mental retardation and negligence. However, it has been realized that the continuous alterations in the delivery of education systems and classroom arrangement cause big problem to these teachers in achieving their education goals and objectives.

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