Summative Project
Sped 438 Consultation and Collaboration
Spring 2014
Brandi Tallmage
Problem Solving
I feel that being teachers we are going to have to work with many different people that have different opinions and views which can lead to problems. I think that we need to know how to problem solve in order to be able to work with and solve the different situations that are thrown at us.
I believe that as a special education teacher you are going to have to be an even better problem solver. You are the one that is going to have to determine what the best strategy for the student is as well as you are going to have to deal with the parents, and other teachers in convincing them of the problem and the right solution because they might all have different opinions.
Co-Teaching
I feel that co-teaching with an elementary and a special education teacher is a wonderful idea. I think that co-teaching can help a class out in many different ways. When i think about co-teaching with a special education teacher i think about trying new ideas and methods of learning that will benefit all of the students and not just the struggling ones. I think that seeing teachers working together and co--teaching also shows that the teachers are more open to new ways of learning which is going to benefit the students more as well.
Paraeducators
Paraeducators help with anything and everything that the teachers ask of them to do. They also assist many teachers in this process and are not just in one classroom. When i think of paraeducators i think of an assistant to a teacher. I feel that these paras are actually a lot more than that, but people don't see that because they are not in a classroom to see all that the para does in the school system. Paras are important people in the school system and without them teachers wouldn't be able to do some of the things they do because they would have to be covering the jobs they do as well as what the paraeducators do.
Teams
Teams are groups of people that are working together with a skill to reach a goal. I feel that the whole school is one big team. They are all working together to reach the goal of the standards for the state they are teaching in. When i think of teams in schools i think of the whole school picking out the best for the students, but i also think of team grade meetings especially if there are multiple of the same grades. This would be when the teachers from the same grades get together and discuss ways of teaching, as well as what works best while other things don'e, and also making sure they are all on the right track to success.
Family
I know that as a future educator to make my students successful it is important for the families to be involved in what the students are doing. As a future teacher i am going to collaborate with the families and get them as involved in the classroom as i can. I want my families to come in and join us or help out as often as they can. I feel that if the families are involved in the learning process, then the students are going to be more successful.
How will this all help be become a better teacher?
I feel with everything that i have learned over this semester the things that suck out to me the most are going to be the ones that are more useful to me in my classroom. I am going to remember and incorporate all that i learned into my class and teaching to be the best teacher that i can be. Teaching is a team effort and i learned from this class that with teams there has to be communication, collaboration, and problem solving in working together. All of these aspects are going to help me to become a better teacher.
Final Thoughts
I have learned a lot from this class and i think that the idea of working together with teams has also helped to broaden our views. I think that being able to bounce ideas off each other was a very helpful thing as well. The one thing that i wish we had was a little more structure on the topics. I felt that since we haven't been in a classroom a lot to see all of this it was hard to relate it to a classroom. We can say how we are going to include it, but i think if we had more background knowledge on it then we would have been able to relate it better. Overall i have learned a lot that i am going to take into my student teaching as well as my career to make myself the best teacher that i can be that is always there to help my students in every way possible.