Exceptionalities I Have Experienced and a Resource for Educators

 Personally, at work, I have seen ADHD, ODD, Autism, and Visual/Hearing Impairment.

ADHD is Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder. During a lesson, ADHD can look like a child not paying attention to the teacher talking, constantly moving around, and behaviors can be disruptive. 

ODD is oppositional defiant disorder. Students with ODD are uncooperative, defiant, and hostile toward peers, parents, teachers, and other authority figures. At the beginning of my time working at my school, I had a student with ODD. He would hit his teachers, curse, run in the halls, and never do his work. His mom had to come up to the school almost every day. 

I work with students with autism every day! I love my job and I am so glad that DCPS has incorporated the CES (Communication and Education Supports). The majority of the students are non-verbal. To communicate with them, we do a lot of sign language and visuals. Similar to the video on the first post, we do a lot of first-then boards in order to create a schedule in the classroom. The kids do so well with seeing the visuals. 

There is a girl in 2nd grade who has a hearing aid and speaker so people can speak to her. I always see her walking around the school with her hearing system and I just appreciate that they advocated for her and gave her the tools she needed to learn.

A lot of students have glasses and IEPs. One of the inclusion teachers always makes sure her students have their glasses and if they don't, she makes it her responsibility to reach out to caregivers and try to figure out what is going on. One time she had to pay for the glasses prescription out of pocket and DCPS had to reimburse her later.

The special education team has meetings with the teachers, inclusion teachers, occupational therapists, and speech therapists. My job has a great SPED coordinator and she works hard.

When I was in elementary, I remember kids being put into classes where it's only about 6-7 students. Now, these children are being included in general education classrooms where teachers are to adapt instruction, modify materials, teach specific learning strategies, and provide tutoring and computer practice. At first, they strictly had self-contained classrooms with special education teachers, but I have learned that they have inclusion classrooms where students can be pulled out and receive services based on their needs, like math, English help, seeing the school's psychologist or social workers if they need social-emotional support. 

Inclusion refers to students being in the least restrictive environment (general ed school) in a classroom where students with disabilities and students without disabilities can learn together, but still receive service hours for what they need outside the classroom. The gen ed teachers and inclusion teachers all work together to make sure the students are learning, keeping their IEPs updated, and receiving the services they need.

Last school year, we had a student with severe ADHD and she would cause disruption in class, walk in and out, and be defiant towards adults. She had to be switched out to another school. She was prescribed medicine (which her mom was not giving with fidelity) and the teacher had done everything she could with the modifications provided to her, but they didn't work. And that's okay, this student needed extra help that this school could not provide.

Another student had to be switched out because he just was not fit for a general education class. He had many traumatic situations happen to him, would burst out with angriness, and never stayed in class.

Reading this chapter, I was able to get a better insight into the different environments that are provided to these students to help them. 

DCPS has many inclusion programs/self-contained classrooms such as Early Learning Supports (ELS), Communication and Education Supports (CES), Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH), Behavior and Education Supports (BES), Independence and Learning Supports (ILS), Medical and Educational Supports (MES) and Specific Learning Supports (SLS). The River Terrace Education Campus in NE, DC is actually a whole school dedicated to servicing the students who have the greatest needs, grades 3-12.

I'm just glad the students do not have to struggle and the school district does what it can to make sure the students are where they need to be and learning despite what people think might be a setback for them.

This a website that has EVERYTHING if you are a special educator or interested in learning about certain disabilities: https://exceptionalchildren.org/