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i am considering a career in special education and am interested in hearing from people who've been involved in it. teachers, family members of students, and especially past students who've been through the system. some things i'm curious about : first and foremost, did it help you? success stories would be nice to hear - people who've graduated from special education and gone on to live fulfilling lives. but horror stories are just as informative. for those who didn't have an overwhelmingly negative experience... what was good about it? did you have good teachers, was the curriculum delivered in such a way to maximize learning, was the school environment set up for success, were there opportunities for social development? if you could change one (or more) things about your experience to make it better, what would you change? i'm also interested in anyone who went from special education to mainstream, either as a part-time thing or fully graduated from one system into the other. what was that like? was the transition well-managed? from what i can see, bullying is a huge barrier to mainstreaming kids with special needs. did anyone have a teaching team who handled it well? apart from that, i'm interested in hearing any personal accounts, whatever you want to share. it would also be cool to hear from different places around the world, how things are done there.
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Jun 6, 2023 11:16
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 05:06 |
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to start things off, all i got from my own schooling days were examples of what not to do. (for context, i went to a rural public school in australia in the 90s.) in primary (elementary), the special ed kids usually had their own room where all the grades and abilities seemed to be grouped in together and had almost no opportunity to interact with anyone outside their class. every day would have a few periods where they were dragged out and sat in a classroom with everyone else, but with their own material, their own teacher, and no chance to work with or talk to any of the mainstream students. the only time any of us noticed they were there was when one of them started acting up, which only created resentment and imo did more harm than good. what seemed particularly cruel to me was that for some reason, the teachers forced all the special education students (past a certain level of functioning) to do pe and sport with the rest of us. so almost their only real interaction with mainstream students was going through the harrowing ritual of team choosing, where of course all of them were left until the very end, and then having to hear everyone complaining about having to have them on their team and blaming them if they lost. that was awful enough to go through as a regular nerd, but on top of the social stigma they already experienced it must have been excruciating. once we got to high school, there was zero attempt at integration. the special education students had their own building and most of them chose to even spend lunchtimes there because they got bullied so much in the playground. they became invisible. i never heard any success stories from that town.
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Jun 6, 2023 11:59
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hi all, thanks so much for the responses! you've all given me a lot to work with and think about. apologies for not replying to anyone yet - i will do that in the next few days when i have time to respond to each post. thanks again!
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Jun 15, 2023 09:23
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