Special education teachers work with learners with various kinds of learning, behavioural, and physical special needs. Generally, they familiarize different lesson plans for students with special needs and create several kinds of inclusive learning atmospheres. At present, the career outlook for skilled and certified special education teachers is strong, offering job growth and above-average wages. However, there are certain critical things that are being required to know by every would-bespecial education teacher before entering this world.
General education teachers and special education instructors share numerous of the same responsibilities.This is for the reason that kids with known special needs often spend a part of the day in the general education classroom as well. Rest part of the day these kids acquire more intensive services in a discrete learning space.
There are multiple critical things that every aspiring special education teacher need to know –-
1. Special Certification With Intense Training
You’ll need special certification of special education courses along with intense training. Teaching special kids is completely different from general teaching practices. In fact, now general education teachers are being asked to add special ed certification to their prevailing credentials as well for early intervention.Beyond just the certification, you also have to become proficient in matters dealing with growth, learning, and behaviour. Also, attending as many workshops on behavioural management, reading the current research on the brain, ADD, ADHD, ASD, etc. help a lot.
2. The JobIs Really, Really Tough
YES…it is as it is a career out of expecting the unanticipated! Do you know almost 50% of special education instructors leave the field in their first five years of teaching? Also, every special educator is bound to have learners who exhibit challenging behaviour. However, the work is a rewarding one, when you see the development apprentices make after a full year of school; most of the time, special ed teachers get emotional. Moreover, special ed teachers need to be determined to get the support that they need for their classrooms.Stress is inevitable in most teaching jobs but mainly so when teaching special education apprentices
3. You Need To Wear Multiple Hats
It is more than just teaching, there is an end number of informal responsibilities that come with the job. Not only are you a special ed teacher, but you’ll become a supporter, a coordinator and a counsellor as well. Additionally, counselling and communicating with the parents of kids with different special needs is a vast part of the work. Here, parents also need to have specialized training on special education so that they also can help in the process of their child’s growth and education.
4. You’ll Face Different Learners
There is no “typical” student in a special education classroom. Each and every learner displays individual behaviour. Being a proficient special education teacher is handling an extensive variety of students as well as their aptitudes.Thus, every aspiring special educator needsto be flexible in their teaching approaches while keeping genuine the prospects they have for school children.
5. It Will Be Quite Stressful
Nevertheless, stress is there in almost every type of professions, but particularly you will face it more in this career segment. No matter how artistic you are as an instructor, but unfortunately, it is a fact. Students with special educational needs require more attention and assistance. Also, emotionally disturbed learners sometimes scream at the teacher as well as other students while on the other hand, many autistic children express their desires by screaming. Here, you need to be able to stay calm to keep things from getting out of control.
Watch this video to find out various ways to create a sensory diet for Special Educational Needs kids!
6. Mounds of Paperwork
Generally, special educators have a lot of paperwork to complete as they have to write IEPs and collect academic data external link also to aid students to meet goals.They also do more paperwork than researching teaching strategies and training their special education students. These individualized plans will need additional work as the special education needs schoolchildren can’t be anticipated to learn and grow at a uniform pace.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
Due to these special necessities, apprentices’ requirements cannot be met within the traditional classroom environment. Therefore, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) was amended in 1997 and is now acknowledged as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Under IDEA’s legislature, states receiving centralized funding must:
- Offer all apprentices with special education needs between the ages of three and 21 access to an apt and free public education
- Safeguard teachers are sufficiently qualified and certified to teach special education
- Categorize, discover and appraise kids labelled with special education needs
- Provide those special education needs students enrolled in early-intervention (EI) programs with a positive and operative transition into an apt preschool program
- Formulate an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for each child with different special education needs
- Teach children with special education needs within their “least restrictive environment“
- Deliver special education facilities for those children enrolled in private schools
IDEA Covers These Following Special Education Needs —
Under the IDEA, these special infirmities are considered into the following areas:
- Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) refers to a developing special education need that pointedly affects verbal and non-verbal communication as well as social communication.
- Deaf-blindness denotes related visual and hearing damages.
- Deafness means a kid’s hearing loss is so severe that it affects the processing of linguistic material.
- Developmental delay is a term chosen for children birth to age nine who display cognitive development, physical development, socio-emotional development, behavioural development or communication delay.
- Intellectual special education needis demarcated as a meaningfully below average functioning of general intelligence.
- Kids with multiple special education needs are those with related impairments such as intellectual and blindness or intellectual special education needand orthopaedic impairment(s).
- Orthopaedic impairment(s) refer to severe orthopaedic impairments that poorly affect a child’s academic performance.
- Other Health Impairment(s)are often due to continuing or severe health difficulties — including ADD/ADHD, epilepsy, and Tourette’s syndrome — and badly affect the child’s edifying performance.
- Specific learning infirmity refers to a series of special education needs in which one or more basic psychological processes tangled in the complete usage of linguistic — both spoken or written that affects poorly in one’s aptitude to listen, think, read, write, spell and/or complete mathematical calculations.
- Speech or language losses refer to communications special education needs such as stuttering, weakened articulation or language/voice damages that have a hostile effect on a child’s educational growth.
- Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)refers to a developed injury to the brain caused by exterior physical forces.
- Visual impairment, which comprises blindness, refers to damageto one’s vision.
Concluding Thoughts
Indeed, if you’re driven to help schoolchildren in expressive ways, special education is a change worth considering with special education courses. It’s significant for prospective special education teachers to be entirelydedicated to their work as this is not an easy career. If you have accurate attitude and are enthusiastic to put in the work, this is indeed a rewarding career choice!
