Visit #2: Middle School Visit

    My overall experience with the middle school visit was great! I never thought that I would even consider stepping foot on a middle school campus as a teacher, but now my heart is open to this idea.

   As the visit began I was immediately impressed with the ESE specialist that introduced us to the school and their philosophy that deals with special education. I thought that this lady was a wealth of information for all of us. The way she spoke about her job gave me so much encouragement and I am so thankful for that. She shared with us so many things that gave me a picture of what my future career could look like. She is definitely an inspiration to me because of her passion, her ability to juggle all her tasks, and her knowledge. I thought that she supplied us with valuable information for our educational career now and beyond. Resiliency, self-efficacy, and professional behavior were all addressed.

   Now, about the actual school. The things that stood out to me when hearing about the dynamic of the school were that they used the approach of trying all other options before resorting a child to a "somewhat self contained" classroom, there was a student with autism that was in honors courses, and the class size numbers. I liked that they used the approach of trying their best to include all students in general education because it seems to model that which we have learned in class about Inclusion. I also enjoyed hearing that a student who has autism was in honors courses and not just because it sounds like one of those feel good stories, but because I think it shows that they do use the least restrictive environment for students. I was a little surprised to learn about classroom sizes and how that works, I know it has always been a debate, but this is the first time that I have ever really thought that there may be a problem. A general education classroom can have a maximum of 22-25 students, but when a special education teacher is present in the dynamic then the number of students jumps to around 30. I see where they think this is okay, but if a special educator is in a classroom I think that he or she should not be considered an extra help to the general education teacher or vice versa, both teachers are a team and should be given the same class size as any other room because chances are the difficulty of teaching in that class is higher than the other classrooms.

   The two classrooms that I observed were very different. The first class was a general education science course that was co-taught. I thought that the general education teacher had a little better handle on the class as a whole, but the special education teacher did share the same amount of power in the classroom. I was very impressed to see that the ELL students were able to have a general education science teacher who could speak both English and Spanish and there were about four that I could see that benefited from that. The special education teacher took on the last half of the lesson and the students started to get a little out of control, but that could be because it was the last half of the class. The second classroom we observed was what I would consider a self-contained classroom and these students were in there because they were labeled with emotional behavior disorder. I personally thought this teacher was great she was fun, sarcastic, quick, and could hold her own with these middle schoolers. I heard a few of my peers say that they did not think she was too good of a teacher, but I have to disagree because she commanded attention from these students that I do not think any other teacher could have done. I would not exactly call her a "warm demander" but I do think that what she was doing was best for the majority of the students. She was a good example of tough love, I think.

   I think it is funny how at both visits so far, that the first half where the teachers speak with us is so empowering and then we actually go into the classroom and get a little bit of a rude awakening. I enjoyed my visit today and really, really feel good about my career choice. I am so thankful for people like the ESE specialist at this middle school today.

"If kids come to us [educators /teachers] from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important."

-Barbara Colorose