Now THIS is why I love teaching. I found myself standing in front of the class (I know, I know, no REAL classroom should have a designated front or back, but this one does) leading students in responding aloud to a rap! This is NOT me at all. Teaching gets me out of my comfort zone. I've found our class is so boring someone has to do something. So their vocab/spelling comes with a rap, which is what made it attractive to teachers, I think. Most of the time the rap is so contrived it's ridiculous, so silly it's actually fun. This one has a "back" going "roar" and the "front" going "oop-oop," and yes, yours truly led it. That's really what it's all about.
Meanwhile the sped teacher has talked to me about trying to use our personnel a little better, so I'm taking this as an opening to try to get some more creative groupings and most importantly, to get them more engaged in their learning. It can be so personalized with all these people, so let's get out there and do it.
Also I've been thinking about special educator roles and responsibilities. I know the sped teacher I work with has all the students with mild disabilities on her caseload, which is about 50. I asked her whether she thinks she'd be more effective just working consult, that is, spending her day just keeping up with these 50 children, making sure they're caught up in classes, doing re-teaching, etc. She said she probably could be more effective that way but there'd be nothing to look forward to if she wasn't teaching. That's the thing, we special educators love to teach, but there's no research that says what delivery model makes us most effective with students.
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