A Teacher’s Plight: A Reading Emergency - Students’ Barriers to Life
Teaching English to Special Education students affords the opportunity to enrich a generation through assisting students to become independent life-long learners. There are barriers that teachers of English encounter when they are establishing and reinforcing their students’ skills. English continues to be a struggle for students with disabilities because of the specific nature of the language. As teachers, our ultimate goal is to promote a desire for our students to become life-long learners. Special Education teachers need a variety of tools in their toolbox such as using diagnostic prescription, teaching code switching, and implementing trauma-informed activities.
When dealing with student writing concerns, Special Education teachers must think diagnostically to achieve educational goals. Many special education students require prescriptive teaching in self-regulation, positive racial identity, and academic enrichment. These concepts are intertwined as one impacts the other in significant ways. My first step in teaching English to students with disabilities requires a skill set that is similar to a diagnostician with the goal of developing a specific prescription and methods to help remediate deficits. Any Special Education teacher knows that the learning cycle is to test, identify, modify, teach, and re-teach. When lesson planning, it is important to create learning opportunities in the following three areas: reading (fluency, comprehension activities), vocabulary (working with ideas and enrichment), and writing (using various models and state rubrics) to help facilitate an approach that is developed in all three areas. In addition, it is important that students read narrative pieces that promote critical thinking that will develop arguments through fact and opinion exercises.
English Literature exposes students to past situations through narrative articles, books and writings that not only express the attitudes of the time but expose students to various perspectives. It is important to note that reading for information and reading for fun are vastly different. Oftentimes, the reading materials for students are simply related to text messages and emails. As mentioned previously, this notion has shown to be detrimental to student outcomes as students primarily use this language in their speaking and writing. Students often utilize text messages to express ideas in a shortened, modified version that is markedly different from the original word. It is the English teachers’ thought that although this code switch is something that is part of life, it is important to teach standard English language to foster success in other areas to not negatively impact their budding professional life. We must begin to understand who our students are and the barriers they face as students with diagnosed disabilities. Without this information, we are grasping at straws with no real direction, but there are different strategies that make teaching much more effective, especially when students have additional concerns such as dealing with trauma.
As an emotional support teacher, one such strategy that can be used to assist my professional work is the knowledge of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). When people experience trauma through ACEs, they tend to cope through their trauma negatively. English teachers can educate students on ACEs by using Trauma-Informed Teaching. Teachers can help students make connections between informational articles and the text to help understand ACEs and healthy ways to cope through trauma. The reading material practices the necessary skills that educators are trying to address, but in a fashion that is more appropriate for the needs of students with emotional disturbance as well as any student who has experienced trauma in the past.
Teachers need a tool box of activities that is based on trauma-informed thinking and planning. It is important that they are aware of the different types of trauma and the effects these situations have on the students’ ability to engage within the classroom. When selecting materials for a class, it is important to think didactically. It is important to consider state standard alignments and trauma-informed teaching as a unit where materials are chosen to reinforce both agendas. ACE teaching is broken into several categories with known methodologies that help teachers to better understand the learner. The first category is abuse which contains physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The next category is neglect which includes both physical and emotional. Finally, the household dysfunction category includes mental illness, incarcerated relative, mother treated violently, substance abuse, and divorce.
Adolescent victims of trauma stemmed from ACEs may not be receiving information in safe spaces about how to cope with their experiences. It’s so important for students to be educated about ACEs and how to cope with trauma because ACEs can have lifelong repercussions. By incorporating ACEs education into the curriculum, students who may be experiencing trauma will not have their experiences silenced. Students need to be given the tools in a safe space to cope with their lived trauma in healthy ways while practicing the necessary skills to become better learners and English students.
In conclusion, it is a responsibility for teaching professionals to continue to teach real life coping skills within the subject of English. ACE is one way we can begin to address the trauma that affects many of our students with emotional disabilities. Our oath is to close gaps and enrich lives, and as teachers we have the ability to challenge a student to become his or her best. We must be mindful in how we are offering assistance to students with disabilities. It is our duty to contribute everything we can to enrich our students’ lives and provide them opportunities to experience success in our classrooms and within their personal lives. This will, in turn, enable them to become life-long learners. The opportunities teachers provide students need to be closely monitored and adjusted when necessary, but most importantly their successes are celebrated!
Antoinette DeLorenze is an 11th and 12th grade Special Education and English Teacher at Oliver Citywide Academy in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment