Thursday, November 1, 2007

I Hate The Educational System

Today I had to spend my planning period for "professional development."
We had to go into a room for the entire period and listen to someone talk to us about co-teaching with a special educator. (If you teach students with IEP's, there should be a special educator come into the room a few times a week to assist with their learning needs.)
1. We teach the advanced students. I have one IEP within all of m 95 kids, and his is a speech and learning problem, which means I don't do any modifications for his work.
2. Even if I did teach IEP kids, special educators only go into the math and language arts classroom, so it still would have been a waste of time.
3. They passed out 15-20 worthless sheets of paper to EVERY teacher in the building. Yet, our copiers don't work, and we don't have enough paper.

But you know, that's not even my point.
They informed us that the special educators should be co-teaching with the regular educator, so that all the students feel as though this special educator is part of the classroom. They don't think that this teacher coming in and just assisting the special ed kids is teaching, its "tutoring," which is not okay. So regular educators and special educators need to plan together to get it all worked out. Why?
If its your classroom, its YOUR classroom. ANYBODY who comes in once a week is not going to be "a part" of the classroom. And if they wanted to teach entire classes of regular ed kids, they wouldn't be special educators! And why should you alter the flow of your classroom?
They want you to plan with the other teachers on your team, plan with the other teachers in your subject area, plan with the special educator, but yet they don't respect you enough to let you create your own lessons, they basically tell you what you have to teach.

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