Greatest Accomplishment & Greatest Challenge

What was your biggest challenge and what did you do about it? What was your greatest accomplishment this week?

Accomplishment

The principal at new horizon was organized and had a vision for us to service as an intervention resource to the general education teachers. Belize does not have a system to identify students with disabilities. It is uncommon for students with more severe disabilities to be taught in school with typically developing students. Students with mild disabilities are in the general public schools but there are no additional supports for them. Mary and I observed the 6 upper grade classes and identified students who needed additional support either for behavior or academics. We were able to develop a schedule to help students with disabilities from each class. We currently have 22 students who we pull out to give supplemental instruction to. We were fortunate that the  teachers were open us being there and were grateful for our help.  So far we have determined most of them need intense academic support in language arts. Only a few can identify letter sounds making it very difficult for them to attempt to read. We are excited to get started working with this select group of students.

Challenge

Our biggest challenges as been helping the teacher understand what special education means. When we first went into the classrooms to identify students to work with we asked teachers if they had any students with disabilities. Most would say they didn't or they only had one or two. We figured out they didn't really know what we meant when we said "students with disabilities". Most people think of students who have severe handicaps or they think of the students who are the "troublemakers" when asked about students with disabilities. We had to change the way we asked teachers for students to work with. Instead of saying students with disabilities, we asked for students who were academically lower than their other typical students. Once the teachers understood the students we wanted to work with they identified more students.