Shadowing a Special Educator

Another thing that I decided to do for my contract was that of observing a Special Educator. I had originally planned to shadow and teach lessons in TAG, but scheduling was becoming difficult and too close to the wire. Thus, I decided to use my alternative special education hours.

During my observation in Whitney Fisher's special education classroom, I first observed students interacting with First in Math activities. One of the games that the two students played in the first hour was called 'Equal Pay.' This is a game where students have to match the money in words and numbers on the right side before using enough of each coin to be the equal amount or pay on the left. Something that I noticed during this activity was that one of the students, a third grade learning disability student, could not process that different coins still add up to equal some amount of money. For example, instead of using a dime, the student would use ten pennies every time.

After conferencing with Mrs. Fisher, she explained that for this particular student, even processing the money in numbers and words has been an accomplishment throughout the year. I learned from this experience that student understanding is something that can easily be assumed or taken for granted when it is not the case, especially when a student has a disability or some sort or if as teachers we have in our minds "they learned that last year...". I feel that from this experience, I have learned to be more sensitive and caring to all students because after thinking back, I believe that I have not been so understanding in similar situations before.