What type of Environment do you learn best in?
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According to the Pew Research Center, our population continues of scholars with disabilities continues to grow and from the most recent research that has been
According to the Pew Research Center, our population continues of scholars with disabilities continues to grow and from the most recent research that has been presented from the National Center for Learning Disabilities our black youth are 40% more likely to be identified with a disability versus all other youth and our Black, Hispanic, and Native all have higher risk ratios for being identified. We need to provide educators in special education with the support needed to support our most valuable and vulnerable populations.
Personalized differentiated instruction is needed now more than ever. We need to begin to utilize an asset based approach to determine how, what are where learners learn the best. Educators can differentiate according to the learner’s readiness, interests and/or learner profile.
Differentiated instruction can support the needs of all learners and needs to be implemented effectively within all classrooms. In order to provide the equitable, inclusive, and accessible learning environments that our learners so desperately need, as the population of our diverse learners who receive special education services continue to increase, leaders need to know how to effectively coach and support special education teachers on differentiated instruction. Here are ways in which differentiation can occur and why school leaders should know how to effectively coach special education teachers through differentiation:
Content
Content refers to the information students learn or ways students access the information. Often the curricula that are purchased by building leaders lack supportive features for learners who require services. If the goal is to provide a quality curriculum for every learner, leaders must ensure that the content is accessible for learners with disabilities. Unpacking and being able to modify content to fit the needs of learners is essential, but not all special educators are versed in that ability. Leaders should be able to coach educators through unpacking the curriculum and modifying it to contextually fit the needs of learners who receive special education services.
Process
Learners with disabilities take in and process information in various ways through various modalities. Often to provide access to quality curricula and special educators have to provide multiple opportunities with varying strategies to support the needs of those they provide services. Leaders must know how to coach special education teachers in how to take the curriculum and the responses to the curriculum to make supportive instructional decisions regarding the process of content.
Product
The opportunities that special education teachers provide for learners to show what they know, understand, and can do is essential to teaching and learning. Often this comes in the form of assessment and in many schools when we think of assessment it is often equated to testing: standard and/or formal. Leaders need to be able to provide supportive coaching in the types of products that are supportive to learners. The goal of assessments is to inform teaching and learning to provide learners with the support they need to make continuous growth towards their goals and increase student success rates. Leaders need to know how to coach special educators in understanding the purpose of assessments and the variety of assessments that are meaningful and purposeful.
Affect/Environment
The question that has been pondered often specifically during the pandemic is: What type of environment do our learners learn best? In special education the least restrictive environment is the learning placement that best fits the individualized needs of the learner. The following placements are General Education, Self-Contained, Home, and Residential. Leaders need to know how these placements impact the types of support/ services provided to learners and that learners can have their educational plan written in which they have a primary placement with services provided in another. Either way leaders can have learners assigned to their school making them responsible for the growth, success and progress of the learner academically, socially, emotional and behaviorally. At times determinations may need to be made to change a placement laterally, more and/or less restrictively. It is important to be able to support special education teachers through the process and know what information is needed to do so.
We still need to above all have an awareness of the type of environments they learn best and how we can differentiate learning. Educators can differentiate according to the learner’s readiness, interests and/or learner profile and require effective coaching on how to do this with the special education learning environment to best support the individualized needs of their learners. So leaders my question for you: Which one of the four ways will you coach your special education teachers through within context first?
According to the Pew Research Center, our population continues of scholars with disabilities continues to grow and from the most recent research that has been
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