As my CFE experience comes to a close, I am saddened to be leaving the special remedial class that I have spent the past three weeks. It has been a wonderful experience and I have learned a lot about teaching children who have developmental and behavioural needs. One of the most important things that I have learned from this experience is the necessity of flexibility in the classroom. Flexibility was stressed for both the teacher and the students. The students had to be flexible by not allowing any behaviours (such as Glass Brain from Superflex), to get in the way of the rest of their day. My community partner often told the students that if they were unable to collect themselves and rethink their behaviour their “day would stop there”, showing the students have control over whether their day can continue to be with fun experiences such as PE, centers etc, or they can ruin their day. I like that this shows the students that they have control over how their day will proceed and that they are capable of being flexible and finding solutions to their problems. It also helped students to reflect on their own behaviours and to think about ways that they could move back to having a positive day. Special activities such as integration into other classes, centers, playtime and centers seemed to also be good motivators to help students to rethink how their day will go.
The teacher in this class also had to be flexible. She showed me that there are days when the whole schedule had to be changed because students were missing or students’ behaviour got out of hand. In having three grades in her class, she also had to be flexible in what areas of the curriculum were focused on for each lesson and unit. The classroom was also filled with students of varying learning abilities and these abilities had to be taken into account when creating each classroom activity.
Although I had interest in working with students with needs before entering this CFE, this interest has grown as I worked in the special remedial class. I would be interested in seeing what other programs different school districts and schools have that work with children that have difficulty integrating into mainstream classes.
The teacher in this class also had to be flexible. She showed me that there are days when the whole schedule had to be changed because students were missing or students’ behaviour got out of hand. In having three grades in her class, she also had to be flexible in what areas of the curriculum were focused on for each lesson and unit. The classroom was also filled with students of varying learning abilities and these abilities had to be taken into account when creating each classroom activity.
Although I had interest in working with students with needs before entering this CFE, this interest has grown as I worked in the special remedial class. I would be interested in seeing what other programs different school districts and schools have that work with children that have difficulty integrating into mainstream classes.