5th Field Experience Blog, EGL 441 Samantha Summers

A Range of Experiences in CWC

In the article "Re-Seeing (Dis)Ability: Ten Suggestions," Patricia A. Dunn approaches the topic of special education with positivity and optimism. Unfortunately, in some of the CWC classes I have observed so far, the teachers approached the handling of situations involving children with special needs in a less-than-positive manner. In one such instance, I was observing a co-taught CWC class. One of the teachers arranged for the students to partake in an online Jeopardy-style review game that they could access either on an app on their phones or by using the computers in the classroom. The website generated questions about the text "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by Sherlock Holmes, which the students were going to be tested on a few days later. 

I thought this activity was a great way to integrate technology into classroom instruction. In Dunn's article, she esteems the use of technology in the classroom and states that, "These tools...invite students too comfortable with working in their preferred comfort zone--say, conventional reading and writing--to venture into other modalities, where they will have insights they would not have had in routine, print-based realms" (Dunn 14). Although I really liked the idea of the Jeopardy game as a means for the students to review for their tests, the excitement generated by the game quickly led to the class getting out of control. Many students were out of their seats, screaming and dancing around. The co-teachers did not make any attempts to try to get the class under control. I think that there could have been an effective strategy to use to somehow encourage the students to control their behavior while still being able to have fun playing a review game. I definitely expected more out of observing this class, and had hoped to see some effective behavioral strategies put into place. I think maybe the game could have been handled in a more structured way. For instance, if the teacher had arranged a review game activity where the students had to take turns going up to the SmartBoard to answer questions, the students would have had the opportunity to get up and move around, while still remaining productive and on-task.

On another occasion, while observing in a different CWC class, I noticed one day that I came in that the class was much quieter than usual. One of the co-teachers instructed them to silently read for the class period, and they did so without a peep. After the class ended, that same co-teacher confided in me that the students were behaving so well because she had "scared" them the day before by screaming at them for bad behavior. I feel like there must have been a better way to handle the students' misbehavior rather than scaring them into behaving. In Dunn's article, she discusses the concept of removing barriers for individuals with special needs. She writes, "If we can become more aware of these barriers and remove them, it would help us rethink disability in ways that would benefit everyone" (Dunn 15-16). In the case of this CWC class, I think that, while it may have seemed like an easy solution to get the students to behave in class, the scare tactic actually put up a barrier that likely caused the students to feel more alienated from their teachers and perhaps even ashamed of their own actions. Since the teacher screamed at the whole class, everyone suffered the consequences, even those who were not misbehaving. I think that the teacher could have utilized a more effective way to discipline the students without alienating them, such as through the use of differential reinforcement (reinforcing only target behavior). The visitor we had in EGL 441 that spoke to us about special education suggested pairing up students who typically misbehave with another student who is kind and accepting, to perhaps guide their behavior in a positive direction. Perhaps the teacher could have employed this tactic in addition to differential reinforcement instead of simply screaming at the students.

Lastly, I did see some admirable work in a third CWC class. A teacher initiated a class discussion about the novel "Mudbound" by Hillary Jordan. Several minutes into the discussion, a student raised her hand to inform the class that she had gone to the movies over the weekend. The student seemed very excited to tell the class about the movie she had seen. Instead of admonishing the student for going off-topic, the teacher leading the discussion told the student that she could share her movie review later on in the class, after the discussion and subsequent lesson was wrapped up and the class had achieved their learning objectives for the day. The student then actively participated in the discussion about "Mudbound" without going off-topic again, and was able to share her movie review toward the end of the period. Thus, the knowledge that she would be able to share her review served as a positive reinforcement for the student to engage in the discussion of the novel. I really liked the way the teacher handled this situation. In this case, the teacher did not stigmatize the student for going off-topic. I believe this was an effective means to "remove barriers," as the teacher was understanding of the student's differences and yet did not make the student "feel different" in class.