During my Junior and senior year of high school, I took a class called connecting. This class was a placement style course where we would spend four days in another classroom throughout the district and one day (usually Fridays) in the classroom learning about special education related topics. I worked in the high school classroom with a girl with a physical and mental disability for one trimester. I was unsure at first about how working with someone my own age would be but I ended up loving it and I think that experience was the first big step in getting me into special education.
First trimester my senior year in Connecting II, I struggled with finding a placement. My photography told me that there was a student in his Graphics class that was struggling and did not have a para-educator helping him when he should have one. Long story short, I ended up working in my favorite teacher’s classroom, helping with this student, Ryan.
When I first met Ryan, he was very shy. It took a few weeks for me to figure out how he worked and how to get him to respond to what I was saying. He has a lot of quirks so I quickly caught on to those as well. A lot of what the kids were doing in graphics, Mr. Rodriguez the teacher, and I quickly figured out that he would have a hard time doing. With his focus and slight autism, it made it hard for him to understand some of what the class was about and the purpose. I worked hard with Mr. Rodriguez and on my own to create new projects and lessons that would keep Ryan entertained and busy and learn something. We talked a lot about things Ryan liked, I pushed him to really think when he could not think of anything. We looked up photos of the things he liked and had him draw them similarly to how the other kids used a special computer software to draw things they liked. One of the big projects that Graphics does is make a t-shirt with a design the kids create on it. I worked with Ryan to come up with a design and draw it out together for his shirt. I had him trace the design once I got it printed out for him. I had a lot of fun with Ryan and we made a very goofy and unique connection. We would have fun days where we would go for walks when he got a little too talky and sometimes made popcorn together as a treat for behaving well and not disturbing the other working students.
We laughed a lot and I miss him endlessly. He taught me a lot about changing lessons to fit an individual student. He taught me that the connections I was building with these placements in Connecting were crucial to my future as an educator. Every experience is something I can take something away from and the more experience you have with kids, the more comfortable you’ll feel in a classroom. I am lucky that I had so much experience going into college because it will definitely help me in the future.
When I worked with Ryan I had to show a lot of patience and attention. I didn’t originally think of myself as a para-educator when I worked with Ryan but so far after learning more about the real definition of it, I would say I fell under that category. A para-educator is defined as an educator who works under the direction of a teacher to help deliver services for a student with disabilities (Friend p.42). This is what I was doing with Ryan. The experience I had with him was one that really pushed me even farther to go outside my comfort zone and really try to change some curriculum to fit him and his learning style. It was a challenge I was excited to take on and from that, I learned a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment