History Alone in a Crowd
by Jazmine Storvold – Tuesday, 14 January 2020, 2:53 PM
History- “What has happened to change the ways schools treat students with special needs?”
Over time lots has changed on how schools treat students with special needs. At a time, students with special needs were completely isolated and not present in schools at all. Now students with special needs are within schools and in classrooms with fellow students. Being that there has been such a large shift towards inclusive education students with special needs are not just being placed in a separate classroom (such as a resource room) but are encouraged to be within the classroom with other students. Schools generally treat students with special need’s as a priority in ensuring they are receiving the support and resources needed in order to be successful. Schools have made it a priority to ensure students with special needs are included in activities within the classroom and school. Education Assistants play a role within schools to support students with special needs within classrooms. There are now sensory rooms for students with special needs to have access to when they are feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated. There are also Learning Assistance Teachers (LART) who are responsible in ensuring students success by creating IEPs with targeted goals and expectations. Resource Rooms are also placed within schools as a place for students with severe special needs to be able to learn. They also are often a safe place for all students with special needs to go and feel comfortable in. Sometimes the classroom isn’t a place where students with special needs feel most an ease and it can cause great discomfort for the student. This can also be difficult for teachers and fellow students depending on the severity of a students needs. In the case of Darlene, it seems as though within the classroom she is always still feeling isolated and upset despite the efforts of inclusion and having support and therefore her reactions of frustration and anger made her fellow classmates feel upset and perhaps unsafe. It appears both students and the teacher were struggling to understand Darlene and how to avoid episodes of frustration. It may have been helpful if the Education Assistant assigned to her made it possible for Darlene to have sensory breaks when she could sense Darlene starting to explode. Regular breaks may have lessened Darlene’s feelings of overstimulation and powerlessness.
