WANTED: SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHER

By Leah M. Surot, Ed.D.

 

WHO is the Special Education Teacher?  How challenging does it get to be a SPED Teacher? What rewards does a special needs teacher get from her work? These are just a few questions a neophyte teacher has in mind when she feels in her heart that she would like to set her foot on educating children with special needs.

A Special Education teacher handles children with disabilities or with exceptional abilities and talents.  She holds a SPED teacher item and assigned classes for special children. A particular expertise is necessary to teach and handle children with different kinds of disabilities like hearing, speech and language or visual impairment, intellectual disabilities, autism, behavioral problem, learning disabilities as well as those who are gifted or fast learners. These teachers are usually sent on scholarships and trainings here and abroad to mold them in their field of specialization. For some, they spend their own money to take up a Masters of Education with specialization in Special Education in prestigious universities and colleges.

For many years now, I have been immersed in educating children with special needs.  My venturing to SPED was never ever planned. It must be surely a call from the Lord our good God.  As a SPED teacher, you devote all your time and energy teaching children with disabilities with basic knowledge, self-help skills and attitudes necessary for them to live an independent and fruitful life.  Inside a SPED classroom, you spend long hours of one-on-one and small group hands-on activities.  If you have 8 special learners, then you also have 8 differentiated Individualized Education Plan (IEP) goals and hands-on tasks for each one of them.  That is why patience is the number one virtue of any teacher handling children with special needs.

Teachers of learners with special needs celebrate the smallest accomplishment of children.  Just the fact that they can express their needs to their SPED teacher like going to the toilet is already an indication of learning.  Just having them fingerspell their names is a milestone already.  Just having an eye-to-eye contact with them is also an indication of big success.  Every little thing that they can do as a result of the teaching-learning process inside the classroom is recognized with praises and positive feedback.  Surely, a teacher in SPED should shower her pupils with a lot of encouragement in order to sustain their educational growth.  The little goals and targets set for them when achieved is already the biggest accomplishment of a SPED teacher.

Educators of special pupils should also be a strong advocate of the rights of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs).  She should be an active participant in the celebration of significant events of PWDs like the National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week, White Cane Day and Deaf Awareness Week.  Enjoining all special pupils with their parents and family members to actively participate in such events is one way of empowering special children at their very young age.

A Special Needs Teacher should also have the biggest heart for children with disabilities.  If she has compassion and not pity for these kids, then she can be a very effective teacher.  She should focus on their abilities, not on what they can’t do due to their disabilities.  Her ultimate goal is to develop them to their maximum potential and to become self-reliant and productive in their very own community.

The real rewards of a special education teacher can never be measured by the awards and recognition she gets from awarding bodies but by the smile and laughter of each special child she touched.  She may never be compensated financially but she will surely be treasured in the hearts and minds of those special children whose lives became meaningful and productive because someone believed in them and nurtured them to the highest level they could ever reach.

(The author teaches at West Central Elementary School I, Dagupan City)

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