Survey of Exceptional Children – Dr. Kathryn Alves
Within my public schools I attended, I never had too much interaction with the students in my schools with disabilities, which caused me to not know much going into this class. Many students in my class had worked with either children with disabilities or other students with disabilities, which almost made me feel I was at a disadvantage for being able to understand the course material.
This class taught me probably the most I’d need to know for being in a classroom besides my actual EDUC courses, as I would love to work in inclusion classrooms but was never sure on how I could make that a beneficial environment for everyone. We learned a plethora of strategies and accommodations for every category of disabilities as well as different parts of an IEP so we’d be more understanding of the whole IEP process for a student with a disability.
We even had different guest speakers for different topics, such as a Special Education teacher with a son with Autism for our ASD unit and a woman who is Hard of Hearing who has worked with university students that are a part of the Deaf community for our hearing impairments unit.
We were also given ample scenarios for every category so we were fully prepared for different situations in the classroom, as well as learning different characteristics of every disability category so we’d be able to identify different behaviors to find the best strategy for providing the best UDL classroom for every student.
My artifact is a final reflection we had to complete as a part of our final exam, which had us discuss our prior experiences before the class and how the class has impacted our knowledge and comprehension of different disabilities and disability concepts. I was truly impacted by the class, which is reflected throughout my different explanations and reflection of my time in the reflection.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eMEbw9xThlrtCE-rFWVi-2_v-BgRJDv2gZRzcD9YX-E/edit?usp=sharing