Case+Study+Critique

Case: How can I engage all these students. Steve Colsen

The challenge: Anita is a special education teacher at Kennedy School. She can see that Jackie, who has been teaching in the school for three years, is struggling to try to focus her students’ attention. Kennedy school has recently developed a more inclusive classroom model, but Jackie has problems to get the students concentrated. Annie wants to try to help her and the students. But it is a real challenge, because Jackie has never had quite as much diversity of learning styles and needs in her classroom as she does now. In her class of 25, only about half of her students are reading at grade level. Many of the other students face various learning and behavior challenges: four students have learning disabilities, two deal with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder and one student has been classified with moderate mental retardation. Four other students are functioning more than two grade levels below their classmates, but have not been identified as having any specific type of disability. With such diversity in her classroom, sometimes Jackie returns home in the evening feeling overwhelmed by the needs of her students. Jackie sums up very well the situation:  How can I meet all of their needs without making six, eight, or ten different sets of teacher plans?! I've always had students with disabilities in the classroom but this year's group seems to have so many individual needs. The challenge is: she has to find a way to engage all of these students who have different needs.

The solution: First Jackie is going to collaborate with Anita, the special education teacher. Collaboration is very important to find strategies to deal with the problem. Jackie is already doing many effective things in her classroom but the collaboration can be a great thing to find an appropriate solution. Anita finds a good way: Utilizing Universal Design for Learning is a great guide and resource for her as she plans lessons with all of her students in mind. Universal design for learning (UDL) is also being applied to the development and delivery of learning opportunities, separate from technology applications. The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) has offered a definition of universal design in education: In terms of learning, universal design means the design of instructional materials and activities that makes the learning goals achievable by individuals with wide differences in their abilities to see, hear, speak, move, read, write, understand English, attend, organize, engage, and remember. Universal design for learning is achieved by means of flexible curricular materials and activities that provide alternatives for students with differing abilities. These alternatives are built into the instructional design and operating systems of educational materials-they are not added on after-the-fact. So the solution is to use multiple forms of representation to help all the students to focus on what is happening in class. For that, they are using different ways and technologies such as Guided Notes Tool, E-Reader, the jigsaw strategy or the Venn Diagram.

Resolution: Jackie knows that she and Anita have come up with a set of new ways of teaching and assessment that will help each student. They've agreed to meet after each social studies period of the targeted week in order to make any revisions that might become necessary, and Jackie feels as if Anita has become an even bigger support than she had been in the past. Anita is also grateful that she has been able to make a difference for many students in Jackie's classroom, several of whom were not on her caseload. After all, this collaboration has been about the students, and both teachers feel like future units will better meet all of Jackie's students' needs.