I remember 20 plus years ago when I was getting my graduate degree in Special Education and a buddy of mine receiving his degree in elementary education told me that his father, a school principal, mentioned that I probably should not waste my time getting a master’s in Special Education. He stated that Special Education would be ultimately fading out of public education. I was just about performed with my masters at this point so I figured I’d take my possibilities with it, besides what other option did I’ve anyways at that point?
I got a Special Education job and taught for about 10 years. There have been loads of ups and downs more than those 10 years, and at some point, I decided that I wanted a modify so I got certified and switched more than to high college history. At this point in my profession, I remembered what my friend had mentioned a decade ago and wondered if I was ahead on the curve on schools no longer needing special education teachers, even though it was 10 years later. I wondered if my job was now safe in my new-found home in the history division.
Well, I loved teaching history, but life has its funny ways that are not aligned to us and what we want, so right after a decade of teaching history I got an initially-class education on budget cuts, and my job was eliminated. Fortunately, I landed on my feet back in Special Education, think it or not.
It had been more than two decades since my old graduate college buddy told me that the requirement for special education teachers was disappearing. During the earlier two decades, my pal had gone from graduate school to elementary school teacher to assistant principal to principal, just like his father had done. I had gone from graduate school to a special education teacher to a history teacher to back to special education teacher, like no one else that I know had performed. And believe it or not, there was nevertheless a bunch of special education jobs out there when I landed there for a second time. As a matter of reality, there were lots of jobs there for the reason that there’s a shortage of special education teachers in 49 out of our 50 states. Think about that… Two decades just after I was told that Special Education was going away, and I discover that they still can’t look to get sufficient special education teachers.
Fast-forward a few additional years to now and there is a new and intriguing twist affecting Special Education called full inclusion. Now inclusion is not a new thing for our schools. As a matter of reality, inclusion has a long interesting history in our schools.
Six decades ago there was the Supreme Court Case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954 the new law of the land became integrated schools for all races. 4 decades ago the ground-breaking law of People with Disabilities Education Act (Concept) began to take impact and assist ensure that greater than six million students with disabilities possess the ideal to a free and suitable education, which signifies they as well get to be integrated into with the general education population.
To assist this happen schools produce a Planning and Placement Team (PPT) that meets and talks about a student’s Person Education System (IEP) after which location the student within the appropriate educational setting primarily based around the student’s demands plus the law. The placement also should be the least restrictive atmosphere (LRE). I can nevertheless bear in mind my college professor describing the least restrictive atmosphere in a quick story that one wouldn’t bring a machine gun to look after a fly. Rather, 1 would just bring a fly-swatter to care for a fly. In other words, if a kid’s disability might be dealt with in the neighborhood college, then the kid does not have to be sent across town and even to yet another town’s special college.
