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What is your classroom space? If you have a classroom, how does it compare to your peers who teach nondisabled students? Does it meet your students' needs?
Have students with disabilities moved out of the trailer out back and into the building?
Please share your experiences. In a staff meeting today the possibility of moving the program came up and it took me right back to those days of the portable out back.... I thought those days were over.
My classroom space is huge compared to what I actually need. I’m in an urban high school. The room I have this year can fit 30 students, but I only have 12:1:1 classes, so this space is carnivorous. I share the room with a foreign language teacher; I have the room all afternoon. When it came to hanging stuff up, only I have really done so, he never really has, which is surprising. Totally fit the needs of my class and students. I have no complaints. I’m in NY state if that matters.
But yeah I too thought the days of the classroom away from others was long gone by now. Students with disabilities are often included with regular ed. Students around these parts. You better have your special education game on if you’re in regular ed.
I teach high school and all of our classes are inclusion with the exception of a resource room. That room is small and about 1/3 of a regular classroom. We average 7-10 students in there. It will fit about 11 desks and 4 computers. I only teach one block of that class and we have a different resource class in there every block with a different teacher. It is too small though. Even our ID students are mainstreamed into the general education classes for a few classes and all electives.
The school I'm teaching at is K-5, and there are SDC M/M classrooms that are in the same buildings as the gen ed classrooms, a portable for RSP and a portable for SPL. The SDC classrooms are the same size as the gen ed classrooms, but not as crowded since they have half as many students. The portables are roomier than the main buildings. All the students love the portables, including the gen ed students. The RSP is pull out and push in, based on needs.
What is your classroom space? If you have a classroom, how does it compare to your peers who teach nondisabled students? Does it meet your students' needs?
Have students with disabilities moved out of the trailer out back and into the building?
Please share your experiences. In a staff meeting today the possibility of moving the program came up and it took me right back to those days of the portable out back.... I thought those days were over.
Depends.
I grew up in a fairly low income, overcrowded school district in a rural area, and lots of things were in portables, not just special education. These days, that same district (where my mom still works in special ed) has been able to fund a large building project, and there are no more portables in use for anything. Interesting fact, though...when I was growing up, the portables were coveted, and it was always a treat to get to use them (which we did for music and art), because they were the only places that had A/C. Some of the special education students using them required a more highly controlled climate for medical reasons, so they were all outfitted with A/C. The main school building was not.
Mainstreaming is trending whenever feasible, for least restrictive setting purposes. The only students who are completely self-contained are those whose disabilities require supports that can't be easily reproduced in the main classrooms, or those whose behavioral issues are such that they represent a danger to themselves or those around them. There are few who are 100% self-contained, because at this point, that high of a degree of specialized programming is often better served at an outside placement, and referrals are made to that effect.
For myself, I taught for a number of years in one such private outside placement. My students were predominantly those with extremely aggressive and/or self-injurious behavior. Classrooms/learning spaces were tailored to the needs of the student, so it looked different depending on who you were working with. I taught life skills in a lab that looked like a house, with a kitchen, laundry room, bedroom, etc. It actually was a small house that was used expressly for that. For students with more academically focused needs, I taught in a more traditionally outfitted classroom. But, again, private, specialized setting, fairly highly restrictive, but still the least restrictive setting possible for specific needs. Also, that setting was temporary, with the ultimately goal always being reintegration back to the referring school district.
We got a new school building this past year. The year before, we spent a lot of time in meetings where the architects were supposedly "getting our input" (really, they just wanted us to feel like we were part of the decisions). The architects and the district did not want to give me as the sped teacher a classroom at all. In our building, some years I had a full sized classroom to myself and some years I shared. I understood that in the years I shared, it was the only solution as of course it didn't make sense for a classroom of 30 kids to not have a space while I took a full sized classroom for small groups. However, to purposefully build a new building without space for me or my students was the height of insulting, IMO.
The district wanted to force a push-in/full inclusion model, and they thought not having a space for us to teach in would accomplish this. They pull this crap every single year, and every single year we determine we don't have the staff to even begin to pull it off. The only way to get the students any kind of regular services is pull out if they're going to choose to only have 2 sped teachers for a building of 550 kids/7 grade levels/70 IEPs. Even if we were going to push in, where was I to keep all of my paperwork/testing/instructional materials? Confidential student files? How would I test kids, make phone calls, hold meetings, or plan for my instruction?
The architects wanted to give me this little drawer on wheels- about the size of a small two drawer filing cabinet. I was told that I would carry my materials in this, and that if I needed to sit at a desk to do paperwork or plan, I would simply wheel my little drawer over to "open" desks in the hallway. The little drawer literally would MAYBE fit materials for one group (I see 9 per day) and a few folders of paperwork (we have like 3 filing cabinets worth). We (other sped teacher, EL teachers, intervention teachers) were also told that there would be "flex spaces" that we would take our materials to if we were doing a pull out group. Sped director insisted that under NO circumstances were these to be assigned to people- they had to be "flex."
I pitched an absolute fit in numerous meetings. I never do that- the vast majority of our staff would describe me as very quiet/reserved. Eventually, my P put her foot down and said she was assigning the flex spaces as classrooms. She told sped director that she wouldn't put names on them if we needed to pretend they weren't assigned. I lucked out into a pretty nice small group classroom- I'm guessing I was assigned the nicest one because I threw a fit. It's about 1/4 the size of a regular classroom, but it's a good size for small groups. The other sped teacher got an extra full sized classroom (we cut the number of classes in one grade level) and the intervention people got the smaller "flex" rooms. I've always said I wouldn't bother trying to teach sped elsewhere because I think the same crap gets pulled everywhere and you may as well stick with the devil you know, but if this were not resolved I would have 100% left my school over it.
BUT, if we ever go back to needing that other sped teacher's room for a class, I'm sure they'll just shove her in with me, and my current room is WAY too small for two teachers. Our groups would literally be 2 feet apart from each other. They would never bother to build a portable space for us- I'd certainly take that any day over having to share!
Last edited by harrison21; 06-01-2019 at 11:53 PM..
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