Final Post

The journey this semester has been very interesting for me.  This has been one of the most challenging semesters that I have had thus far.  I am very glad for all of the information and insights that I have learned but am glad to have a break coming up! 
One major fact that I learned was that no matter how much we narrow and research something there is so much information out there to sift through. 
Thank you to everyone for sharing your comments and expereinces with me as well.  I feel that through your experiences I was able to gain insight into other areas of education that I might not have other wise had the opportunity to look at.  Good luck to everyone in the future!

Sensory Integration and Family Relationships

I have been doing my observations for this internship class at an afterschool program at a private school in Normal, IL.  This has been a very interesting, busy, and trying couple weeks for me during this class.  I had decided to change my focus for the paper at the last minute.  I was finding that my topic was way too broad and needed to be changed.  After talking with several people at my internship site and people that I work with I decided that my focus needed to change.  I am now focusing on sensory processing disorder.  I have found that this disease affects more children than we think.  I also think that the tools and treatments that we as teachers would use in the classroom for sensory processing disorder are good tools to know about when dealing with all children. 

One of the students in the afterschool program was a former student of mine.  I found it very interesting that even though he was in my class almost three years ago both he and his mother still recognized me.  This was the student had originally inspired me to research this topic.  I had worked with his mother and this student to find out what was going on with him.  His mother told me what a remarkable difference she had seen in her son since he was able to get his IEP for school and to receive occupational therapy. I was great to see how much the student had changed and how much he had improved.

One insight that I learned was how important we are in the lives of all of our students.  You never know the impact that you will have on a student even at a young age.  Another insight that I learned from doing the research this week for this paper was how important our roles as teachers are in helping out children.  It is our job to speak out when there is something that needs to be changed and when there is something that we can do about it.  I have come to realize that the most important thing we can do is to be informed.  When we are informed about issues then we can help to inform others as well.

Professional/ Administative Insights

I have been doing my internship in an afterschool program at a private daycare in Normal.  The daycare center is affiliated with Epiphany Elementary School, a private school in the Bloomington-Normal area.  I originally chose this setting because I was interested in finding out how different the public school system and the private school system where in helping kids with special needs.  I met with the director at this center to discuss some of the issues that are related to children with special needs.

My focus in the special education field is in the mental health side of the field.  I am focusing more specifically on how to address and seek treatment for these children.  I work in a private daycare as well and have struggled on where to start when looking of resources to help with a child.  Where do you start and how do you get that child help without having to pay enormous fees to get it.  There was one child that I was trying to get assessed in one of my classes.  I looked into getting help for this child and looked to Easter Seals to help.  I found out all of the wonderful programs and help that they could provide, and then I got the estimated bill.  $100 per hour with a minimum of four hours required that would be billed to our center.  While I still felt this program had the most to offer it was financially not a possibility.  

I spoke with the director about some of these issues, including where they turn for help.  She was very helpful in recommending some different areas to look into when seeking out help for mental health in children.  She has told me how their center had used people through Easter Seals as well and were very pleased with how they were handled.  However, they are funded by the private school and have allotted funds for things like this.  Also, she recommended getting the parents on board first because some of they do provide financial assistance to families that need it.  The financial responsibility falls on the party that initiates the contact with them.  She also emphasized how important communication between administrators, teachers, parents, and the assessors for the process to go smoothly to benefit the child he most.

Observations from the past two weeks

These past two weeks have been very informative to me in my search for answers in the special education filed.  The sight that I am working in is a private daycare that is associated with a private Catholic school in Normal, Illinois. One of the concerns that I have about working in a private daycare is the availability of resources for children that have special needs that need to be addressed.  Finding the resources that are available to us is a difficulty that I have come across in working in a private daycare.  You are able to see the warning signs and know that a child needs help, but we do not have the resources to use that other state funded programs have.    One interest that I have is finding out how to go about getting these resources for the children when the state is not the one providing the resources. 

I really want to focus my paper and research for this class on helping children specifically with mental health issues.  I have found in that often times these children are the ones that need the most help, however, they are often the hardest to get help for.  After talking to the director at my site I found that both she and her teachers felt that this too was an important issue and one that was difficult to approach sometimes.  She explained to me how often times when they approach parents about a child they take any issues with their personal mental health to be a slam at their parenting.  Often times the parents think that a child is a certain way because of something that they did wrong, which is often not the case.  One of the teachers at the center indicated to me that they would love some help in navigating through this process.

From my own personal teaching experience it has been the parents that are the biggest obstacle when it comes to getting a child help.  They are often in denial about an issue with their child and will blame the child’s behavior on anything except the child.  I had a child that had a sensory disorder in my class last year and it took many conferences and subtle suggestions before the parents would have even thought of sitting down to discuss the bigger issues and to get the child evaluated.  This too was another issue that some of teachers stated they had struggled with in the past.  Sometimes the parents get offended and would pull their child from the program..

Has anyone come across any of these issues in their own experiences with work?  What kinds of things did you do for that situation?

Interview

For this first assignment I interviewed several different people to better help me understand what areas would be most interesting for me to work on which areas needed an impact outside of what I can see at the time.  I interviewed the center director at my internship site, a teacher at the daycare that I work at, and the parents of a former child that I had that was diagnosed with special needs. There were several different needs that each person brought insight to base on different needs they see on a day to day basis.

I want to focus my research in the field of Special Education.  These are some of the issues that we discussed.  One issue that was addressed is the need for early intervention for the child and how to best include a child in the classroom. Another issue that was discussed was how to provide the correct care and how to deal with the costs that were associated with the correct care for the child.  Also, how to go about starting the process and what sort of documentation is best to use with the parents.  Another concern comes from the teachers wondering whether they are doing enough to meet the new needs of the child.  Is the care that a certain center can offer the best fit and appropriate for a child with specific needs?  An interesting issue that came up was the idea that people are wanting to make a diagnosis to “fix the problem” rather than putting in extra work to help the child succeed on the both the teacher’s and parent’s efforts.

I feel that these interviews have led me to go in a different direction that I originally was anticipating. I want to create a project that gives teachers and parents support when they feel there is specific issue to be addressed.  I want to help both find ways to seek outside help that is both time and cost effective. I had originally thought that I would want to focus more on early intervention, but I really have a passion for working with preschool children. One thing that I have learned from the whole process of seeking help is that early intervention goes up to age two and preschool classes are age three to five.

My focus for this project will definitely be in special education. These are some of the subtopics that I am considering.  One is identifying what care is appropriate and the costs to implement them into a daycare program.  Another topic could be on the materials and technology that would be needed to help the child in your room meet their needs.  The third topic I am considering is how to better educate and equip teachers to be prepared for meeting the needs of special needs children in their classrooms.

If you have any additional ideas about topics that I could consider I would love to hear them!  Do you think that these ideas are too broad or are worth looking at?

Giving It A Try

Here is my first attempt to blog in this class.  I am new to the whole blogging thing.  Someone please let me know that you can read this!  I am very excited to get this class underway and looking forward to the new direction that this internship will take me. After all it puts me another step closer to graduating.  I am so excited that it's almost here!