Prompt #3

I decided to sit down and interview my sister who is starting her career in the special education field at her alma mater.

Q: What do you do for a career?

A: I am an Intervention Specialist at ___ High School and I have a Multiple Disabilities classroom.

Q: Why did you choose to teach in this field?

A: I chose to teach in this field because I have a strong passion for working with children with disabilities. these children have endless amounts of potential and need an educator that is going to help them become independent contributing members of society.


Q: What goes into your lesson plans? How do you prepare it?

A: For my lesson plans, I usually prepare a few days to a week in advance. I do not like to plan too far in advance because since I have kids with such high needs, often the work does not get done. It takes a decent amount of planning to go into my lessons because I must differentiate everything I do in class. I have some students who can read and some who cannot, I have some that are verbal and some that are nonverbal, so all my lessons must be tailored to align with each student and their needs.

Q: How much time do you have to put in outside of the school day?

A: I typically put in an hour or two each day after school. That goes anywhere from completing IEPs, progress reports, and other paperwork, to just simply preparing stuff for class. Some days it is more and some days it is less, it just depends on what all needs to be done at the time.

Q: What does a daily schedule look like for you?

A: Every morning we do calendar where we go over the day, month, weather, etc. After that some of my students will go down to the cafeteria and do some work. When they come back that is when our instruction time starts. Typically, we spend about two hours in the morning working on academics or IEP work. I have one student that leaves to go to a food and fitness class, and I have another student that will leave on Tuesdays and Thursdays and will go do some work in the community. Once our instruction time is done, we get the kids ready for lunch, and after lunch they work on their vocational work which is the Frisch's kids coloring packets. They put those together every day. Once that is done we go to gym, and then once gym is done we head back to the classroom and get the kids ready to go home. 

Q: Are there any misconceptions or stereotypes in your field that you have experienced?

A: I think with the type of students in my classroom, people might think that my students are not very capable of attaining anything and some people may not take the time to see the potential that my students really have.

Q: How do you work around those?

A: I try to include my students into the gen ed. population as much as possible, so the staff and students can really get to know my kids and see that they are more than just what these people see on the surface.

Q: What advice would you give to new college students or graduating high school students that want to become teachers?

A: As soon as you enter college wanting to become a teacher, all eyes will be on you, and you are now in the works of becoming a professional. Remember that you never know who people know, and what you post on social media can and will be used against you if it is not appropriate. I have deleted some social media, and I personally know people that jeopardized their careers because they posted inappropriate things online. Be aware of what you are saying, always! Remember what made you want to become a teacher in the first place and run with that, because it is going to be hard. It is still hard for me now, but seeing those kids everyday makes my job worthwhile. 

- Joe