Effective Teaching...
by Harry and Rosemary Wong

March 2006

The Success of Special Ed Teachers

The demands on the teachers of special education students are enormous and the rewards are equally enormous.  These are the wonderful teachers who have the skill to bring order and structure to the lives of their students and who have the kind and understanding hearts to see all children as capable and worthy.  These are the teachers we called “The Saints of Education” in our October 2004 column.  (https://teachers.net/wong/OCT04/)

In this column, we will revisit with the teacher we featured in our October 2004 column, Robin Zarzour, now Robin Barlak.  (Our best wishes to Robin!)

In addition, we will share the techniques used by Charlotte Empringham, who teaches special education in the Thames Valley School District in London, Ontario, Canada.

Finally, we’ll close with the strategies and wisdom of Dan Seufert, who recently retired after years of teaching special education in North Carolina.

Robin Barlak and Her Nurses’ Procedures

Robin Barlak works with children who have a variety of disabilities—autism, speech and language delays, ADHD, and severe behavior, physical, and developmental handicaps.  “Miss Robin,” as the students call her, teaches special education at First Step Preschool in Ohio’s Parma City Schools.

Her classroom assistant and right-hand helper is Lois Preston, "Miss Lois" to the students.  Lois is in the classroom each day, all day long assisting with small groups, snacks, attendance, record keeping, art, and anywhere else she is needed.

Robin says, “After reading The First Days of School, I constantly think of procedures, because special education students can be put in an at-risk situation if there is not a consistent set of procedures.  They like a consistent set of routines every day as it makes life familiar and friendly.”

The consistency helps Robin because she has a student with medical complications who needs a nurse with him while he is at school.

There are three nurses and five therapists in and out of Robin’s classroom each week for this one child.  At the beginning of the school year she simply typed up the schedule and procedures of the day.  These were given to each nurse and therapist when they first came to her classroom.  This way each professional knows the daily routine, and therapies can be scheduled according to the prevailing schedule, such as Physical Therapy during gym time.

Robin Barlak’s Daily Schedule

Morning Class (repeated for the afternoon class)

Robin says, “With a schedule, it has been working great because we are all are on the same page and I don’t have to repeat myself and take class time to discuss my classroom schedule and procedures.  All the nurses and therapists are very grateful as well."

Charlotte Empringham and Personal Fulfillment

Charlotte Empringham is a Special Education Specialist who has been teaching Developmental Education for ten years.  Her classes consist of ten students with various learning differences and special needs.  The students may be in her classroom for three or four years and then move onto a high school setting.

Her program is based on academics developed through a Provincial (state or district) Curriculum which she modifies to suit her students’ abilities.  She says, “My classroom setting is structured to take advantage of teachable moments.  Communication skills, daily living skills, and learning strategies are integrated into our programming.”

Charlotte teaches grade 5-8 students with developmental challenges.  Here’s how Charlotte describes her class:

Her classroom is structured with procedures and routines taught at the beginning of the year and re-taught several times throughout the school year.  The classroom is a visual learning environment with charts and posters available on the walls so that students can access information to enable them to complete their assignments.

As they enter the school every morning, each student is personally greeted by at least one of the adults in the classroom.  Every effort is made to notice and acknowledge good behavior, kindness to others, and those who are following the procedures and routines with verbal praise and/or rewards—such as tickets for our weekly draw or a ‘star’ certificate, which is a schoolwide incentive program.

Dan Seufert Stands Tall

Dan Seufert is not a traditional teacher by a long shot!  Dan immersed himself in teaching his students turning his classroom into an Early American hands-on museum where the special education students serve as docents to regular classroom students.  Dan was also known for his pirate character that prowled the school.

Dan retired from teaching special education in North Carolina and moved to South Carolina where he now teaches in the Lancaster County School District. He is the special education teacher at Indian Land Elementary/Middle School.  He feels he has a good grasp on what it takes to bring about change in special needs students as a result of the self-contained, behaviorally-emotionally disabled classes he taught for fourteen years.

He says that his ideas center on recognizing the potential of these students.  They center on recognizing the positive spirit of these students.

They center on celebrating and encouraging the "thinking out of the box" that these students are so good at doing, just as all great leaders and discoverers are capable of doing.

Dan shared, sadly, how often he watched teachers try to break the spirits of these children, make them feel worthless, or set them up for failure.  He feels there is no need to come crashing down on students for bad behavior and miss the golden opportunity to teach a new behavior.

He says, “We don't need to break their spirits.  What we need to do is re-direct their spirits and then watch their spirits and abilities and "differentness" carry them to new heights!”

Dan delighted in the years of opportunity he has had to teach important life lessons to his students, lessons such as real men know how to shed a tear and are not afraid to do so; the real man is one who reaches out to help others, not belittle or hurt others.

Like Robin and Charlotte, Dan Seufert’s classrooms have structure and consistency.  Dan’s classes, however, go beyond structure and consistency.

Dan wisely says we should not assume structure and consistency alone will solve the many behavior problems these students have.  Structure and consistency only delays the appearance of behavior problems for a little while, and when the structure is removed, the behaviors will return.

Students need to be taught alternatives to unacceptable behaviors.  It means that positive behaviors have to be taught.  Replacement behaviors have to be taught.

He says, “When a student misbehaved in my classroom and it was necessary to utilize a time-out procedure, before he/she could return to the general class population I would ask them:

1. Can you tell me what happened?
2. What could you have done differently to have kept this from being a problem?
3. What can you do differently to keep it from being a problem next time?
4. Is there anything you think needs to be done now to resolve this problem (e.g., letter of apology, apologizing in person, picking up the books that were knocked over)?”

“I would also incorporate the use of group processing time, where the entire class looks at a problem situation and offers possible solutions.  This technique worked great in settling a problem between students.”

Dan believes and knows that beyond the personal strife or the need for attention, many children demonstrate inappropriate behaviors because they do not know alternative behaviors when they are in certain situations.  What works for them in the home or in the "hood" is oftentimes unacceptable behaviors in school, but they are the only behaviors they know.

To bring about new behaviors we have to give them new tools for dealing with life and problem situations.  We have to teach them responsibility for their actions and what steps to take to develop and show acceptable behaviors.

Beyond behavior, Dan shared his viewpoints about expectations with us.

He says, “I think the biggest injustice we do to children is setting our expectations too low.  I especially see this with children in special education.  I have found that children will give you what you expect.  I expect 100 percent from my students and 100 percent of the behaviors I know they are capable of giving me.  I do expect a lot!

“I then go about setting up the procedures and techniques and methods to make it happen.  Ah, the joy on their faces when they realize they can reach 100 percent, when they see they can be the best!”

Dan did not accept what was “good enough.”  As a self-contained teacher of children with severe emotional and behaviors difficulties, Dan said, “It was not good enough for my students to just have behaviors that were as good as students in a regular classroom.  Before I would consider mainstreaming my students into the regular classroom, their behavior had to be the best, much better than the other students they would encounter in the regular classroom.  I found out that if I only expect their behavior to be ‘as good as’ the behavior of students in the regular classroom, when their behaviors began to slip they would quickly find themselves back to the behaviors that landed them in my self-contained classroom.

“However, if I expected their behavior to be better than the other students, then a slight slippage of behavior still gave them room to pull themselves up to acceptable behaviors.  I taught them what they needed to do when their behavior began to slip.  We role-played it in the self-contained classroom; we talked about possible situations that might lead to behavior slippage and what they could do about it.”

Stand Tall

We met Dan Seufert over fifteen years ago and he shared his personal quote with us:

"Ours is not the business of producing doctors or lawyers or teachers or nurses or factory workers or sales associates.  Ours is the business of putting smiles on young faces, hope in young hearts, and dreams in young minds.  The rest will take care of itself."

In his classroom hangs a sign that reads,

"A man is never so tall as when he stoops to help a child."

In his career, we are sure that many of his students found Dan Seufert one of the tallest men they ever met!

Reaching New Heights

The lessons learned from Robin, Charlotte, and Dan are not just for dealing with special needs students, but they can be applied to all children.

We encourage you to start going beyond the expected and reach for the extraordinary.

For a printable version of this article click here.