I went to a Parent-Teacher conference/consultation today at one of my student’s school. With me are the child’s parents, her developmental pediatrician and Eve, an occupational therapist. When we were led in the room where the conference was to be held, I silently asked myself why are there so many chairs gathered. When the teachers started arriving, then I realized that those were for the teachers who will be teaching the child this school year. There were at least eight of them. That many? Yes. One teacher for each subject.
The doctor started out by explaining to them the different difficulties that the child is experiencing due to the child’s developmental problem. They were pretty much interested as they enumerated their observations (for those who were the child’s teachers last school year). For those with other concerns, they too, enumerated the different concepts that they think the child will have difficulty with during the school year. More or less, in the discussion, they were able to understand the child’s difficulties because they were able to pinpoint these concepts they think the child will have a hard time with.

I just hope that these would be followed through. As we have explained to them, we do not ask for special accommodations since the school has a very traditional setting (35+ students/class). We just want them to understand the child’s behavior and/or condition and be able to know how to deal with these difficulties inside as well as outside the classroom. After all, it would not just be the child who would benefit in this set-up, the teachers too would learn a thing or two about these children with developmental problems.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 4:10 am and is filed under Being a (Special Ed) Teacher, Teaching Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.