By Sara Finegan 

         My colleague, Laurie Vierra, is a Special Education Intern this year with a special day class of third and fourth graders, having taken advantage of our district’s offer to pay for general education teachers to move into and obtain a Masters in Special Ed.  

         A background in the general education standards, pacing, and instructional methods are great assets in the special ed classroom.  Laurie knows what her students need to be able to do in order to function at grade level, and she’s interested in lifting them up to that level.  She has no sense of comfort with student dependence or any belief that a learning deficit is a static thing that can never be repaired. 

         She certainly isn’t under the impression that a learning disability prevents anyone from doing grade-level work.

         This was, at first, a little bit disconcerting to the students in her class and some of their parents, who are used to the program of the teacher she is replacing: 

• Gone are the days when the teacher and the teacher aide (para-educator) will go into student backpacks to retrieve homework:  she will not accept assignments turned in by anyone other than the student.   
• Nowhere in her classroom does the aide sit with students and follow a written script for instruction and support. 
• Students don’t get candy for behaving or finishing their work.   
• Students in Laurie’s class have homework every day, including weekends.  And parents can’t do it for their kids.
• Kids have to get their own pencils and paper; the aide is no longer running across the room to bring the students supplies.
• The work the kids do at home and in class is meaningful; there’s no such thing as “sponge work,” and every lesson and assignment is directed toward a reachable educational goal.  

         I’m interested to see what will happen as the year progresses, and Laurie alters her students’ IEP goals to better reflect state standards.   Almost all of the kids in her class had identical goals during the past couple of years, regardless of what their needs and strengths were.  

         I have a feeling that Laurie is already redesigning and reworking the expectations for each child; I know for a fact that she’s got a clear idea of what each child needs to learn in order to reach higher objectives.  If I know Laurie, she will be custom-creating goals that will actually move her students toward grade-level work.

         That class is moving, kicking and screaming perhaps at first, but more and more confidently into demanding, high-quality work.  I’m delighted, because it means that when the kids come my room for fifth and sixth grade, I won’t spend a year working to develop independent learners.

It was not always this way… 

         A few years ago, I opened my classroom to five new fourth graders, three of whom were GATE (gifted and talented) certified and all of whom, the teacher told me, were proficient in math, reading, and writing. 

         They’d scored high on the state’s standardized tests the previous spring and were just wonderful kids.  She advised that they should all be mainstreamed for math, and that four of them could attend a general education social studies or science class. 

She was right that they were wonderful kids.  I adore them.  But they were not wonderful students, not yet.

• During the first week, one of them spent six hours in the classroom crying because she wanted the lower-grades special day class (SDC) aide to come and sit with her. 
• During the first week, all of them failed the beginning of the year math inventory which reflected what they had learned the previous year.  Only one of them demonstrated anything close to mastery of some of the math modules for the previous year.
• During the first month, I discovered that they had no idea how to talk or think about what they were reading:  their idea of reading comprehension was to parrot back what the text said. 
• When I administered an On-Demand writing assessment that asked them to describe their favorite experience the previous summer, none of them wrote more than three sentences. 
• Three of them lasted less than two weeks in a general education math class because they weren’t able to follow the lessons.   
• None of them were able to participate in science or social studies, because they couldn’t get accustomed to the concept of active, engaged learning.  They sat passively through instruction, and waited during independent work time for someone to tell them what to do instead of reading the directions.
• I discovered on their first benchmark test that they were used to having all assessments read to them, even though four of them read at the third grade level or higher.  When they did in-class assignments, they expected me or our aide to sit with them and tell them what to do next.

The children were shorthchanged…

         Their previous teacher did them a grave disservice.  She sent me five very intelligent kids who hadn’t a clue how to learn.  It wasn’t their fault; they’d never been taught how to think or had thinking skills modeled for them. 

         My former colleague never worked in general education, never entered a general education classroom, and felt safe only in her cocooned Special Day Classroom, where she could nurture her students and coddle them.

         Laurie’s work is already showing results, and it’s just the beginning of November.  She’s participating in a fourth-grade team with two other general education teachers:  she took on social studies, and has a reverse-mainstreaming thing going on in her classroom; she teaches a rigorous math class to her students and some of the lower-scoring kids in general ed (and three of my students, fifth and sixth graders who are still needing support with basic math skills in a very small group situation). 

         When you walk into her classroom, it’s student work you see, not artwork done by her or her aide. 

         Laurie and I can finish each others’ sentences when we discuss rigor and independent learning.  This shorthand is based on a mutual understanding of what special education is:  a service designed to bridge the gap between ability and capacity, not an educational system to protect kids with special needs.

         When we smother kids with support and don’t teach them how to think for themselves, even the brightest of them will atrophy as learners.

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By Sara Finegan 

           Some students are so far behind that they cannot keep up with a general education class.  Some students process in a way that requires more time, more space, more opportunities for practice, and a slower pace in order to master new concepts. 

           Some students need a small group – less noise, less activity, less chaos – in order to learn.   Some need instruction provided in ways that aren’t commonly found in a general education room – more visuals, more guided work, more modeling, more incremental. 

          All students with learning disabilities need at least one, if not most of these things in order to learn how to learn.  Notice that I didn’t say they  need them in order to learn everything.  Only to learn how to learn. 

 Full inclusion after rigorous preparation

         I favor inclusion of students with special needs in the general education classroom – after they have been given the appropriate, rigorous instruction and practice in the basics that will allow them to function on a par with everyone else.  I do not favor inclusion where the child enters too far behind to ever catch up and spends the rest of his or her school career vainly trying to do what the other students do.   

Our goal as special educators is to help our students bridge the gap between where they are and where they need to be in order to be able to follow along in a general ed classroom, at a general ed pace and in that kind of environment.

         In order to push our kids up to that level, we may have to enfold them in a Special Day Class or separate classroom environment for some or all subjects for a period of time.  In the best of all possible worlds, this would take place in the elementary school level, and by middle school, the vast majority of  kids with IEPs  who had spent time in a Special Day Class would be out in the general school population for most classes. 

How quickly depends on the child and on us

         How quickly we can bring kids up to the appropriate skill levels depends on each child’s areas of need and strength, and the level of rigor we infuse into our classrooms.  A demanding classroom will firmly and lovingly raise students who use their brains like a muscle in a gym, stretching, pressing, and moving from strength to strength.

I’ve had students arrive from other schools or lower grade Special Day Classes who lack the ability to do independent work, who have become so dependent on the assistance of aides and teachers that they are unable to problem-solve and try out new skills.

I’ve seen special education classrooms which rely on endless series of packets and worksheets, done quietly at student desks, where no questioning takes place and compliance with behavioral rules takes precedence over learning. 

And I’ve worked with many colleagues who become so frustrated with their students’ challenges that they lose sight of what we’re working toward and begin to teach so far below grade level that nobody will ever catch up. 

         None of this is going to move our kids from our classrooms into the general education population with any success.  All of this will perpetuate the deficits our kids arrive with. 

Keep in mind what we want for our students

         If we want kids with in our special education classrooms to move from deficit to ability to competence, we must be relentless in our rigor of instruction, and stand firm in our expectations of learning. 

          We must keep our eye on the ultimate goal, which is that we will shoo our students from our learning nest into the big wide world and watch them fly, fly into their lives as learners.

             Rigor is not the equivalent of harshness.  A demanding classroom is a nurturing environment where students are not expected to learn and function on their own, but where scaffolds and supports are in place and are gradually removed or reduced as mastery takes place. 

          A demanding classroom is one whose staff is attentive to the small signs of growth and need, and adjusts instruction accordingly. 

          A demanding classroom is one where students themselves, at all ages,  work with staff to set reasonable, achievable goal and celebrate success. 

          A demanding classroom is one where the teacher’s motto is “yes, you can, let’s work to find out how…” and where failure is seen as an opportunity to try again. 

          A demanding classroom is one where a student who doesn’t get it just hasn’t been taught it the right way yet – and where the staff is committed to finding the right way for that child. 

           A demanding classroom is one where laughter, curiosity, and determination are reflected in the faces and work of the children, and where academic behavior is as important as social behavior.

When we demand of our students…

           When we demand excellence of our students and fail to show them how to achieve it, we are not providing rigorous instruction.

           When we demand competency from our students and don’t support them in their learning, we are not providing rigorous instruction.

          When we require compliance from our students without understanding and ownership, we are not providing rigorous instruction.

           And when we reduce expectations to accommodate learning deficits, we are certainly not exhibiting any rigor at all in our own work.

 If we want our students to be able to do general education work in a general education classroom, we have to teach general education skills, not special education habits.

          We must demand of our own instruction and planning the same thing our colleagues in the general education classroom demand of themselves and their students.  To do less is to abdicate from the position as teacher.

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