Teaching about special social issues

Special education refers to instruction designed to meet the needs of children with behavioral and emotional disabilities, mental disorders and developmental delays. As special education teachers strive to improve the learning skills of disabled students, they must negotiate social issues such as increased isolation, lack of appreciation, low parent participation and lack of sufficient administrative support.

Dipping Participation

For children with special needs to realize their academic ambitions, parents, teachers and communities must help each other. However, lack of parental support is the biggest problem facing learning institutions, according to the Enterprise City Schools website. Given that most parents may be busy working, special education teachers find it challenging to bridge the gap between home and school. For instance, when a special educator wants to inquire about a student, he can feel discouraged when the parent doesn’t respond to emails or return calls.

Increasing Isolation

Unlike general education teachers, beginning special educators receive little guidance or professional support from administrators or policy makers, according to authors Peter Youngs, Nathan Jones, Mark Low of Michigan State University. This may lead to special educators resigning or switching careers. Besides, although the use of isolated special education programs yields positive results on students, it prevents special education teachers from effectively collaborating with general education colleagues to plan appropriate instructional strategies.

Diminishing Appreciation

Instead of receiving appreciation for putting effort in instructing students with varying disabilities, special educators often find themselves dealing with advocates and attorneys. When an individualized education program is not meeting set objectives, for instance, a blame game may erupt, with parents blaming schools, and schools shifting blame to special educators. Given that the law doesn’t specify who bears responsibility when a parent, for example, challenges her child’s identification, evaluation and program, or IEP, in court, special education instructors can be easy targets because of their low rank.

Grieving Parents

Sometimes special education teachers have to face parents who are dealing with grief, particularly when their child’s disability is long term. To such parents, disability dashes hope and your challenge as a special educator is to help them realize new dreams for their children. Although helping parents cope with disappointment and frustration may not part of your professional job description, it enhances parental involvement -- which is crucial to improving children’s educational outcomes. This, however, presents an extra task at no extra pay.

Social Issues That Special Education Teachers Face

Special education teachers strive to improve the learning skills of students with learning, mental, emotional and physical disabilities. Lesson plans must frequently be modified to adapt to the needs of these students. Despite the hard work and dedication displayed by special education teachers, it can be very difficult for outsiders to understand the magnitude of their work, leaving them with a variety of social issues to conquer.

Insufficient Support

Special education teachers are often under greater pressure for the achievement of their students than faced by fellow general education instructors. These teachers face many special challenges not assumed by their peers, which can make it difficult for others to relate to. School administrators often don’t understand the demands of special education and fail to support teachers by attending individual education plan meetings, backing them up in parent-teacher meetings and assisting with student interventions.

Increased Isolation

Learning models in special education programs are often designed in a way that isolates special education teachers from standard collaborative learning environments. General education instructors commonly work as part of a team to educate students, but due to the nature of their work, special education teachers often work alone with the same group of students all day. This lack of interaction often leads to frustration and loneliness.

Related Reading: How Much Do Special Education Teachers Make in Texas?

Lack of Parent Involvement

To help their children succeed in school, parents of special education students must work with teachers to reinforce lessons learned in the classroom. Students spend 70 percent of their time outside of school, so teachers rely on parents to make sure they’re completing homework, studying for tests and showing a constant interest in their education. Special education teachers need parents to show up at school conferences, listen to difficulties their children are having at school and help them to overcome these issues at home. However, parents do not always take an interest in the schooling of special needs children, either because they refuse to believe there is a problem or simply don’t want to be bothered.

Overcrowded Classrooms

A special education classroom often contains students of a variety of different age groups, with various learning disabilities. The teacher is tasked with providing appropriate lessons for each group and modifying them to fit the unique disabilities of each student. In fact, Teachers of Color notes the average special education teacher has 17 students with 2.2 disabilities each. When budgets are tight and students are crowded into a special education classroom, the job becomes difficult and very stressful for the teacher to manage.