I have found that the more a teacher can collaborate with support teachers, the more progress students with special needs are able to make throughout the course of the year. I must admit that it was a bit of an adjustment coming from a public school in a huge district with little funding, to a private school with more support teachers than I had ever interacted with before! I knew right from the start that I would need to be organized in my approach to collaboration with these teachers as it is very easy in the busy week to let this communication fall through the cracks. In fact, I made this one of my professional goals for the year. The first step I took to encourage collaboration with special education teachers was to share my online plan book and provide them with the ability to see what I was doing in my classroom at all times. This also facilitated conversations about long term planning and links between what students with special needs were doing in the classroom and in their pull-out services. It also made it easier for special education teachers to come into the classroom prepared to work with students with their current learning, without wasting time trying to figure out what the lesson was about.
"Over the course of the school year, Whitney and I had an excellent collaborative relationship. She began the year open to receiving SEN support in any way possible. Our weekly meetings to discuss student progress allowed us to evaluate and change interventions as needed in order to support the students to the best of our ability. She is an excellent role model for collaboration and team teaching between general education and SEN. Working with her this year and taking away new strategies and ideas from her expertise in teaching has been an enlightening experience." Kristina Passarella
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| My online plan book from one week. This plan book is shared automatically with ELL and SEN and they have access to it whenever they need. This helps to facilitate conversations about ways to help students with special needs accomplish lesson goals. |
