Introduction to Special Education

We had a very productive day in Teacher Cadet. We started an introduction to special education. Mrs. Sutusky had us read a story titled “A Wicket’s Wad.” No one in class understood it because it wasn’t meant to be understood. While reading the story everyone made comments like “huh”, “what does this mean”, and “I don’t understand.” Mrs. Sutusky wrote all of our comments on her dry erase board so that we could see our response to the story, and that was cool. She had us read “A Wicket’s Wad” to better understand the everyday struggles special education children face. They have a hard time understanding things such as reading and we experienced that first hand today in class. Then she gave us all a note card and told us to answer the question “If I was a parent of a special needs child, I would…..” on one side and our response to the reading assignment on the other. Mrs. Sutusky loves to hear our responses. After that Ms. Moak, the North Central High School resource teacher, came in to give us a better understanding of her job. It seems to me like her job would get frustrating due to having different age kids on different levels in her room at the same time. She has to ensure that she helps every child with their specific requirements. Ms. Moak clearly loves her job. We asked her “What age children do you enjoy teaching most” and she responded “when you love teaching as much as I do, it doesn’t matter what age group it is.” The class really enjoyed hearing what she had to say. It gave us all a better perspective about special education. When Ms. Moak left we all got out our big books and continued working on them. We’re all putting the finishing touches on our books. The class is so excited about the books, and we can’t wait to get in the class room with elementary children and show them our hard work.

Student's comments while reading "A Wicket's Wad"

Ms. Moak speaking to the class about Special Education

Brandon, Jill, and Courtney extremely frustrated with "A Wicket's Wad"