Reflection on My Teaching and Working with Students with Impairment

Reflection on My Teaching and Working with Students with Impairment

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

 It is a mind changer for me, which I have never thought about while in school. Although I heard little about disabilities in students in the school, I was only concerned about hearing and visual impairment. Going inside the classroom, I never bothered to ask my students nor gave interest in knowing about their disabilities, although I have seen many students wearing glasses. I learned that I need to prioritize their learning from the disability point of view too to address their needs and support. I realized that my teaching wasn’t going in the right direction because I failed to understand the issues that my students used to face. In this reflection, I will be pointing out and discussing different disabilities that we encounter in real classroom situations and will be reflecting on what I realized based on my teaching and working with my students.

          Firstly, I should never be easygoing whenever I see my students with physical disabilities in the classroom. I seriously need to identify the type of disability that they are having and need to address them. Physical disabilities are of different types as some need medical attention and some need assistive devices for students’ personal space (Council of Ontario Universities, 2017). I need to make my teaching inclusive (Hindle, Kutchel, Allan, Downie, Leahy, Steel, & Britt, n.d.) and accessible in the classroom by designing it as per the needs of all learners based on their learning styles and abilities. My normal teaching should be replaced with specialized instruction that enables me to meet the educational needs of the learners. For instance, meeting the needs of visually impaired students and students with hearing impairment by changing the seating arrangement (Henkler, 2018) whereby they sit in the front seat so that they see and hear clearly and sometimes allowing them to use the tape recorder, meeting the needs of the physically challenged students by making a special change in the classroom by providing them with modified desks and chairs that ease them for comfort reasons (Little People of Ontario, 2019), extending the time for their home tasks, assignment or oral examination (Hindle, Kutchel, Allan, Downie, Leahy, Steel, & Britt, n.d.), etc. In a nutshell, I should be creating an empowering classroom through inclusiveness in my teaching practices fully accessible to every need of every impaired child (UCT CILT, 2019).

          Moreover, I learned that I should be identifying students with a psychological impairment, which is also called psychiatric or mental health impairment. As a teacher, I should be supporting the mentally challenged students through proper care in the classroom and should be appropriately reacting to their behavior and attitudes (Thomas, n.d.). I also realized the role of the parents and how important it is to collaborate with them to help such children. As a teacher, I should be assisting them in taking notes in the classroom, providing extra exam time for exams and assessments, maintaining constant touch with them, allowing them preferential seating, accepting frequent breaks, private feedback, etc. in boosting their learning outcomes and encouragement (Dept. of Disability Resources, 2022).

          Finally, I understood that a classroom will be of diverse cultural, gender, socio-economic, or linguistic backgrounds. I should be recognizing every child in the classroom as a unique individual. I should break the generalization in the classroom by breaking the stereotypes without supporting any forms of prejudice. Instead, I should identify the challenges and address them by bringing diversity into the classroom so that my students would be able to counter any forms of discriminatory stereotypes whereby they would be able to understand each other’s cultural, gender, socio-economic, or linguistic background (Yesweekly.com, 2021). I realize that I need to process the learning through student engagement activities where I should be promoting collaborative learning during the lesson so that they realize the differences they have through strong classroom community building.

          To conclude, all teacher should refine their ideology and be a guide, supporters, helpers, and learners in the classroom. They should understand that there are students with different forms of disabilities in the classroom and I need to seriously identify their disabilities and save them from becoming the victim of different issues.

 

References

Council of Ontario Universities. (2017). Teaching Students with Physical Disabilities. https://accessiblecampus.ca/tools-resources/educators-tool-kit/teaching-tips/teaching-students-with-physical-disabilities/

Dept. of Disability Resources. (2022). Faculty Guide: Teaching & Interacting with Students with Disabilities. https://disability.tamu.edu/facultyguide/teaching/

Henkler, Ed. (2018). Teaching Suggestions for Visually Impaired Students. https://theblindguide.com/teaching-suggestions-for-visually-impaired-students/#:~:text=Position%20the%20student%20in%20a,the%20board%20and%20increase%20concentration.

Hindle, D., Kutchel, D., Allan, T., Downie, A., Leahy, M., Steel, M., & Britt, J. (n.d.). Physical disability. Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training. https://www.adcet.edu.au/inclusive-teaching/specific-disabilities/physical-disability/

Little People of Ontario. (2019). Best Practices Policy for Students with Dwarfism in Ontario Schools. https://littlepeopleofontario.com/_pdf/LPO%20Best%20Practices%20LP%20Student%20Policy%20V2.0.pdf

Thomas, L. (n.d.). Supporting Children with Mental Health Disorders. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Supporting-Children-with-Mental-Health-Disorders.aspx

UCT CILT. (2019, October 21). Teaching students with visual impairment: Creating empowering classrooms [Video]. YouTube. https://my.uopeople.edu/mod/book/view.php?id=291941&chapterid=338217

Yesweekly.com. (2021). The importance of cultural awareness and diversity in the classroom. https://www.yesweekly.com/education/the-importance-of-cultural-awareness-and-diversity-in-the-classroom/article_cc3e3018-8bf7-11eb-9d02-7b53ac861451.html