Intern Experience Week #4

This week in my classroom at SHMS we welcomed a new student to our classroom on Monday. I was able to look at our new students file before he arrived so it was nice to have an idea of the students behavior and levels, seeing that the majority of the students in my classroom have some type of a behavior problem. This student has Jacobs Syndrome, and I have never worked with an individual with this or had ever heard of it before. Because of this I spent some time looking up Jacobs Syndrome on the Internet and also in some of my Special Education textbooks. I learned a lot by looking at characteristics of the Syndrome and comparing them to this new students file and his present levels, to see which of his behaviors were related to his disability and which were not. This particular student had a history of being violent, which is something that I was extremely nervous about, seeing that his first day would be taught by me. I have taken over teaching all subjects now for the better part of 2 weeks.
This is the first time that I had had an experience with welcoming a new student into the classroom I was in. Also the dynamics of this classroom sets it apart from the regular classroom. My students were all very welcoming to the new student and tried to make him feel as welcome as they could, but this new students just had an attitude about him. I can understand the attitude seeing that he didn't want to get picked on if the other students saw that they easily could. But when it came to the actual work in our classroom this new student is way above even my highest level of learner. I tried to accommodate the student as best as I could but a lot of times it was hard because I have so many different groups going on at one time it was difficult to try and gather work for him on the spot. It was very frustrating also because this student was not very understanding about it and just rolled his eyes at me and made rude comments. I didn't want to single him out because in his IEP it stated that doing that would cause him to get violent, I also didn't want him to think that was appropriate behavior in our classroom. My mentor teacher saw some of the attitude, but not the full force of it because she is often working with a group herself, and I also think that she wants me to experience everything that goes along with being in special education, which I greatly appreciate.
Overall, this week was very eye opening in ways that I never thought because usual I tend to focus more on the academic side of the week, not the behavior and social which play a huge role as well.