Educational placement for students with hearing loss has been a long debate. What are your thoughts about educating students within the "mainstream" versus in a centralized program/school?
What are your thoughts on addressing attention span and problem solving? If a child is pushed in and is choosing not to attend to the lesson or has an interpreter and is refusing to watch them, what do you do?
Attention span and problem solving are both really great topics for discussion. Attention span is something that I think you will experience in different ways with different ages. And problem solving is a skill that all students need to learn, hearing loss or no hearing loss. With attention span I only have experience with little ones. This makes it easy because as the teacher you push to make your lessons and materials fun and motivating. If you are still having trouble then you implement some kind of reward system for paying attention and then slowly fade it out. I have no experience with a push in setting so it is difficult to wrap my mind around how to handle that. I would say that if I had an elementary student who is not watching a lesson or an interpreter because they cannot comprehend what is being said then I would meet with the teacher before hand if possible to get the vocabulary and concepts to pre-teach for the child so they will not have trouble attending in class. If it is more of a behavior issue then I would have a discussion with them about the importance of paying attention and what to do if they don't understand or didn't hear something. This way you are helping to teach self advocacy skills. Then if there is still an issue I would maybe try to find a time where the student can explain to me what they understood from the lesson and they could make a list of questions to ask the teacher to help them understand. (This would be more of an upper elementary task but would also work on asking questions and if they didn't want to go back to ask questions then they will probably work on their attention span in class more.) Lastly, I might implement a reward system. If they really focused for so many days they would get a reward of some kind.
I like your thoughts on how to address attention concerns. A reward system would be helpful, especially if it's something that motivates the student. I would first start with observing the student in the classroom to see how the teacher is presenting, student's location, and visual/auditory distractions. I would meet with the teacher and interpreter to get information and hear what they view the student's strengths and weaknesses are. The fix might be a different location or it might mean you have to have a talk with the student. It might also require the interpreter's location to change,too. There is a lot that plays into a student's attention. If you do a reward system, you will want to think about how to set up because simply asking the student would not be very reliable because they will always say they did. Maybe setting up a little sheet for the teacher to complete might be a way to monitor and check.
ReplyDeleteI like how you think it is important for what is best for the student and how successful the student will be in the classroom is the main deciding factor. I too, agree with this. In an ideal world, having the student with their peers is crucial for many reasons. Yet, we do not live in an ideal world and I feel that can be hard for some professionals and families to accept. When a family has more than one child I feel that this is huge. They see their oldest child in the regular classroom with children their age and making friends and growing up ‘normal’. Then they have another child with a hearing loss and they may feel that child is being left out if they do not attend the same school and get the same experience. As a deaf educator I feel it is part of our jobs to inform the parents that this child even though they may need to attend a different school they still have the opportunity to make friends and work alongside their peers; just in a different setting.
ReplyDeleteI feel having an older student explain what they learned is an effect way to really see what information they are retaining and understanding. It also allows for a switch in roles type of activity. You can have them be the ‘teacher’ and teach you what they were just taught. This allows you to really see what they know and helps them build some skills that can help them down the road when they have to teach something to a peer or present to the class. Good Job!