As you progress through this course it is important for you to reflect on your reactions to teaching and working with students that have a physical or psychological impairment or have cultural, gender, socio-economic or linguistic differences. Starting with the information in this Unit, examine and reflect on your emotional reaction to teaching students with physical or sensory or other health impairments. If you experience feelings of uncertainty, please reflect on how to possibly overcome these feelings.
In order to talk about my emotional response to teaching students with physical, sensory, or other disabilities, I need to begin with the process of the inception and development of my inclination to teach.
When I was 11½ years old, my mom and stepdad had a son. In our culture, it is customary to say that I had a brother. This means that taking care of my little brother became an obligatory and integral part of my life. My brother was born seven months old with congenital hydrocephalus (Hydrocephalus, n.d.), which later almost caused cerebral palsy (What Causes Cerebral Palsy?, 2021). After his second routine immunization, the baby experienced side effects, fever, and bowel failure. Our mom gave him small enemas with a syringe without a needle to establish bowel overstimulation (at the time, I saw this as an important part of saving a life without squeamishness or prejudice). We had perfect silence during the day when my little brother slept, and at night he was constantly sick and my mom would sleep with him in her arms to give him to me or my stepdad in the morning. I was studying from the second shift at that time and managed to do my homework on my own, helping my parents. We all family loved our little baby so carefully and tenderly, paid so much attention to his needs and treatment that this year this strong and healthy young man will be already 29 years old. It is worth mentioning separately our learning journey with him, when I helped him with his homework at school. And once we spent a year together at a private school where I worked as an English teacher and he was in sixth grade.We would leave the house together to go to school and come home together. In this way, my brother constantly felt that he was needed, loved and cared for, no matter what.
This experience taught me to believe that every soul encased in a body has value and meaning. The body may be small, sick, substandard, limited in capabilities and changed, but the soul remains in this body always. And it is only necessary to find an approach to this soul, to build bridges of understanding, care, love and trust, as an ugly duckling gradually transforms into a beautiful swan. Of course, there are different cases and hopeless situations, when mental deviations do not allow us to hope for improvement of the condition. Such as, for example, early schizophrenia (WebMD, 2015), when a child freezes in its development. Then concepts for teaching students with intellectual disabilities using behaviorist theory(Algahtani, 2017) are suitable:
1. Breakdown of activities into small parts.
2. Model, illustrat, and explain every step in a process or new activity.
3. Employing reward in order to reinforce appropriate learning behavior by students.
4. Use as much additional practice and assessment as possible to ensure maximum mastery of concepts.
5. Integrating organized and predictable activities into the lessons.
6. Providing direct instructions for students.
In my practice within the classroom and online, I have worked with several children with disabilities. Last year I had a girl with cerebral palsy (Mayo Clinic, 2023) online. At that time, I found some teaching aids for working with these children and included necessary physical activities that the girl could do in front of the camera (Primary School Teacher Strategies for Cerebral Palsy - AllPlay Learn, n.d.).
In terms of cultural, gender, socioeconomic or linguistic differences, diversity creates a unique learning environment. I once had three students from Syria in my class who did not speak Russian well and were therefore in seventh grade instead of ninth grade. I was working in a school with a German bias at the time and was teaching optional English lessons. These children, or rather a sixteen-year-old boy and his two sisters of fifteen and fourteen, were always and everywhere together. And they knew English better than anyone else. It so happened that my lesson was the only one where the students could show their merits and the best qualities of students. But first I had to gain their trust, learn to understand and respect their culture, and gently and sensitively seek ways to interact with them. One of the sisters wrote me an alphabet of the language they spoke among themselves and taught me a few phrases. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures with them left because I didn't think to take pictures with the students at that time, I got this hobby later and it became another way to build relationships with the students. I started to have pictures with students in different situations on the walls in my classroom, so everyone could find themselves. It became a unifying factor for everyone.
In conclusion, I would like to note that the teacher is the most serious judge of his/her students. A teacher often has a certain confidence about themselves, their abilities, knowledge, and capabilities; they feel entitled to make judgments and demand from students obedience, respect, and change for the better. It is difficult to demand something from a person who is limited mentally or physically, so the main mission of every educator should come first here—to improve the life of each of the students, to maximize their individual qualities of personality and character, and to properly evaluate their performance (Hindle et al., n.d.). This can be a huge contribution to the future adult's life.
References
Algahtani, F. (2017). Teaching students with intellectual disabilities: Constructivism or behaviorism? Educational Research and Reviews,12(21), 1031-1035. https://doi.org/10.5897/ERR2017.3366
Hindle, D., Kutchel, D., Allan, T., Downie, A., Leahy, M., Steel, M., & Britt, J. (n.d.).
Physical disability. Australian Disability Clearinghouseon Education and Training.
https://www.adcet.edu.au/inclusive-teaching/specific-disabilities/physical-disability/
Hydrocephalus. (n.d.). National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/hydrocephalus#:~:text=What%20is%20hydrocephalus%3F
Mayo Clinic. (2023, September 28). Cerebral Palsy - Symptoms and Causes. Mayo Clinic; Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cerebral-palsy/symptoms-causes/syc-20353999
Primary School Teacher Strategies for Cerebral palsy – AllPlay Learn. (n.d.). All Play Learn. https://allplaylearn.org.au/primary/teacher/cerebral-palsy/
WebMD. (2015, December 28). Schizophrenia: When Do Symptoms Usually Start? WebMD; WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-onset-symptoms
What causes cerebral palsy? (2021, May 11). Https://Www.nichd.nih.gov/. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/cerebral-palsy/conditioninfo/causes#:~:text=Cerebral%20palsy%20is%20caused%20by
