Quote:
Originally Posted by deafdyke
Deafbajagirl, again what state are you in? I'm sure there are people here who could really help you, or maybe there are people here who know people.
It's good that you've got some nibbles. Even if you don't think it would help, definitly contact the Deaf School. Maybe it might just be a matter of reassigning various and sundry kids to different programs. The reason why your job is so hard, might be that they weren't assigned to the correct school.
Maybe you could contact the Deaf School to have evaluations done.
Since you've got a lot of Spanish speakers, I would definitly contact Lexington in
NYC. They have a formal foriegn language transiston program for kids from other countries. They may be able to help you.
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Thank you for your suggestions - I will check Lexington out this week. I'm not quite comfortable revealing what state to everyone since I'm kind of conservative about personal information being revealed on the internet (yeah, I do read Dean Koontz' novels). But I will give you a hint...there is NO deaf school in this state at this time. My problem is that what I described is the job description of the typical special education teacher...I pretty sure most, if not all, teachers feel the pressure and stress that I do. Special education is not an easy field (neither is regular education for that matter). I've worked in a deaf school before - and will most likely return to work at a deaf school again. It's easier to say - hey! I'm gonna to individualized educational programming for every child that comes - and I'm going to meet his communication modes and language needs. But doing that - when there are other children in the same class whose needs are not the same (nor should they be) - whew. HARD. Not impossible...but it takes a lot of creative management skills to pull it off. Plus most of the children are delayed in the area of language - which pretty much adversely impacts everything else. My gripe is mostly about the extras that I'm doing, which takes away my focus on just being able to teach. Bullentin boards. Blah! Perhaps interactive learning boards would be fine...but what a pain to maintain it. Useless paperwork that can often be concised into one or two forms instead of ...20. Being on stupid committees such as yearbook and staff birthdays. Sponsoring events or clubs. Dealing with fundraising...that stuff. I think that there are a lot of unrealistic and unfair expectations of teachers.