14th October 2019

After doing many years of coursework and student teaching, you have finally earned yourself the right to be considered for a special education teacher training program. Do you know what would be the right thing to do in such a situation? It is not uncommon for even the old and experienced teachers to feel a degree of anxiety facing their first class of special need students with the variety of additional and unique responsibilities to be fulfilled for having a successful year.

Here is a look at some of the tips that will keep you afloat in a classroom following your SEN teacher training engagement.

Review each of the IEP due dates

One of the critical aspects of special education teaching is meeting deadlines and timelines. In addition to making plans of the daily lessons and teaching, a special needs education courses also requires you to be accountable for holding annual Individual Education Program (IEP) meetings and three-year re-evaluation programs within a defined timeline. Missed deadlines often lead to creation of an IEP that is out of compliance, meaning potential citations from your state or district.

At the beginning of the year, go through every student IEP and mark the due dates on your calendar. It is helpful you can know ahead of time and plan for the months when you can expect to stay extremely busy with a great deal of meetings and paperwork.

Establish positive contact with the parents

During the first year of your special education courses in India, it is very important that you develop positive relationships with the parents as that will make life easier for you in the long run. Start by making a phone call or sending an email to every parent with the intention of learning more about their child. This will allow you to gather valuable information on your student while allowing the parents to consider you as a potential partner with whom they can build a relationship starting out on the right foot.

It is very important that you establish a positive rapport at the start of the school year as this will be highly appreciated by all involved. This will also make the parents more receptive in the event you have to contact them with less positive news in the future.

Review and organize the various student IEPs

Before the start of the SEN teacher training it is important you finish doing a review of every student IEP. Familiarize yourself with the student goals, areas of need, accommodations and service minutes. It is common for special education teachers to develop binders or other similar systems for organizing and keeping all of their IEPs in an easy to access location. A helpful organizing tip – create a one-pager summary of the student IEP that can be shared with other teachers and be of interactive use with the students during the day.

If you are teaching at the elementary level or in the resource room, you will develop your schedule based on the needs and service minutes of any student in question. As a middle school or high school teacher who is responsible for teaching a subject or class, you will want to make sure that the student goals are aligned with the curriculum that you have been assigned to teach.

Be dependent on your mentor to start with

As a new teacher to the special education field, you will require considerable amount of guidance and hopefully the same will materialize in the form of a mentor assigned by your school. Seek out the concerned person and ask a lot of questions to start with. Most veteran teacher take pride in helping out the new teachers while many get paid extra in order to do so.

Conclusion

Every kind of teacher – even those teaching at the veteran level – face jitters when starting something new. Trying to following the aforementioned tips will help keep you more relaxed and prepared and all eager about meting your new students.