Greatest Of All Time, CASE PD

GOAT CASE PD

One of the more challenging things about special education teaching is that the undergraduate work focuses so much on needing to cover a broad field which includes legal paperwork, and navigating different disabilities, of which there are many but that is just one aspect of the job.  You just don’t get out of college with a special education degree able to thoroughly understand the core curriculum you must support.  Then, it is vice versa for regular education teachers who have clients in their classrooms with significant needs.  The Cooperative Association for Special Education Cooperative (CASE) has assisted in closing this gap with their professional development. 
 
They hosted a literacy professional development that encouraged research-based reading strategies to help engage students in language and reading activities.  They also made it extremely relevant for those teachers whose students utilize Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC).  This population of student has increased in the last half decade as many have found the ability to overcome communication skill barriers with low (eg. picture cards) to high (eg. ipad with word app) tech. 
 
They started the event right off the bat reminding attendees of the statistics that show that persons with non-intellectual disabilities have a poorer outcome when it comes to their reading skills.  For example, that 1 in 10 individuals with severe communication and physical disabilities is able to read at the same level as same age peers without disabilities.  That’s right, NON-INTTELLECTUAL disabilities.  So many assumptions are made by sight, which makes sense since that is where many of us take in most of our info.   
 
These instruction motivators then hit on one of my favorite points, that rote repetitive curriculum may not be the best the way.  I loved this as one year I was asked to use Early Literacy Skills Builder (ELSB) with a student one year and it was, well, just plain awful.  The same lesson over and over, just like some of those ‘task boxes’ that might go well for your cognitively challenged but might just push other students into a severe wish to never enter the classroom again.
 
So yes, this special education cooperative then conducted their hours long professional development in an organized manner that kept their audience rotating around the learning space so that none of us suffered from butt fatigue.  Strategies for sharing stories, phonological development, language acquisition and direct teaching of core words for meaning were shared.  Personally, I was lucky, as when I was given my complex needs assignments I had already completed two undergraduates in education, one for ‘reg-ed’ (which includes the pedagogy of all the subjects) and one for ‘SPED’ which focused more on interventions and procedures.  But again, not every special education teacher comes out with great subject pedagogy and here is why CASE is the Greatest Of All Time in supporting its staff with the tools it needs to make progress with the clients they care for.