Using My Already-Acquired Skills In The Classroom

Q1: What academic assessment and intervention skills do you already have that you could use if you implemented a response to intervention program in your school?

In the last 25 years, schools in the United States have experienced a 283% increase in the number of students with learning disabilities and receiving special education services (Gresham, 2002). When Vaughn, Linan-Thompson, and Hickman explain that that this increase my be attributable to the overidentification, misidentification, and underidentification of a student and his or her learning disabilities, I am slightly inclined to be a little skeptical. If we are underidentifying, a the very least, how is there such a dramatic increase? Are there other factors involved that may have had a significant effect on the issue at hand?

Lynon’s argument, one I resonate with more closely than the ones stated above, proclaims that many of these “disabilities” are simply instructional casualties(146). It is unfair to pin the label of challenged to a child that never even got the opportunity. Because of this, many educators, government official, parents, and others believe that implementing an objective regiment that mandates the same outlined curriculum for each teacher to follow. Many believe this gives children an equal opportunity to reach the standards expected of them. However, one teaching can instruct a classroom using the same lesson plan as another teacher, and you would most likely get very different results!

Although many of my academic assessment and intervention skills have never been certified, I believe they could be helpful when implementing a response to intervention program in my classroom/school. I already knew that at least 30 minutes of daily instruction in a kindergarten classroom will help tremendously in getting the child to where he or she should be. Growing up, I have always appreciated the art of story-telling, and I have my parents to thank for this. Both my mother and father have allotted much of their time to reading and singing to me. I was given countless amount of books for my birthday and Christmas, and my mother would take me to the Carmel Public Library as a “special treat” after most preschool days. Suffice-to-say, it unfortunately took until I started my degree of Early Childhood Education at IU to gain empathy and understanding of those less fortunate in this regard. Through my teaching, I now understand that most did not have the same benefits growing up and that a child’s upbringing has nearly everything to do with their academic success.

From the assigned article written by Rebecca S. Martinez and Leah M. Nellis, I now know that the task of reading and learning to read is often the most challenging task for too many people. However, reading disabilities can be prevented and identified if addressed early. Although I do not have the full experience that other educators have had working with the RTI program, I still believe that I could help decrease the skill gap. Just the basic knowledge that RTI is composed of a multitier system, I can categorize in a way that specifically corresponds to the needs of each individual student. Other skills such as patience, empathy and sympathy, and experience in a variety of children’s programs inevitably pushes my confidence level in successfully implementing an RTI program up a few notches.

One part that really stuck out in our reading was the argument that the RTI is crucial in the early stages of education because here, they are learning to read. They gain this skill in order to read to learn soon after in their academic career. Efficient interventions at the first sign of risk can squander certain lifelong implications of a child’s success rate.