Substitute Teaching

11/20/18

Special education - high school.

This is what I found interesting:

• the regular teacher, who I was able to observe, got the lesson started very late, and was easily sidetracked by conversations with individual students.
• the lesson he delivered was about the “right” way to ask questions. He would use the following framework: a) pose a poorly worded question, b) try to get a conversation going about why it was bad
• I was struck by how boring this framework was. The teacher talked way more than any other individual, and some students didn’t talk at all. Furthermore, despite these students being in special education, they pretty much already knew how to ask questions politely and un-intrusively.
• I suggested having the students role play.
• Later, when I was substituting, I was supposed to read-aloud a chapter from a book. After one student asked me repeatedly if he could read and I let him, I realized how powerful it was for the students to read in front of their classmates, rather than me do read-aloud for them. I think it showed themselves and their peers that they were capable human beings.