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Dan Ring - Short Essay B
Teaching U.S. History in Waukegan
I have taught U.S. History to several levels of students. On one occasion I was teaching high school students who were learning disabled. Now keep in mind that the IQ levels of many
of the students can be well above normal and it is the mode of delivery of the material that differentiates these students from students in regular education. However, some of these students because of their difficulties do not have a high opinion of their abilities or that the materials that they are being taught are "dumbed down"
for their classes. It has never been my practice to "dumb down" what I teach.
At the high school my classroom was adjacent to a classroom which was used by the College Studies Program and the teacher of that class would go into his topics in quite a bit of depth. One of the problems of teaching in these rooms was that there was a door between the rooms and there was no insulation at the top of the block wall that separated our rooms. The result was that what was said in one room could often be heard in the next.
I had taught a certain topic of U.S. History to my students several weeks before
and was now onto a different topic. Suddenly one of my students who
was seated near the common doorway stopped the class and stated that
the College Studies Program students were studying the same material
we had covered previously. And then exclaimed that "weren't we supposed
to get the 'dummy stuff' because we are special ed?" And how come
I was teaching the same material that they were studying because the
other class was going to college.
What followed was a great moment in teaching. I told them that how we learn differs from one individual to another and that what is taught as material in a subject need not be different between the special education class and the College Studies Program. The students began to inquire whether this event was a fluke and over the next several weeks they came to know that what I had said was true. As a result of this revelation I was able to raise their level of personal expectations and expand the breadth and depth of the topics which were covered for the remainder of the year. The side effect of this was that they would now approach the teacher and the students in the College Studies Program and comment on the lessons each was receiving.
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