Importance of Special Education Training

Children that have learning disabilities are some of our greatest challenges, and offer our greatest rewards. It is up to us to develop methods of giving them all the tools possible to ensure that they receive the best chance of success. As we learn new skills with which to disseminate knowledge to our special children, we see opportunities for these methods with all children.

It has been my experience that all children need to be motivated. Special Education training focuses on getting the message through an obstacle course to the child in a way that the message can be best appreciated with the child's limitations. The same concept applies to all students. All children provide their own little obstacle courses because they want to have fun more than study. It is the teacher's goal to mix learning with fun in order to make the learning experience welcome.

So why is special education training important for all teachers? All children have special needs because of their excitement about the sunny day, the argument that they overheard at home, or the dog that chased them on the way to school. These are transient distractions, but they present obstacles. A message that is fun and easily understood has the best chance of engaging the student in the learning process where such distractions exist. Special education training can help the teacher select such activities most effectively with these distractions in mind.

The more we understand about navigating the obstacle course, the more we can remove the effect of these distractions from the learning experience. I have found that special education training has helped me select a particular delivery style or technique for a particular student. This training can come from almost any source. I love school, but find that even a one day workshop can be a tremendous asset in preparing to deal with the obstacles presented to us daily. Even a good book while sitting in an easy chair can be a great source of knowledge as well as a catalyst for an idea that might help navigate among the obstacles.

I hope that you have found my idea interesting. I am always looking for additional methods, information and resources that are useful in education, so if you know of any that I don't have links to, let me know about them. If you have a helpful tip that you would like to share, but don't have a web site, send it to me, and if I publish it, I'll include your e-mail address with it so you can get feedback. Have a great day!

	This website is in no way associated with Quest Educational Foundation of Collier County, Florida that offers tutoring, mentoring and scholarships to students in Collier, County, Florida.	Visitor# 1514 since January 11, 1998 Copyright © 1998-2003 by Kathy Waites - All rights reserved