"How can teachers best meet the needs of students with mild disabilities?"

"How can teachers best meet the needs of students with mild disabilities?"

The readings and discussions this week were enlightening, and addressed issues in meeting the needs of students with mild or high incidence disabilities. Beard, Carpenter and Johnston (2011), as well as Alper and Raharinirina identify the increase in public awareness around disabilities, and individual's with disabilities rights, since the passing of the Disabilities Act of 1988, as well as The Assistive Technology Act of 1998; the progress that has been made and the barriers that often get in the way of ATs being implemented to best meet identified student's needs.

In order to best meet the needs of students with disabilities, more information and training is needed among all stakeholders, including administrators, teachers, special education professionals, parents and the community. Technologies are constantly changing, and an IEP that was written for an AT one year could possibly be obsolete the next.

Mindset is often the barrier to students getting the much needed Assistive Technology. Teachers can intimidated by the technology, uninformed about what technology is available, or how to assist the student in it's use. Quite often teachers may not understand how to fully implement the AT into the curriculum for the student who needs it.  Administrators and PPT Teams could be concerned with prohibitive costs to the school if they are held responsible for obtaining the AT for a student. Parents may not know how to best advocate for their child's needs. Other challenges may be how to assess a student's progress while using an AT.

Some steps that can be taken to best to avoid these barriers are:

• Keep student and family members in the loop when deciding on a device,
• Allow for a trial period with coaching and mentoring,
• Include Student, Parent/Guardian, classroom teacher, SpEd Team and Assistant Teachers in training
• In school and in home technical support to ensure proper use of device,
• Ongoing communication between student, student's family, teachers and PPT Team about successes and challenges around the device.

As always, teachers must scaffold for all students, including using strategies, methods and tools that ensure each individual success at any given task/project. This may mean breaking larger assignments down into smaller pieces so a student with a disability can feel the same sense of accomplishment as they meet each benchmark. Using rubrics, graphic organizers, calendars and other organizational tools is advisable as well.