Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/to-teach-each-child-the-trials-and-rewards/5009345/
One child at a time . . .Confident with my training in early childhood education and my years of experience working with typically developing children, I lost some of my confidence when I began working with children with special needs eight years ago. What was it about special education that was so mysterious? Who were these special children anyway? What did they need and what did they look like? How would my role change in working with other specialists - who until this point had only come into my classroom to take the special children out for therapy?
As an outsider (with limited experience) looking in, I had often been critical of those special educators and therapists who were only interested in focusing on the deficits and fixing the child in isolation. I had been educated in an exclusive environment where children with disabilities and therapists were kept at a distance. Now for the first time the different disciplines were merging together and words like family centered approach and interdisciplinary model began to take on a whole new meaning. I was confronted with my own biases about persons with disabilities and those professionals who work ...