The teaching profession is considered one of the most respectable jobs globally. A teacher and students relationship is acknowledged everywhere. You must have seen a teacher teaching average students, but! Have you ever seen a teacher teaching special students? Well! Most of you must have. Teaching a special student is an enormous task and, of course, a task of responsibility. You have to be their second guardian in school and keep your eyes open throughout the teaching session.
Key Tips for Teaching Special Students
Make an academic schedule- to teach special students; one needs to put some extra effort. The first thing you need to do is to make a schedule. Yes! to handle special students, you need to design a routine based on their personal needs. It is not essential that all the students must have the same disabilities. The truth is students’ disabilities might differ from each other. Some may be blind, deaf, and dumb, while some may be autistic, etc. So! As their disability differs, their individual needs are also different. The way of teaching and what to teach differs as the disability differs. So! While designing a schedule, you must keep these things in mind and make an easy schedule to follow and satisfy their individual needs.
Group therapy- This method is beneficial to generate awareness about the importance of learning among special students. Try to sit with the regular students whenever they are learning something or working on a particular assignment. Making a special student sit with a regular one helps them gain knowledge and boost self-confidence. Sitting with regular students and learning or doing a project with them makes the special students happy inside out and gives them the message of equality. Group studies are considered best for learning or grasping things. So! Being a teacher of special students, you should also focus on group study to make such students more knowledgeable. Also, by studying in groups, they will develop a competitive spirit, which is a must in students.
Being a teacher and making your students sit in groups to enhance their knowledge is good but! Only doing these things will not make a big difference and is not enough either. The special students require extra attention to gain understanding and learn something. You need to understand that they are not like other regular students. Whenever you are in the classroom, try to pay extra attention to each student. For example- if there are 20 students in your class, each need might be different. So being a teacher, you should look after every 20 students personally. Giving a personal touch in your teaching helps you know about your students and helps students learn you better.
Say yes to break- As I said in the points mentioned above, special students are not the same as the normal ones, so teaching them should be a bit different. Think of a situation where aregular student is asked to study for long hours. What will happen to them? They will get bored, right! Now think about the mental condition of a special student if they are asked to continuously study for such long hours. Aren’t they more exhausted than the regular students? Of course, they will. So! Being a teacher, you should not force such students to study for much longer. Instead, give them a break to refresh their mind. It will help them to study with total concentration.
Final Words
Nowadays, many schools are uniquely made for special students. Such students are getting to read and learn over the same platform as regular students. During corona times, special students attend online classes like everyone else. They used online apps that use a learning management system (LMS Full Form) and Institute ERP to give a good learning experience. Managing and teaching a special child is considered to be very difficult. For teaching such students, you have to be extra attentive responsible as a teacher.
Thank You!