Recommendation for a Jewish School and Synagogue for Students with Disabilities - Essay Example

Public schools are supposed to provide a certain percentage of their funding for needy students in private schools, and the Jewish schools can benefit from the information provided by an IEP in terms of the difficulties faced by the needy students. In spite of this, parents are often reluctant to share the IEP of their children with disabilities. Therefore, one way of supporting students with disabilities in Jewish schools is for the parents and guardians of students with disabilities to provide their IEP.

Most parents fail to see the relevance of the IEP in their children’s Jewish education, especially in schools where only Hebrew and Judaics is taught. Parents must provide information that may assist those teachers to provide learning experience for their child that is effective (Reamer 185). According to Reamer 102), another thing that needs to be done in such schools is to take measures for countering stigmatization. Most parents are reluctant to take their disabled children to Jewish schools as they feel that their child will be labeled.

Parents say that they wish their child to be in a place where the child will not be singled out for labeling and where he can feel positively about his Judaism. The parents are not interested in reading and writing Hebrew, but with the maintenance of the Jewish connection. The school should therefore come up with a policy that discourages labeling of students as with disabilities and also encourage parents to instill self confidence in their children to avoid the effects of stigmatization. One problem facing many Jewish schools is the qualification of their staff members.

Most do not have staff members who are special educators. The special educators are adequately trained to handle children with a wide range of disorders and disabilities, therefore giving them a better chance of successfully teaching the children what they have to learn. Hence, for a Jewish school and synagogue to support the inclusion of students with disabilities, they must employ trained special educators as part of their staff. Despite supplemental Jewish education programs such as these schools providing excellent Jewish experiences, parents wishing their special need children to have a Jewish environment everyday often have to fend for themselves with little school support.

Those with the ability to afford it have to hire tutors and shadows, a solution that has not always been successful. In most cases, the parents have to make that difficult choice of taking their children out of Jewish schools. Thus to avoid this, the Jewish school and synagogue should provide the necessary support to parents of their students to ensure that raising and educating children with disabilities is not a wholesome burden (Reamer 322). In order to initiate services for students with special needs, the staff and school administration of a Jewish school and synagogue should follow certain laid down guidelines for all learning disabilities.

One vital guideline is understanding that both social and academic behaviors of students with disabilities are symptoms of a disability and not flaws in characters or intentional acts. The teachers should allow time extensions for the completion of assignments and tests, and should not be impatient in case of delays in the completion of homework and such. They should also apply the use