The Structured Interview Method - Essay Example

The interviewee was a Speech Pathologist at an Elementary School in Northwest suburbs of Chicago.   She indicated that she has been teaching at this school for six years and she has seven years experience as a teacher. She currently teaches 45 students of which are 30 males while 15 are females. The interviewee has also worked for a rehab company in skilled nursing facilities. In this interview, I sought to gain insight about the approach she uses when he teaches a class of learners with special needs.

She indicated that parent(s), resource teacher, OT, PT, principal, nurse, school psychologist or general education teacher attend IEP meetings if applicable. The meetings usually vary from 30 minutes to 60 minutes depending on the needs of the student. The interviewee also stated that consultative minutes are completed weekly. However meetings to discuss students on the caseload or those who may need services due to concerns are held twice a month. The teacher indicated that meetings with the teacher to discuss goals, vocabulary needing to be addressed with the speech therapy setting as well as any other concerns that the teacher may have are usually done at least once a week.

The site also uses student study team meetings and it also implements RTI process. The success of this initiative is attributed to the use of cooperative/collaborative teams as well as co-teaching One great lesson I learnt from this interview is that continued teacher education is essential with regards to dealing with special needs learners. The needs of these learners constantly change depending on the environment in which they are living in hence the teachers need to improve their knowledge constantly in order to be in a position to meet the changing needs of the learners.

Teachers can gain more knowledge through group discussions since these allow them to interact freely. Teamwork as well as inclusion of all teachers concerned in teaching special education classes are basic tenets of success with regards to the achievement of the desired goals in improving the quality of education for learners with special needs. The interviewee indicated that SPED students are graded using the same method as regular education students. The goals are goals being addressed through their IEP are noted on progress updates completed at each report card.

She also stated that flexible grouping and volunteer parent intervention are essential in order to establish the need of the students with special needs. The other strategy used in teaching students with special needs is to move them down to a grade lower level reading group if it is seen as appropriate to his or her level. However, the only shortcoming I have realised of all the strategies used is that they grade the students with special needs in the same way they grade general students. These two groups are quite different hence they may not use the same strategy to grade them.

In conclusion, I can safely say that this interview achieved its objectives. As the interviewee aptly stated, there is no right way for everything. This is mainly because of the fact that we live in different areas and these are characterised by different things. For instance, the people in each area have their own way of doing things.