Archives: Administrative

We’re taking this week off for UNC’s fall break, but will be back next week with a new post.

As a teacher, hearing that students in your classroom have a diagnosed learning disability or other special need can be overwhelming and even intimidating. Preparing lesson plans for twenty students already seemed difficult enough. Now you are expected to provide specialized instruction with no real training or guidance from special education staff!

It’s perfectly natural to feel concern or frustration. And you’re not alone — many teachers have been in your shoes at some point in their careers. This blog is here to help.

Each week, we’ll consider a commonly held belief about special education, providing special instruction to students with special needs, and the behavior problems you might encounter in an inclusive classroom. Many students with learning disabilities also have underlying behavioral or processing disorders, and researchers have struggled to design ways to reliably identify those problems and to treat them. In this blog, though, we’ll concentrate on classroom practices. I’ll look at each issue, ask what the research says, and offer teacher-tested strategies for teaching students with learning and behavior problems.

If you have questions or concerns about special education that you’d like us to answer, or just a story to share, please leave a comment on the blog! We’ll be looking forward to hearing your thoughts as well.