Communication Reflection Paper

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To begin, this was my first week back at Pittsburgh Faison since I left for break in December, but when I arrived I already had a connection with my cooperating teacher and some of the students; this made my first week not as stressful as it could have been. I have seen my cooperating teacher around the building, since I completed my PS2 pre-student teaching at the same school last semester. I also got to work with Mr. Attenberger during our Tuesday morning restorative practice meetings and at professional developments last semester. There was a half day last semester where I got to spend the whole morning with Mr. Attenberger, so I could see his daily routine and so we could start to build the professional relationship needed to work together. …show more content…

When I started on Tuesday those students felt comfortable working with me, and that made me feel confident. Furthermore, Mr. Attenberger only works with students in grades 3-5 that need help only in math. At Pittsburgh Faison this looks like a push in/pull out since there is no classroom for Mr. Attenberger to work in he will take the students to the hallway den to work, or pull them to the table in the back of the classroom. While observing Mr. Attenberger this week I noticed one thing that I really liked, he does not help only the students who are on his roster, he will walk around and assist any student who is struggling with the math work. This week, I noticed that typically we would stay in the classroom and work with students if the teacher was reviewing something that was already taught, and we would pull out the students if they were working on something new. When Mr. Attenberger pulls students out he usually goes over something they previously worked on to give them a little warm up, and then he will teach the students the new idea. Mr. Attenberger also teaches the …show more content…

I was beyond shocked to see one of the teachers giving his/her class a test without letting the special education teacher know there would be a test. My cooperating teacher showed me tests in the past where he altered it to fit the needs of the students he works with, since the regular education teacher gives the tests straight from the curriculum. It was very hard to watch the students take this test because there were somethings on the test they did not know how to complete. The heart wrenching part was that it wasn’t only the students on my cooperating teacher’s roster that had these problems; it was a lot of the students in the class. Mr. Attenberger stressed the fact that communication between the regular education and special education teacher is very important especially for reasons like this. We both walked in there not knowing what the test even looked like, so it was hard to be prepared to help the students who needed it. My cooperating teacher assured me that this probably only happened because it was the end of the marking period and the teacher wanted to get one last grade in, but I could tell he was just as upset as I was. He then explained to me that some teachers are harder to work with than others because they do not want the children who need extra help in their classrooms; I have heard about this being an issue but I never had to experience this until the other day and it tore

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