Purpose Driven Life

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A Purpose Driven Life
Dr. Seuss wrote in his book Happy Birthday to You, “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” Every essence of our being, from our personalities to our DNA is different from everyone else in this world. Many of these distinctions are apparent in the classroom setting and at times can prove challenging for a teacher. Some students may learn the lessons very quickly while others may take extra time and may need out-of-class help. These differences will affect their ability to learn and grow as a student and the strategies I implement in my classroom will affect their ability to succeed.
When teaching a lesson to a student with a special need such as cerebral palsy, certain tactics need to be used as outlined in an article by Frank Ricci, a nurse in the ICU at a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh. In this article Ricci describes how to develop an educational program for a unique group of students. This group of students was comprised of 12 members who each had cerebral palsy and of those 12, 7 were in wheelchairs and 8 had mild-visual impairments. The goal of this educational program was to teach these students about safety restraints and how important seat-belts are. While this program was not math or science related, the techniques used by the teacher are applicable to any classroom setting with diverse students. To begin the session, a short story was read about safety. The story included animated characters and was funny. Next, posters were presented with bright colors and big slogans that read “Be Smart, buckle up.” Following the presentation of the posters, the teacher showed the students how to properly buckle their seat belt and gave them an opportunity to ...

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