Think Out Loud

Special Education students and teachers face additional challenges with online learning

By Julie Sabatier (OPB)
Sept. 3, 2020 6:26 p.m.

Broadcast: Friday, Sept. 4

Special education serves students with a wide variety of disabilities. Some need support in the classroom, while others need additional services outside of their classes, in small groups or one-on-one with a teacher. Special education teachers, students and parents are still trying to figure out how to make all of this work now that most Oregon students are starting school online.

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“Think Out Loud” heard from three teachers: Kesia Micheletti, a special education teacher at Roosevelt High School in Portland, Amy Neff, who teaches special education at Pacific Crest Middle School in Bend, and Jeff Gierer, a speech language pathologist at Woodlawn Elementary School in Portland.

“Many of my students have developmental delays or cognitive difficulties, and I think one of the biggest barriers for some of our students right now is just accessing new technological platforms,” Micheletti said. “I think that there’s a really big disconnect for those students that don’t read and write because so much of our virtual online stuff is in written format.”

Gierer estimated that teachers and students in Portland Public Schools have been introduced to 19 new online learning platforms and tools.

“The thing that we kept hearing repeatedly from families was ... just how overwhelmed everyone is,” he said, adding that teachers are feeling the same way. “The vast majority of our job is just not the same and not as effective.”

Unlike the Portland Public Schools district, online classes haven’t started just yet for students in the Bend-La Pine school district. Their first day is September 14, but Neff has already begun reaching out to families. One thing she said she wants to be sure to address is her students' social needs.

“We started some lunch bunches online so they could see each other and talk in a non-academic environment. We also did some Zoom dog walks,” she said. “We all get on Zoom and take our dogs for a walk.”

Micheletti and Gierer echoed what Neff said about the need for social time in the school schedule. And they’re working on creative solutions as well.

“In the spring … we hosted several social hours for our students, where teachers turned their mics off and just sat and listened and let the students be social," Micheletti said. "I think the key is figuring out how to help students also invite their [general education] peers that they’ve become friends with into our spaces as well.”

Cindi Polychronis contacted “Think Out Loud” to share her experience as a parent.

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Her son is in the fourth grade in a Portland Public School. He has Down syndrome and has been working with the same special education paraprofessional on a modified curriculum for years. Shortly before the start of the school year, the teacher and the family were notified via email that the paraprofessional was reassigned and would no longer be working with this student.

Polychronis said the start of the school year had been hard, and her son was refusing to get on video calls.

“I wish that the school, district and school board members could come into our house and watch him failing, watch him not able to access the general ed curriculum anymore, watch him sit in front of the computer and have no idea what’s going on and then want to shut it down," Polychronis said.

She wishes they could see how her son asks for his paraprofessional — “Where is she? Why can’t I see her?” — and how the family has no good answer for him.

Gierer said that, unfortunately, Polychronis' son’s story is not an outlier.

“I think one of our hopes of special educators ... was that in the context of a pandemic, in the context of this unprecedented historic situation, there might just be some pause on staffing or restructuring or rethinking services in general," he said.

But that hasn’t been the case.

"What we found is that there’s a lot of shuffling, a lot of changes, a lot of changes in expectation and approach that I think speaks to a larger disconnect between the people who are on the ground working with students and the people in special education who are making those decisions,” Grierer said.

The three teachers said that, although the future is daunting, they also have high hopes for this unprecedented school year.

“There’s amazing amounts of energy and positivity coming from teachers from all corners of every building that are just willing to just pull up their sleeves and get to work,” Micheletti said.

“I wish we had more time,” Neff added. “But will we’ll do the best we can and use our time efficiently.”

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show, or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.

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