Posts Tagged School Day
The Fine and Performing Arts & Education
I see too many public service commercials-today-exhorting us to support the Performing and Fine Arts in public education. We, as a nation, have evidently become so low-brow, or unsophisticated, that we can no longer see the need for Art education in our schools. So now, we have our children pleading with us, on television commercials, to keep Art education alive. This is a sad state of affairs for us and our children, because art is what truly separates us from the beasts and allows us to rise above the mundane drudgery of life. As many others, I believe art should be at the center of education and not just because it’s good for us. Art stimulates a child’s cognitive and affective domains, as well as their motor skills, which leads to learning, discovery, creativity and motivation.
Academics are very important, of course, but too often they only stimulate a very small portion of the student’s mind and heart. There are three, basic domains of learning: the Cognitive (mind), Affective (emotions or feelings) and Motor-Skills (hands-on). These three domains are key to our thinking/reasoning, learning, problem solving and creating. A healthy mind (Cognitive) is capable of taking in, retaining and processing information, which can then be applied, if retained and used, to the individual’s life. Emotions and feelings (Affective) are closely connected to an individual’s learning, because they aid in retaining and applying information, as well as stimulating the desire to learn more. Seeing, hearing, speaking, the ability to write, walk and run are all part of the individual’s Motor-skills. Without these three domains, learning, needless to say, would be impossible. Reading, writing, math and the sciences stimulate the cognitive and motor skills domains quite effectively, but the affective is too often short changed.
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Education – We’re Failing Our Children
There are reams of reading and stacks of studies purporting to assess various problems of the United States’ educational system. Each problem turns out to be rooted in our individual failure to place an extremely high value on a solid education. Our failure contrasts sharply with societal values of China, India or Japan where admission to universities is a high calling and competition for scarce slots is fierce.
This failure to assign a high value to education is all too easily laid at the feet of society rather than each of us. Unfortunately, that approach allows individuals to escape responsibility for doing something to reverse the “… rising tide of mediocrity”, so well documented a whole generation ago by the National Commission on Excellence in Education.1 If we truly cared we would be working, really hard, to reverse that tide.
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How to Become a Special Education Teacher
Get Started
1. Become qualified.You need two things: A State Teaching certification and (since NCLB was enacted) status as a Highly Qualified teacher in the subjects you plan to teach. Every state has its own guidelines for teaching certification and HQ. Check with your state’s Department of Education (or equivalent department) for specific guidelines.
* Although it varies, the following will be needed for certification: A four year degree in special education, OR a four year degree in another subject area, with a master’s degree in special education. (If you have a four year degree in a subject other than education, many states will allow you an emergency or temporary certificate so that you may teach while earning your certification in Special Education.)
2. Find a suitable university or college with a program in Special Education. Public universities often do just as well as private colleges, if not better in some circumstances, at preparing you for working in a public school.
3. Take as many elective courses as possible in reading and math. Special education students are nearly always integrated in the english and math regular classrooms. This will give you a better idea of their needs. Reading instruction is also critical in elementary grades.
4. Look around for alternative options. If your degree does not also make you Highly Qualified, check your options. Each state usually has two or three means of becoming HQ. The most direct option tends to be a Praxis II exam if your state considers it acceptable.
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