Find Fulfillment With A Career In Special Education
Unfortunately, children who have disabilities do exist, and they need teachers who have compassion, patience, and the knowledge to help them strive to reach their potential, no matter what it is! This is the field of special education, which has grown in its importance and demand, and makes a very fulfilling career choice.
You are such a person but you also have others depending upon you to put food on the table. No worries, this is not an impossible dream! You can enroll into an online degree program and do the work from home.
First of all, you will more than likely need a Master’s degree to find employment, which is required by most states and is regulated by the National Teacher’s Association. Upon your completion, there will be an exam for licensing, so don’t forget to research the various institutions offering degrees to make sure of their accreditation. However, if you do not have an undergraduate degree in education, you can still enroll into the special education Master’s degree. Read the rest of this entry »
Autism and the Importance of Play
Children have been learning through play for millions of years. In my opinion most children learn best through play, including children with autism.
Play is extremely important to children with autism, even though they typically have a difficult time understanding the concept of play. The reason is because play is an abstract concept and children with autism are generally more concrete thinkers. In addition, play involves an intense level of communication and eye contact, something children on the spectrum typically have a hard time maintaining.
At the beginning of the school year 2010- 2011, my assignment was teaching a classroom of children with multiple disabilities. There were seven children and they were all of Kindergarten age. Three met the diagnostic criteria for autism. Two of the seven were non-verbal. Three were only partially verbal. The remaining two were verbal but with autism-like verbal skills which included an inability to understand abstract questions or answer “W” questions or who, what, when, where and why.
Reason Number One: Play is important to children with autism because it teaches reciprocity. Read the rest of this entry »