Critical Reflection #3: The Use of Categorical Labels

Recently in my field placement, my cooperating teacher sat me down and discussed the labels that were on the students in the class along with other opinions that she has about the students and their lives. She told me that one student was labeled MR, which we now call cognitively impaired, or intellectually disabled. Another student's diagnosis falls under IDEAs category of Other Health Impairment, there is a student from Puerto Rico who was tested in Puerto Rico for dyslexia which they determined that he had, and another student who my cooperating teach just said had a low IQ and fell under the EBD category.She also told us that she has NEVER had a student go to college and only a few ever go to Vo-tech. 
As much as I find these different things to be very interesting,  I can't help but think of the impact of these labels on the students. The student who has the label "MR" desperately wants to be a United States Marine like his two older brothers. He is highly determined and actually appears to be a very intelligent person. His social worker is currently in the process of having him retested because she does not believe that the diagnosis that has been placed on him is correct, nor do I. From what I have witnessed, the main difficulties that this student posses are simply reading and speech ones, leading me to believe with the limited observations I have had, that he might simply have a processing disorder (some kind of learning disability)and possibly a speech disorder. But, with the MR/ID  diagnosis this kid would never be able to achieve his dream, or anything that he would actually really enjoy doing. However, with a reading or speech disability there is a much higher chance of him being accepted into a military program.
In class, we learned about these labels and even at that point I believed that in a perfect world students wouldn't need these labels to receive services. Everyone has weaknesses and everyone has strengths  if the schools do not change to meet this fact and provide high quality instruction to all students, labeled or not, than these students who do not necessarily need a label, will continue to be stigmatized. That point that I just made is also made in the following video. 

In this article (http://www.intellectualdisability.info/families/overview-of-learning-disability-in-children), they discuss what exactly the label intellectual disability means and my favorite quote that really relates to the student in my field placement was, "People with intellectual disabilities and their parents are at risk of being undervalued and stigmatized." I think that is exactly what is going on with students like the one I have mentioned before. The stigma associated with his diagnosis often gets his abilities and strengths to be undervalued. 

critical reflection #2- Alternative Testing

1. Last week at placement, my cooperating teacher told Emily C. and I that we will be unable to come to placement this week due to the administration of the PASA tests because the state does not allow observers in the classroom. This made me think a lot about the students that I am used to seeing while at placement and immediately figure that it must be a different group of students that she will be administering this alternative assessment to.
2. I thought this because when we discussed alternative assessments in class, we determined that only a very small number of students were able to take these assessments and their disabilities had to be severe enough that they wouldn't show any abilities on the other test with or without accommodations and that no more than 1% of students in a school district can take this assessment, but that is about all that we mentioned about alternative assessment. So therefore I wanted to learn more about alternative assessment and which students are able to take it.
3. On the next page of this mag, I found out who the PASA is for and the following page tells the criteria for determining who should take the alternative assessment article. Then I found a video that tells how different states adhere to IDEA by assessing all learners, even those with special needs.
4. By the end of this research, I have completely determined that the group of students I typically observe are definitely not the students receiving the alternative assessments because they do not meet the criteria listed. The students that I typically observe would be taking the PSSA with accommodations that have guidelines  which will hopefully be linked to this reflection either as new content or its own piece. 

Critical Reflection #1 Comorbitity

At my first placement on Wednesday, I was introduced to Ms. Nelson's 6th grade learning support class. In this class there are four students, all of which who have learning disabilities and some also have other issues as well. The student who I performed the ORFs and Maze tests with is in 6th grade and reads at a grade 4.9 reading level. There are two  students who have ADHD with their learning disability, but come from very different backgrounds, and there is also a student who has a learning disability and is also an ELL.  This bunch of students makes for a very interesting class and I can tell I will be learning a lot from them. 

While I was at the placement, I observed students writing poems, conducted ORFs and Maze tests, and then helped the group of students with their picture poems. I was very grateful for such a laid back placement because it gave me the opportunity to begin building rapport with the students which I find to be very important. 

This placement got me wondering about comorbitity with learning disabilities and ADHD. We talked in class about how ADHD itself cannot be serviced under IDEA, but if comorbity exists it can. We also talked briefly about learning disabilities themselves and how they are issue that is most served by IDEA and special education. Nearly half of all students in special education have a learning disability. 

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