Part 1:

What did the article suggest was important in helping teachers prepare for instructional planning when including Special Populations?

In this article, it suggests that the important thing in helping teachers prepare for instructional planning when including special populations was the actual experience from student teaching as well as being influenced by other teachers.

In regards to the student teaching aspect, this serves as a starting point in the teaching world, which has many valuable lessons. Student-teaching is not only an important experience because it culminates pre-service training, but also because it serves as the launching pad of teachers' professional lives by providing the experiential base upon which new teachers will draw throughout their careers (Cook, 2007).

The other important suggestion made in the article was cooperating-teachers were a bigger influence than college coursework in dealing with different situations such as teaching methods, planning, and a positive mentor/mentee relationship.

What do YOU believe is important to consider when it comes to the student teaching experience and the relationship between the student teacher and cooperating teacher?

The relationship between the student teacher and cooperating teaching I feel is a critical part of a beginning teachers career.

Cooperating teachers that are positive can really impact a student teacher not only in ways of being a mentor and a person to seek advice from but they can also be a learning tool that allows for the student teacher to grow in their profession from seeing how cooperating teacher conduct themselves in their classrooms and build relationships with their students.

As a new teacher, now going on year three I have personal experience with working closely with two different cooperating teachers. The first year was great, I felt supported, I felt comfortable to ask questions and learn from watching how this particular teacher taught in her classroom.

This year in middle school was a bit different. The support was there at first but then faded, questions weren't really answered and it was more of a bother to ask questions so my year turned into a trial and error or a learn as you go type method.

It was a struggle not having that positive cooperating teacher and it made a huge difference in my stress level and made me question why I decided to teach. However, I also felt I grew so much this year from having to learn on my own and now realize that it wasn't a curse but more of a blessing because I learned so much more about myself and my capabilities of being a great teacher.

Part 2:

Conduct some research within the Ashford Library and locate an academic resource that addresses special populations and designing assessments with them in mind. Share the resource you find and summarize it within your response.

The resource that I was able to find was "High-Stakes Testing and Students With Disabilities, written by Katsiyannis, Zhang, Ryan, & Jones.

It is discussed that alternate assessments are sometimes used to demonstrate academic progress. Alternate assessments are administered to students with severe cognitive disabilities, typically defined as performing intellectually within the lowest 1% of the population. (Katsiyannis, Zhang, Ryan, Jones, 2007). The article also discusses how accountability is likely to change not only for educators but for the student as well. A rise has been noted in the participation in these high stakes testing by special populations as well as preparations for educators in the special education department.

References

Cook, L. (2007). When in Rome...: Influences on special education student-teachers' teaching (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. International Journal of Special Education, 22(3), 118-130. Retrieved from ERIC Digest.

Katsiyannis, A., Zhang, D., Ryan, J. B., & Jones, J. (2007). High-Stakes Testing and Students With Disabilities. Journal Of Disability Policy Studies, 18(3), 160-167.

What did the article suggest was important in helping teachers prepare for instructional planning when including Special Populations?

The article showed several areas of what was important in helping student-teachers prepare for instructional planning. The theme that influenced the student-teachers the most was there cooperating teacher and the fact there was a power struggle between the student-teacher and the cooperating teacher, more so to avoid conflict.

Although the most influence was their previous experience and that seemed to be more significant with their instructional planning because they were using memories of early teaching and practices that they remember learning from other teachers they were inspired by.

What do YOU believe is important to consider when it comes to the student teaching experience and the relationship between student teacher and cooperating teacher?

I personally believe student-teachers gain more learning watching someone else teach then learning from a course book or performing course work. It is prominent to absorb a certain amount of data, but the real teaching comes from the field.

Especially, when learning instructional planning with special populations the student-teachers will want to visualize real life experience in order gain those gut feelings and learn how to be prepared in the field. The student-teachers are going to want, and witness situations dealing with behavior problems and see how the cooperating teacher handle it and it about what the student-teachers analysis and observe from.

Part 2:

Conduct some research within the Ashford Library and locate an academic resource that addresses special populations and designing assessments with them in mind. Share the resource you find and summarize it within your response.

The source I found was Outcomes of Functional Assessment-Based Interventions for Students With and At Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in a Job-share Setting.

In this article, we describe a systematic approach to designing, implementing, and evaluating functional assessment-based interventions developed by Umbreit, Ferro, Liaupsin, and Lane (2ÜÜ7), This job-sharing classroom was with two classmates, two first-grade students. One student was at risk for emotional and behavior disorders (EBD) and the other student was receiving special education for emotional disturbance. They both partake of a regular school practice.

The results of both withdrawal designs revealed a functional relation between the intervention procedures and academic engaged time. Though limitations and future directions limited. Regardless, of the limitations the example followed an important concept that even though teachers were limited they still require an effective approach that is scientific, evidence-based standards and the day-to-day realities of the classroom setting.

References:

Cook, L. (2007). When in Rome...: Influences on special education student-teachers' teaching (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. International Journal of Special Education, 22(3), 118-130. Retrieved from ERIC Digest.

Lane, K. L., Eisner, S. L., Kretzer, J., Bruhn, A. L., Crnobori, M., Funke, L., & ... Casey, A. (2009). Outcomes of Functional Assessment-Based Interventions for Students with and At Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in a Job-share Setting. Education & Treatment Of Children, 32(4), 573-604.

Mine is below to help with the two students respond above. Please follow the guide carefully.

Part 1:

The article discovered that numerous areas were crucial in helping to prepare learners-teachers for instructional planning. Mainly, their cooperating teacher strongly impacts their decisions in leaner's teaching. Even though, it is mentioned that learner's teachers mostly engage in this to obtain approval and to minimize conflict that might occur.

Furthermore, their previous experience in the classroom influences their instructional planning (Cook,2007). The experiences might be in earlier learning practices or reminiscences from their schooling. The article also explains that the university coursework might cause more influence over learners' teacher instructional decisions since they use what they have acquired in the class when preparing for the instructional planning

I believe there are no children that are same regarding their abilities since every child learns and develops in different ways. It is the responsibility of the teacher to offer each leaner with the utmost educational experience. They are also required to plan and design the instructional program which meets the need of the learner's because what works for one student might not work for another.

For that reason, teachers are supposed to be able to modify and accommodate learning as per the student's skills, style, and requirement. It is crucial to have student-learner interconnection since it influences students to work hard towards in class, having a more accommodating classroom is crucial to the leaner's success; they can learn skills such as communication and cooperative skills and learn from one another.

Part 2:

In Jay Herbert's High-Stakes Testing: Opportunities and Risks for Students of Color, English-Language Learners, and Students with Disabilities. The article discovered that high stake testing is not useful in measuring what special education learners learn.

The primary argument was that the traditional tests chose a few types of aptitude to assess mostly mathematical and linguistic intelligence (Heubert, 2009). Presently, there is the need for the test to be incorporated in different ways about measuring the aptitude. Several special education students might demonstrate high talent on the assessments which integrate bodily-kinesthetic, or the musical intelligence.

References

Cook, L. (2007). When in Rome. Influences on special education student-teachers' teaching. International Journal of Special Education, 22 (3), 118-130.

Heubert, J. (2009). High-Stakes Testing: Opportunities and Risks for Students of Color, English-Language Learners, and Students with Disabilities | National Center on Accessible Instructional Materials.