Supporting Students with Exceptionalities Pro-D

 Having worked as an SEA for half a school year, this was a very insightful pro-d. One of the things the speaker, Hazel, emphasized was to respect the child by giving them the right to self-identify. For example, the child might self-identify as a student with autism rather than autistic. If that is the case, that is what we should call them. Another thing she emphasized is terminology, like IEPs or the tiers of funding. She stressed the importance of not using these as adjectives to directly describe a child, because it is dehumanizing to do so. For example, we do not want to be calling a child an IEP or a tier 2 child. I think this is important because as teachers, we need to watch what we say. What we say has weight and can be mistaken the wrong way. 

The other main thing I took away from the Pro-D is Hazel's mention of Shelley Moore's principle of inclusivity, as seen below. She was talking about how our society has progressed throughout the years from exclusion of students with exceptionalities to segregation and now integration and inclusion. Our goal as teachers is to provide all students with a sense of belonging in the classroom. We want to make them feel included. However, what I find interesting is that Shelley Moore takes it a step further and has a category called teaching to diversity, where we as teachers treat every student as unique and different. That way, we see the best and most unique parts of our students and treat them all equally. I really liked the idea and the way she visualized it with dots. Very interesting.