 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Special ed teachers still rare commodity
By MELANIE AVE
© St. Petersburg Times, TAMPA -- The slight, energetic teacher with cloudy blue eyes bends before her student. It's the first day of school and she is at once a cheerleader and a coach. The blind student is 16, though he doesn't remember his age. He's learning how to button and unbutton a shirt at Dover Elementary School's Exceptional Center for mentally handicapped students in southern Hillsborough County. Here, the triumphs aren't about how students perform on a chapter test or explain the Pythagorean theorem. Here, achievement is measured when students learn to use sign language, open a carton of milk, chew without being prompted. The student, Richard Woods, a burly teenager with an unwaning smile, wraps his large fingers around the buttons and shoves them through the holes. He looks up with unseeing eyes, waiting for approval. One button is in the wrong hole, leaving the blue-striped uniform shirt lopsided. Still, Phoebe Irby is thrilled with the progress of her student, the oldest in the class of eight blind, deaf or retarded students ages 4 to 16. "How many buttons did you do?" asks Irby, watching closely as he puts his fingers on each button and begins to count "1 -- 2 -- 3." "Now undo it," she prompts. "Do it gently. Gently. Your mom wouldn't want you to yank your clothes." Slowly the buttons slide out. The shirt hangs open. Mission accomplished. Irby beams. "Good job, big guy" Irby is a rarity in the teaching ranks, a teacher in a field which few choose and in which fewer stay: special education. The state considers the shortage of special education teachers to be critical. Amid a continuing national teacher shortage, special education is at the top of the list, along with math, science and foreign language. Last school year in Hillsborough, about 300 of the district's 1,800 special education teachers were not properly certified to teach the 5,400 students assigned to special education classes. With a new school year just begun, Hillsborough is still hunting for special education teachers, who make up 16 percent of all teachers. Twenty-three percent of its 165 vacancies are to teach children with emotional, mental and physical disabilities -- the highest single category. Special efforts are being made to recruit and mentor new special education teachers, said Ed McDowell, Hillsborough's director of exceptional student education. "It's a concern," he said. "We're seeking caring, intelligent, hard-working people. It can be a very good career if you've got a feeling for these kids." On the first day of school last week, Irby was a whirlwind from the beginning of the day until the end. She jumped and cooed when each student entered. She hadn't seen them in five long weeks of summer vacation. "Welcome back! We missed you. What did you do this summer?" Her mouth and hands moved at once as she used her fingers to communicate what their ears could not hear. She wrapped her arms around each of them, and admired their new shoes and backpacks. She is considered by her colleagues to be one of the best. In 1995, Irby was selected Hillsborough's teacher of the year and one of five state finalists. The next year, she was named America's best educator from 1,500 nominees in a national teacher awards program sponsored by Walt Disney Co. and McDonald's. The daughter of a Navy man who moved every three years, Irby, 49, decided to become a special education teacher while attending Florida State University. She befriended blind students and decided she would teach children like them as a career, no matter how difficult. "It's the best thing ever," said Irby, who lives in Brandon. "You go home and go, "Yeah.' You see it in their face and you know they've got it." As the school day got under way last week, her students prepared to make a batch of monkey bread. Irby asked them: "What do we need?" Daniel Sampson, a well-spoken 10-year-old, replied: "Butter." "And where do you buy butter?" Irby asked. "At Wal-Mart," he said. "Now what is going to happen to the butter?" she asked. "What is it going to do in the oven?" Later, Irby squatted on the floor beside Briana Riner, 10, a shy brunette, and asked her to count the biscuits on her plate. She waited. "How many?" Irby asked again, as the girl pressed her slender fingers on the slabs of uncooked dough. "Two," Briana replied in a voice barely above a whisper. "Two biscuits, that's right," Irby said, smiling and walking away. Around the room, one child struggled to tear the dough into pieces, while another made row after row of tiny neat balls. One girl sniffed a bottle of cinnamon and struggled to recall what it was. After several minutes, she decided it was a spice. "It's just the little things," Irby said later. "And I get so many every day." The Council for Exceptional Children in Reston, Va., attributes the shortage of special education teachers to overwhelming paperwork, large caseloads, inadequate school district support and significant teacher isolation. Research shows many new special education teachers get frustrated and quit after three years. "One of the things you hear everyone say is there's a lot more paperwork," said Betty Epanchin, special education professor at the University of South Florida. "I think we're doing a much better job preparing teachers now. But, historically, they've not been prepared for the jobs they're going into." Each year, the law requires teachers to fill out lengthy individualized education plans for special education students and meet with their parents at least once a year. Each goal in the plan has to be tracked regularly. "Sometimes you're talking about 25 different kids with 25 different problems," said Lincoln Elementary School teacher Melissa Wolfe, who stopped teaching special education after three years because of large classes and loads of paperwork. Wolfe believes more educators would choose the field if class sizes were reduced, more aides were provided to assist teachers, and children with similar disabilities could be taught together. "I was coming home upset every day," said Wolfe, 33, who holds a master's degree in special education. "It's a really challenging job." In Irby's class, the thrust is on teaching basic skills. Much of her class time is spent taking students into the community, where they learn how to buy groceries, use a coin laundry, order a hamburger. Each student has a calendar hanging on the wall that maps out the day's schedule. On this day, the activities included: breakfast, cooking, game, lunch, brush teeth, physical education and art. Across the district, some disabled students are placed in regular schools, depending on their disability so they learn in classrooms alongside non-disabled classmates. But others, with more severe disabilities, are enrolled in exceptional student centers such as Dover, where Irby teaches with the help of two assistants. It's going to to be a big year for the students in her classroom, all of whom she taught the year before. She hopes Richard will learn to respect the personal space of others. Briana will eat without physical prompting. And Daniel will master 26 Braille letters. By the third day of school, Irby was already ecstatic. All last year, Irby tried all sorts of games to help Daniel learn the difference between the letter "I" and "E" in Braille. "He was getting so frustrated," she said. "Now, all of sudden, he gets it every time. Every time he comes to it, he says, "That's the letter I had trouble with.' "It's just so cool." - Melanie Ave can be reached at (813) 226-3400 or melanie@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times |
