What a Learning Disabilities teacher does.

I’ve been asked by people what it is that I DO on a day to day basis. Well, I’ve given you the testing and meetings and paperwork side of it, which takes anywhere from 40% to 60% of my time. The other time is spent actually working with kids. I see kids for a half hour a day, for three or four days a week. When I see them, I work on their IEP goals, which are in reading, writing, or math. More than often it’s reading and writing, but Math comes through occasionally.

Since I am at an elementary school, I work with grades K-6. I’ve got students in grades K, 1, 3, 5, and 6 this year. As you can imagine, I work on different things at different levels. The “itty bitties,” as I like to call them, work on things like number and letter recognition. Being able to count to 100, knowing uppercase and lowercase letters and their sounds, and knowing or sounding out simple sight words are usually the skills that my itty bitties work on with me. We do a lot of rote drilling and letter/number games. They’re so much fun. I really like them. A lot of progress is usually made at this level and it’s fun to watch them learn these skills and generalize them into reading actual books. And they’re so cute! I’ve got so many stories of the cute things that they say. Also many sad stories about the immense responsibility that some of these little adults have to carry around from day to day. Some of them care for siblings, or cook meals, or put themselves to bed or get ready for school all by themselves. First graders should not have to do that. It’s no wonder they don’t know their letters. Who’s reading them bedtime stories or playing fun little games to help them learn? It’s really an eye opener when deciding what is important for them to learn in the short little time slot that I have to spend with them. I often just want to be a mommy to these little ones. But enough of that. On a good note, most of them are quite resilient, and it’s amazing to see what they are capable of.

When students start getting into 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades, then I start working on more of the writing and reading skills that help them be functional in the classroom. We work on reading fluently out loud. We do worksheets to help them comprehend what they read. We write sentences and practice good punctuation and capitalization. We learn how to edit our own writing. We learn how to write a good sentence in the first place. For math, we usually practice our facts. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. I do a lot of reteaching of what the classroom teacher presents, and we do a lot of practicing with worksheets and drills, and activities to increase their skills.

This is also worked on in 6th grade, but the focus tends to start shifting to homework completion, study skills, and applying their reading and writing skills to classroom work. This is challenging and does not always happen. Of elementary school grades, I think 6th is my least favorite. I do like middle school, where there is more skill-focused work. A lot of organization skills and homework skills are needed in this area. That’s a fun age too. Adolescents need good examples. Well, they all do, but especially pre-teens and teens.

Sometimes we just spend time together, too. If the kids have worked hard all week, sometimes we play games for a few minutes on Friday. If they have worked hard all quarter, we have a little party for a reward. Those days are often more work than the work days. So THAT, is kind of a little picture of what I really do when I see my kids.