Anyone teach profound and Severe mentally disabled student's?

Question

I have a chance to take a job teaching profound and severe mentally disabled students. However, I do have some concerns. I've met teachers who teach these students and it seems like all they do is feed, change diapers, and lift kids in and out of wheel chairs. What has been your experience with this? What are your biggest challenges and do you feel bogged down with the amount of paper work that comes with working with these children?

Answer 1

I have a severely mentally impaired adult child. He has never tested with an iq above 43. I was told all the things I am reading here - he would never be potty trained, never do anything for himself, never - never - never.

He does all his own laundry and has since he was 12. He does all his own cleaning. He cooks 50% of dinners and makes his own breakfast and lunch. He lives independently in an apartment next to mine. He has his own business selling tshirts. He has worked as my office assistant - opening mail, doing copies, and other busy work. He has worked as a bagger at a grocery store.

People make a lot of assumption about the capabilities of children who are difficult to reach. His teachers would often tell me what he couldn't do and I would say have you tried and they would say no. And I would show them what he could do. You put a kids in a classroom of kids who are expected to do nothing and nothing is exactly what they will do.  

The paperwork teachers must do today is abysmal. As far as I can tell it does not benefit the children at all.

Answer 2

Working with students like this can be both a very hard and rewarding job at the same time. It takes a special kind of person with a great amount of patience and creativity to work with these kinds of students. There is tolieting involved with some students but usually you have several classroom aides who help with this. And its not like your changing diapers all day because usually you just do it at least 3 times a day depending on the student and the process does get quicker and easier as you do it and before long you dont think twice about it. It's not so much as having paperwork everyday just around the time that you have an IEP due then you have alot of preparation, but if you have ever work with other special needs students its just about the same process and amount of time. As far as lifting goes, once more you have aides to help you with that. Most of the aides have a one on one student and they are in charge of makeing sure the child gets lifted to a armchair, stretched or walked etc. If you can stand to talk to a room full of students who many dont respond back to you, have a great amount of patience, are creative in your lesson plans and know how to have fun,relax and enjoy your job then I would say a MOMR classroom would be great for you.

Answer 3

Personally i havnt taught, but I am worked as an instructional assistant in a FMD unit and worked in a therapeutic group home... But the majority of the time is feeding, changing diapers, medications, etc. I loved working in the FMD unit.. The amount of paper work varies on school district and state, but normally it isnt a significant amount more than other special ed teachers.

The biggest challange would be to learn what the students needs are and what they want.. Many of them has different signs/signals to show that they are hungry, need to be changed, or in pain..

Answer 4

I agree that you should definitely ask to observe in the classroom first. Changing diapers, feeding, and transporting are all a big part, but I find it rewarding because there is so much you can work on. There is so much room for improvement, and in my experience, the little successes that each student has means so much more to all of you. You do have to develop a sense of humor about some of the situations. Some days all you can do is either laugh or cry, and it's always better to laugh! I work with my students on the letters in their name, counting and numbers, learning to do things for themselves, colors, and many other academic and life skills. Personally, I take offense to the comment that it is glorified babysitting. I work hard to teach my students and work with them at their ability levels. We make a difference in our students lives, just like all teachers. It's a job that you either love or hate- there really isn't any in between. The paper work really isn't as big of a problem as it is with the higher functioning kids. You have to document everything and keep records of your students progress but it's no worse than any other kind of special education- and no papers to grade! Good luck whatever decision you make.

Answer 5

I worked as a class room aide with severely handicapped students at a high school.  Since I was only an aid, I didn't have to deal with the paper work, but I can tell you this.  It was us aides who did the lifting, toileting and diaper changing.  It was very frustrating at times, but it has been the most rewarding job that I have held.

    It requires a lot of paitents.  You may have a student that you work with all week on the numbers 1-5.  He finally gets it, and then when he comes back the next day, its all gone.  Or you may think that you aren't getting through, and then you get surprised.  

    You also need to have a sence of humor about the work you are doing.  People who don't work with special ed may think that my co-workers and I are crude and just mean by the way we talk about our students and our job, but if you are in the field, you understand that if you can't make jokes about all of the crazy stuff you see and do every day, you won't last in the job.

   If this is the right job for you, good luck, you will be blessed over and over again.  If this isn't the right job for you, you will know within a few week. (We had a new teacher come in once that only lasted 3 days.  She never called and never came back.)

Answer 6

I used to.  I spent a whole year trying to get one student to learn how to pull a zipper up while trying to keep her from scratching and biting me.  In the same facility, I had a guy who was very big and fairly violent who wouldn't get serious about learning basic reading until I introduced him to writing his own simple poems - then he got really motivated and started to like school.  If you don't like getting dirty - if you're afraid of getting physical - it's not a good job choice for you.  Even if you switch to LD, what happens is that lots of violent students just get put into LD classes because they don't have adequate placement.  If you can stand to work very hard to make very small progress just because you believe that everyone deserves to keep exploring until they find something they like in life (I also had an MR/DD/FAS client - not student - who was as good at interior design as a pro - she was like a Martha Stewart - and I could always calm her down with decorating books) - then go for it.

Answer 7

Profoundly and severely mentally-disabled persons function at a very low mental age. Few are toilet-trained, as they typically have a mental age of 2 years or less.

Imagine taking care of 5 kids, each weighing 80 to 100 pounds each, none of whom are toilet-trained, have any functional expressive language, can't feed themselves, and can only do activities we associate with infants (rolling, lifting the head in a supine position, stacking only 2-3 blocks, and babbling). I don't think it'd be a job I'd enjoy, even WITH an aide.

All those years of college in order to be a glorified babysitter who has piles of paperwork and the frustration of working with kids who make only miniscule advances, if any.

I'd keep looking for a job.

Answer 8

If you feel you would like to work in this area of special needs, you need to visit a school and see what is done with these children on a daily basis.  As a teacher of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties, your biggest challenge would be to help these children to communicate in some way. It might be a smile, a nod of the head, a raised finger or a fleeting moment of eye contact.  Finding  and responding to each child's  communication process is the beginning of teaching them.  

Yes, they do need to be fed, changed and cared for but they also need to be able to communicate and you need to respond to, and develop this communication. A sometimes frustrating but extremely rewarding career ahead of you, if you can do it.

Answer 9

First things first, I am NOT a teacher. I am simply a college student who is doing their service hours in this type of classroom setting (students range from 11-14 years). I cannot tell you anything about paperwork except that there is lots of documenting different health issues (i.e., if one of the children had multiple seizures that morning, they need to document it) as well as constantly sending letters home to the parents. All the stuff you mentioned is a big part of the job. However, depending on where you are, you usually have a lot of help. In a classroom with 7 students (only 1 isn't in a wheelchair), there is usually anywhere from 1-4 aids during classroom hours and there is one aid per student for lunch time. Another thing I've noticed is that, often times, you don't have all the kids in the room at once. They have different schedules and one might have gym while the others are in class. Some are on bathroom break or at the pool when the rest are in the "sensory room." There are times when the noise level gets to be too much. The teacher asked me to take one of the students for a walk around the school today because she had been particularly vocal that day. But honestly, I think the job is very rewarding. Today I had my first experience helping feed one of the students. He was surprisingly patient and thought it was funny when I spilled orange juice, haha. This teacher focuses a lot on numbers, the days of the week, the month, the weather. Basically anything you would learn in pre-school. She does lots of repitition and uses music to help teach the "lesson." She also does lots of hand-on things. When they were learning about rocks, the class made rocks. They got to feel the rocks, shake a jar filled with them, and even taste them. Today they made popcorn balls, but to start off, the teacher took off the lid and let popcorn fly everywhere. The kids loved it! She tries to make all her lessons hands on, as the kids love the stimulation.

Answer 10

Ask to go to the class rooms,and stay for a day ,check it out  first .It's not for everybody it can  be very  challenging that's for sure.They also have really bad behavioural problems you may not be ready for. But if you can do it there's a real need for it .