I want to major in special education, what kinds of career opportunities will I have?

Question

I''ve decided to switch my major to special education because I know that I do better with small groups of people rather than a class, I want to help those who have mental disabilities, my mother has a cognitive delay, but she's not handicapped, just mentally disadvantaged in some ways, I want to help others like her

Answer 1

Well, it depends on what disabilities you want to go into and the severity of the portion of the population you want to work with. I work with autism, and for these types of delays there are certainly still options of teaching all kinds of classes, be it public or private varying from very small like 6 students with a head teacher and two support staff, to many more students and (hopefully) more support staff.

When you start getting into a higher level of severity if when the number start to go down. I work in a private school where every child is one-to-one with a tutor who runs their programs all day, so you are only working with one child at a time. This teaching position is entry-level for the most part.

Get a higher degree, and you can be the person who is in charge of writing their programs and IEPs, and making sure everyone who's working with them is doing what they're supposed to.

For many types of special needs, outside of schooling there are services that they can receive in their homes paid for by parents - occupational therapist, speech therapist, in-home tutor like what i described in the school setting above, music therapists, art therapists...

Long story short, special education is pretty much ALWAYS a high-need area in terms of needing employees, certain areas needing more than others. I can tell you right now there are more grants and free money and bonuses for schooling and work offered to people who want to work with more severe, high-needs populations. And for any disability, there are a thousand different treatment options in the U.S. so there are always people needed somewhere.

Answer 2

Oh man I had a great link for this today. The pay is more, and you will have many job offers.

www.ed.gov has more info on special ed. tons of info!

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ose...