Special Ed Teachers- Do constant interruptions affect your teaching?

Question

I'm a teacher in a small, self contained special ed classroom. I find the number of interruptions and pull-outs in a typical day to be excessive and detrimental to student achievement.

For example, there is speech, counseling, occupational therapy, physical therapy, academic intervention. All day long they are being pulled out of my class for something or another by different providers. It is so hard to keep all the children on the same page because of this. Some of my kids are only with me for about the equivalent of an hour out of the day. If it's not that, then the phone is constantly ringing off the hook.

Am I the only one who regularly experiences this type of confusion in my classroom?

Answer 1

OMG yes!!!  It'll drive a person nuts.  The kids with the most problems academically are the ones that are pulled the most.  How is a classroom supposed to function like a classroom if we can get a good schedule going???  It seems like the providers could move around in clusters so that minimums are cut down.  Like ruin only Tuesday morning...not Monday -Wednesday and then again on Friday.  Sure they are on IEPs, but kids and teachers sometimes need to feel like they are group!

My biggest gripe is that "downtown" decided that additional testing was needed... beyond the NCLB testing.  A pretest completed in January (???) and a post-test after NCLB.  This should get us in the practice of things so we can test August.  Gee, thanks!