Running Head: social validation of services for youth with ebd

Sean (Negative Attitudinal Group). Sean had been teaching physical education for six years and had been in his current school for the past two years. Sean’s school was located in a very large school district in the suburbs of a major city. Sean’s philosophy on teaching physical education was more related to the teaching of sports skills than the other three teachers. He wanted the children in his classes to learn the basic skills of the major sports that they might play out of school. He pointed out that he taught skills such as basketball dribbling, passing, and shooting. Sean wanted his children to come to physical education dressed appropriately and ready to work hard.
Sean resented the fact that dealing with the children with special needs took up so much of his time during class and he felt that this was not fair to the other students in the class. Specifically, he stated:

I’ve really tried with a couple of the kids that I get but they just cannot follow directions. They run around when I am talking and do not follow directions. Sometimes they even run out of the gym and I have to stop my lesson to deal with that problem. When the weather is nice I like to teach outside but I cannot take these kids outside because I am scared they will run off.

Sean approached the principal with these issues when they first arose. Sean asked the principal if an assistant from the special education classroom could accompany a couple of the children with whom he was having problems. The principal did not provide the support Sean was hoping for, and indicated that physical education time was a chance for the special education teacher and her assistants to have their break. Sean added that his philosophy was based on the belief that children with special needs should only come into GPE classes if they had an aid or teaching assistant come with them.

Sean had minimal practical training or experience teaching children with special needs in the college undergraduate courses that he had taken. He had not taken any classes that focused on the education of students with special needs. Sean expressed regret at not completing a class that dealt with inclusion issues and teaching practices and that his student-teaching cooperating instructor did not help him with this challenge.

Sean did not talk for very long about how he planned his lessons. He showed me an index card that he carried while he was teaching that outlined the lesson. When asked the question of how having a child with special needs included into his class affected his lesson planning, Sean responded:

I think of the particular child and the problems that they have in here and then I try to plan ways that I can deal with these problems such as giving them other things to do or having them work with a partner that I know they work well with.

Sean had mixed feelings toward the practice of inclusion in general. He stated:

I can see how it can make a child with disabilities feel better about themselves and feel part of the general class, and I think this is really important, but I’m just not sure if that is more important than the other children getting what they need in my classes. I guess I believe that inclusion looks great on paper but when it means that it disrupts my class then I begin to question the whole practice.
Sean wanted his students to be successful when performing sports skills. He said that seeing them perform the sports skill correctly let him know that he had done a good job modeling and teaching the skill to them. He measured student success by using a checklist of things to look for in each skill. This assessment technique was required by the school district. Sean described what his goals were for the children who were included into the class. He stated:

Many of them simply cannot understand the parts involved in a lot of skills so they can’t do them that well…maybe they are getting some kind of social benefits from being with the other kids…I’m pretty much just happy if they are not misbehaving as actually following directions is a goal for a lot of them. They just can’t stay on-task like the other kids.