Esther Kim Integrated Reflection

The Illinois Professional Teaching Standards reflect the importance of a teacher understanding that students have different approaches to learning and therefore, developing ways to instruct diverse learners. Now that I am nearly at the end of my first phase of the Learning and Behavior Specialist I program, the terms diversity or diverse learners have become permanent fixtures in my vocabulary. This is only natural when one takes a course like Curriculum Development I and learns about concepts like universal design of learning, differentiated instruction, and self-determination, and then is placed in a practicum setting where all the students have varying learning style and needs. Through these avenues, I was able to engage in discourse about diversity and diverse learners with my classmates, practicum supervisor, and my professors. In my courses, we talked about identifying the needs of diverse learners and the different strategies to ensure that each students needs are met. One such way was differentiated instruction. Through content, process, product, and learning environment, an educator can meet diverse learners needs. At first, this was just a theoretical concept to me. I could not completely picture differentiated instruction happening in a real, live classroom. In fact, while I understood the meaning of diverse learners on paper, I still had yet to experience what it means in the classroom. In the classroom I am placed in, there are eight students. After reading their files, talking to my co-operating teacher, and just by interacting with them, I am starting to understand what diversity means. One student came in one day with a dirty T-shirt, matted hair, and was mumbling something about living in a cabin with his mother. His homework was half finished and he mentioned not having electricity in the cabin. The student next to him proudly showed off

Esther Kim his homework and said that his father had helped him the night before. One student struggles with reading but can write down a word correctly. If I ask her to read what she wrote back to me, she would not be able to do it. One student struggles writing down what I say, but can read almost anything off a Wilson Reader. All these students are in one classroom, but my cooperating teacher manages to adapt and instruct according to their needs. My co-operating teacher differentiated her instruction through content by giving out different books to each student to read since the students were at various reading levels. I was able to adapt to a learners need through the use of my instructional program. The entire class was using the Wilson Reader Program but one learner especially struggled with her decoding skills. So I adapted to her needs by shortening the list of words and grouping them into word families, which would make it easier for her to learn. We also used the time delay procedure, which kept the learner from making errors. Another way that I have come to learn how to approach diverse learners is to understand the purpose of a task. For example, I asked a reading comprehension to the whole class and asked them to point to the answer in the text. I walked around checking their answers and when I reached a student who struggled with decoding text, I asked her to tell me her answer orally. Her answer showed me that she had understood the passage, which was what I wanted to find out through this task. Through this placement, I have slowly been learning how to adapt as I instruct diverse learners. I was able to share many of my experiences with my supervisor who has added to my knowledge of what it means to teach diverse learners. As I told her my concerns about not being able to engage my students during whole group instruction, she provided me with a few tips. She suggested that I should not just focus on the student who is speaking or participating but continuously scan the room to see who is engaged and who is not. Students who do not seem to

Esther Kim be engaged may learn through different means and I would have to come up with a different way to engage them in the learning process. Her suggestions have been very helpful and through combining my experiences from my practicum setting and from my courses, I have learned to adapt and instruct diverse learners.