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Service Learning Paper

Nonnie K Jones
Ivy Tech Community College

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These past few weeks I have been completing service learning. I completed my service
learning experience at Greenbriar Elementary School. I chose to complete my service learning
experience there because that is the school that I attended when I was in elementary school. I
knew it was a great school then that is why I was sure I would get my full experience attending
that school. The special education teacher that I was able to work with was Liz Lewis. She has
been working at Greenbriar for three years, but as a special education teacher for 6 years. She
was an awesome special education teacher and I learned a lot observing her. She had an assistant
that helped her occasionally but I was only able to see her two times out of the five that I visited.
I went to observe every Wednesday for two hours. My experience was overall interesting.
The classroom was pretty interesting in my opinion. It was one big classroom for all the
special education students. However, students are pulled out of general education classrooms in
order to come to this classroom. LRE Least Restrictive Environment mean that the student
should be separated from nondisabled classmates and from home, family, and community as
little as possible (Hallahan, Kauffman, & Pullen, 2015, p. 31). One half of the class had a
different special education teacher helping her own students. On that same side it has a lot of
sensory items for the students. While observing I notice their favorite thing on that side was a
swing. They had breaks after finishing their activity and that was what they were allowed to do.
On the other half was Ms. Lewis side of the classroom. She taught math and reading to her
students. The other teacher brought the students in at 1 pm and they started reading. They went
over sounds and letters during reading then they read an actual book. For most of my visits I was
allowed to have one of the kids read with me because he was able to read the stories without
help. When he finished the story he had an easy work sheet that went along with the story. For
reading there was four students, when they finished they was walked back to their classrooms.

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Then that was when math class started with only two students. When Ms. Lewis finished
teaching math the students had a break for about 10 minutes. When the break was over we
walked both the students back to their classrooms.
I did not expect my service learning experience to go the way that it did. I expected it to
include a lot of difficult observation days considering I am not used to working with students
with special needs. However, my observation honestly went extremely smooth up until the very
last day. On the last day there was a new student that had never gone to a real school because he
had been homeschooled his whole life. His mom came during my observation time and spoke
with Ms. Lewis for about 10 minutes. Through research we know that the direction of causation
between behavior is a two way street. (Bell & Harper, 1977; Bellefontaine, Hastings, Parker, &
Forman 2006). Communication between teacher and parent is extremely important with this type
of situation. That required me to help and watch over this new student. MS. Lewis took him to
her office in order to do school work and he was not happy. Ms. Lewis allowed him to bring
some sensory toys that he liked. She invited him over to play with some blocks that he liked
playing with while he did that she explained to him what they were going to do, basically a full
schedule so he wouldnt be surprised. However, the student was not happy about that and he
started screaming and trying to leave. She was very sympathetic towards his needs and tried to
get his favorite toys out and welcoming him to do his work. Eventually he was willing to do his
work and we was able to return to the special education class.
My observation in a special education class has taught me a lot that the book did not
teach me. It taught me to have a lot of patience because in order to work with students with
special needs it requires a lot of patience. That was an obvious thought but it requires so much
more than I thought it would. Also being able to stay up with every students specific needs and

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what works for every student. It was difficult for the first time but it definitely gives you a
rewarding feeling.

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Reference Page

Hallahan, D. P., Kauffman, J. M., & Pullen, P. C. (2015). Exceptional learners: An

introduction to special education.