ITU group project

Another project we are working on is creating a collaborative ITU with a few classmates. This has been a challenging project for me but I do feel that I am learning a lot. I find it to be challenging for a number of reasons: 1) I have never had to create a lesson plan or shared unit plan ever. I am not a teacher therefore I have never had to do anything like this. 2) Working in groups can be challenging because we don't know each other, don't live near each other, and don't know how one another works best. And 3) I feel like because we don't really know what we are doing, we are overcompensating for it and maybe doing too much. Even though there are these challenges, I do find that a project like this is beneficial in the field that I work in. I am constantly having to collaborate with other teachers on how to best prepare and plan for our students to succeed. My job is not a 1:1 job where I just keep to myself and my client. I am working with parents, teachers, school administrators, etc. and we don't always see eye to eye. What we do have in common is to do what's best for the client. As a group, we may all work differently, but we all want to succeed at this project and put forth out best efforts and I think its good practice for us to figure out how to best accomplish that. As for the lesson planning...I am learning a lot. This week we had to complete an online tutorial and it demonstrated collaborative teaching and gave sample lesson plans. This was extremely helpful for our group project. The teachers that the tutorial featured worked so well together and did so much for their classes, however it was not overwhelming. It was sort of "the less is more" motto, and the kids really seemed to enjoy their classroom environments. It really made me re-think my individual lesson plan. When I don't know how to do something, I over think it. So now I will go back and revise and simplify what I have. I also really appreciated the sample lesson plans that were provided for us to look through. Again, I have never had to write a lesson plan, and so I found this to be a helpful tool for the lesson plan process. As stated before, this project is a challenge for me, but I do feel that I am learning a lot from it and I am excited to see how everything turns out!

Best Practices

One of our biggest projects for this class was to create and submit a Best Practices power point. I, so far, have found this to be one of my favorite assignments. Being a Behavior Therapist, I decided to focus my best practices on behavior management in an Autism classroom. I can't tell you how many classrooms I have worked in and it has been so hard to help facilitate appropriate behaviors from the students because there was no classroom management happening. So it was very interesting for me to be able to dive into a project that I felt would be beneficial for any future classroom I work in. One aspect that I really appreciate about integrated learning is that, as an educator, you try to find your students strengths so that they feel empowered to do their best. Too many classroom teachers are only focused on (or have to be focused on) the standard. Everybody has to learn the same information the exact same way. Well...that is not how society functions. So I really loved looking at the big picture on how to structure a classroom so that each child has an opportunity to succeed. Yes, there are general rules and limitations that apply to every student, but within those rules and limitations, an educator can find a way for their students to succeed in following them. I'll admit that I thought this assignment would come easy to me because I have 9 years of behavior therapy under my belt. But it was actually really difficult trying to figure out what was necessary to include and what to leave out. I didn't want to have too much wording but I also wanted those who don't know behavior therapy and are reading the power point to walk away feeling like they had learned something. It was a time consuming project, but I feel like I have learned so much more about how to better myself as a behavior therapist than I did before. I also really enjoyed reading other best practice power points. It was interesting to see what my fellow classmates decided to focus their projects on and how many of our power points overlap. There was a lot of helpful and useful information.