SpEd Referrals - reflection

After discussing this process with individuals currently working or who have worked in the teaching profession - I think this would be/will be a very hard process!

It is not that I think identifying a disability will be hard - it is easy to see different behavioral traits or to notice that a child is falling behind - but what I think will be hard are the steps and adjustments that must be taken afterwards.

I feel this will be trying in two ways:

1. Being able to (read ~ not being able to) successfully implement the correct changes
2. Not having support from the school  

I currently have a girl with special needs in my 4th grade English class.  Because special needs are not addressed (as they should be/at all) in Korea, she receives no adjustments or aide beyond what I can provide for her.  The school does not acknowledge that she has a learning disability and her family uses it as a threat against her.

I feel and know that I do not make proper allowances for her. So therefore I am failing her as a teacher and she is not receiving from me the best wducation that she should be getting. 

I do not have the know-how or the support to truly give her what she needs. There are no interventions, no plan, no assessments for her to offer assistance. 

She is 1 in a class of 16. 

I can only imagine that back home it would be 4-6 in a class of 30! 

Assistance and support are needed!

An additional reflection after my interviews ~

I think that my initial prediction (that IEPs will become standard for every child) is a bit off base.

While I do not doubt that this would be greatly beneficial to all learners. I now think that it would be overly taxing on our educators and administrators. 

We simple do not have the staff or money to offer such an education.

At least not at the public level.

Not yet.