Kei Lucas, Elementary Special Day Class
(Generally students with moderate to severe disabilites)

Ask this teacher:

• Why did you decide to become a Special Education teacher?
• What does it take to be a good Special Education teacher?
• What advice would you give a first-year Special Education teacher?
• What are the biggest challenges you face?
• How do you meet these challenges?
• How do you balance the many demands on your time?
• How do you handle the paperwork?

  There is a ton of paper work, and if I didn’t put that out there, I think I would be misrepresenting what we do for part of our day. Certainly there is paperwork that is generated just by the nature of it being a special program. You will have IEP goals and objectives that you’ve got to update. You will have the day-in day-out, whatever kind of assessments that you are doing. I think one of the things we certainly need to learn how to do is to pretty quickly sort out what’s really important that I need to look at now and do now, what can I stick in the circular file from hand to file, and what are some things that I can set aside and deal with later, whether later is Friday when you are clearing things off of the table or take it home and clear it off.

• How much time do you spend on planning and preparation?
• How do you work as a team with parents, administrators and other teachers?