Students First in a Cross Categorical World

The following blog was written by Bryce Vandenberg, an Exceptional Children's teacher at Carson High School. Mr. Vandenberg also coaches our wrestling team and assists with cross country.

If you had asked me 10 years ago where I would be today, teaching a Cross Categorical Adapted Curriculum class would not have been my answer. My main goal at the time was to change the culture of physical education. I was sure I was going to be the change, that I thought, physical education needed. After completing student teaching in physical education, my plans changed drastically. I took a job substitute teaching in an adapted curriculum classroom and I was hooked almost instantly. I liked the challenge of having to find a way to reach each student when they were all so unique. After substitute teaching in this setting, I realized that it was what I was meant to teach. I began teaching the adapted curriculum at Carson in 2009. The school’s motto, “Students First” helped me plan for my classroom then and it still does today. 

Due to the strengths, challenges, and needs of my students, I had to learn how to plan units and lessons in a completely different way than I ever had before. I had to plan backwards. I would make a list of skills that each individual student needed to learn to be successful and how I was going to teach them that skill. From my list of skills, I would create a unit that would allow me to incorporate as many individual skills as possible. This would allow me to differentiate the lessons so they would be effective for all of my students. For example, a particular challenge I encountered was teaching a reading lesson to six students, one of which was reading at a second grade level, two others that were working on identifying letters of the alphabet, and the other three falling somewhere in between. A typical 2nd grade lesson would be too difficult for some of the students, but letter identification would be too simple for the 2nd grade readers. I would group students into stations and adapt each reading activity at each station to fit the needs of the learners there.

While there are many challenges in teaching in the adapted curriculum due to the variety of strengths and needs, there are even more rewards. It is very rewarding to be able to push students past the limits that have been placed on them by society, such as helping a student learn to read, to communicate, or to help them come out of their shell socially.

Thinking outside the box is something I have to do almost daily. Teaching techniques that work for some students do not necessarily work for all students. As a teacher, I must find techniques that reach and include all my students. Being creative and trying new strategies is time consuming and frustrating at times, but it can be fun and is highly rewarding. There is no better feeling than when something reaches all my students and they learn and comprehend the material I am teaching.

My students are some of the most fun-loving and hardest-working students that I have ever had the pleasure of teaching. They do not give up easily even though much of the work they are given is challenging. While they have friends, hobbies, interests, and fears just like any high school student, they do not pass judgments, they are not members of cliques, and they see past physical differences. There is no other setting I would rather teach in and no other students I would rather be teaching. Though I am their teacher, the lessons I learn from them everyday are lessons I will keep with me throughout my life.

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