Service Learning Reflection

Emma Foster
Ivy Tech

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Service Learning Reflection

The classroom that I was in was used for multiple classes throughout the course of the
day. There were decorations all over the walls but some were for Spanish class, some were for
science, and there was a giant roller coaster in the back of the room from robotics club. The only
dry erase board that the class had was a portable one that was used to block the storage of all the
books and other random classroom things. There were 6 6ft tables with 2 chairs at each for desks
and there was tape that divided sides of the desk for each student. There was also a 3 drawer
stackable storage unit at the end of each table that held pencils, dry erase boards, and anything
else that the students might need throughout the day.
This is a classroom where the teacher pushes in. She does multiple different classes
throughout the day, and the students are moving as well, but she doesnt have an actual
classroom. She is one of the only ones in the school, but she is an overflow that they brought in
when they realized that they needed to teach a foreign language class.
Over the course of the time that I was there, the Spanish class had 6 students in it, the life
skills class had roughly 8-10, and the P.E. class had 15-20. There was not a great amount of
students in the entire school so the classes were small and intimate.
The class had a routine that they come in and get out their books and start on their
homework. The teacher will call them to attention in Spanish and start her lesson. She managed
the classroom very well by making listening to the students outbursts to an extent but also not
letting them take over the classroom. I could tell when it was an off day for students because by
the time that I got there, my teachers tone had changed from her normal perky tone to a more

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stern and gruff one. The overall demeanor to everyone was that of kindness and excitement to be
doing what they were doing.
Since this was an entirely special needs school all interactions were working with a
student with exceptional needs. One that comes to mind was that one student was having an off
day and everyone could tell. He usually was not a bully and while he was outspoken and
talkative, it wasnt in a mean was usually. On this day he was being the complete opposite of
himself so the teacher told him to go out into the special room and she left another teacher with
her class and went to talk to him. She sat and let him tell her what was wrong and why he was
acting out and genuinely showed that she cared. After talking to the student and letting him get
what was bothering him off his chest he was much better behaved. This makes me think of the
term normalization that the textbook uses. What this teacher was doing was making this student
feel as though he was a person and his thoughts and feelings were normal and valued. He did get
disciplined for acting out, but he was listened to first as to why he was acting that way. Thats
something I think every teacher should do no matter if it is a person with special needs or not.
Since this school was solely for high functioning autistic students many of the things in
the chapter about autism are connected to what I saw in the classroom. There was one student in
the class who had some severe language impairments. His voice did sound very robotic and he
reversed pronouns all the time (Kauffman, 2014, p.217) There was also a student that fell under
the autism savant syndrome which is where an individual with autism has such extraordinary
skills that at first blush, one thinks they are geniuses (Kauffman, 2014, p.219). This student was a
musical genius and had won the young composers competition twice and was an extraordinary
piano player. This school also had life skills classes which they said proved to greatly help the
students that they graduated transition into adulthood with less issues and some are even able to

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go to college. The practices in the classroom did meet my expectations and went above what I
thought they would be. The teachers were constantly thinking about the future and how to get
the most successful adults there.
In the classroom I learned that even students with special needs can pick up on you and
your attitude. The days that my teacher would come in and say she had a horrible morning and
nothing could go right the students were much more misbehaved. The book seems to me to
make it out that students with special needs are not going to pick up on basic observation skills,
and while that may be true in some cases, at the school I was at it seemed that most of them were
aware of things going on, most of the cues that teachers were giving, sometimes by accident,
were being received by the students. This experience shaped my view of children with
exceptional needs by showing me that they are still students and still deserve to be treated fairly
and as such.
This school was also very focused on the hidden curriculum, or like the book says the
dos and donts of everyday living that most people learn incidentally or with very little
instruction from others (Kauffman, 2014, p. 218).
I think that the chapter in this book on Autism is very well presented. These teachers at
this school are much trained in dealing with students that are autistic, but I think that if they were
to read this they could implement a few things into their classroom. The TEACCH approach is
something that I really think could be implemented. They had a routine but it seemed to change
day to day as to when they could work together, when they had to focus and listen to the teacher
and when they could play. If my teacher would have read that section of this book and used the
link to watch how it works I think that it could have benefited the students and the school a lot.

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Kauffman, J., & Hallahan, D. (2014). Exceptional Learners: An Introduction to Special
Education. (13th ed., pp. 24-27). Pearson College Div.

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