Name: Veronica Santos

Class: ECED 2050 Children with Exceptionalities

Assignment: Journal Article Review #3

Source: Snow, Kathie. “Go Beyond Goals: Think Outcomes!” Revolutionary Common
Sense, 2004, www.disabilityisnatural.com.

Highlights from the article:

This article is about taking in mind not just the goals people set but really the
outcomes from those goals and the ways people go about reaching them.
The article spoke about unintended consequences. The author spoke firstly
on her own experience with her son Benjamin. Benjamin has cerebral palsy.
She initially had him going to therapy multiple times a week ( Three to four
therapy sessions a week). She thought by doing this she was helping him.
When taking him to therapy she was told her daughter was not welcomed. So
she took her daughter to a group child watch at her church. Her daughter
however was not happy about it and often threw fits about going. She said
that she felt bad each time and that her daughter must have felt like she loved
her son more. She personally felt very used up most of the time. It wasn’t until
a while later when her son said that he no longer wanted to go to therapy
because it did not make him feel like a normal person, that she finally ended
his therapy. She says now they found more natural ways to help him that
positively affect the whole family.

The author then goes on to talk about what the outcomes or consequences
of providing a child who receives special ed services with a full-time aide. She
says that the goal may be something good like to help them be as successful
as possible but the consequence might be that the child becomes very
dependent, that the student struggles to form bonds with the other children,
and the teacher may leave it to the aide instead of being a teacher to them.
These problems can carry on into adulthood as they start jobs. Instead of
providing the student with a full-time aide, the author says that their peers
may assist them. She also said that the teacher or supervisor may help them
by modeling the same behavior that they expect to be shown. The assistance
should be given in the most respectful and natural ways according to the
author. The environment according to the author should be set up in a way
that encourages group work, that way it encourages them to help one
another. The author later in the article talks about the outcomes of segregated
special ed preschools. She said that some parents noticed their children
picking up more of the behaviors they were working to overcome. The
consequence of this being that they are given a label and often go to resource
rooms in elementary school. They are seen as not being about to be
 successful in general education classrooms because of their label. Special
settings have many consequences, one being that the adults with disabilities
unemployment rate is high. The author ends the article by saying that even by
not doing anything negative consequences may come about. Thinking about
the outcomes of the different goals we have in mind gives us the control to
pick goals that will have good consequences and we can limit the negatives.
We just must practice having more outcome-based thinking she says.
The main point of this article is pretty straight forward and it is to help the
reader understand that everything has consequences, even choosing to do
nothing, and that though we may not intend for it some of our goal choices
may have negative consequences and that we should teach ourselves to
think more about outcomes and take more control of our outcomes by
thinking about each goal and what the outcomes could be. More specifically
how our goals for those with special needs may affect them and those around
them. We must consider how our goals and actions will affect them. Not only
in the moment but their futures as a whole.

Critical Analysis:
.
When reading this article I realized that though I may think about some
consequences, I never realized just how deep they can go. Most people
however may have not thought out the consequences and just thought about
their goals for the child. However, even with students who don't have special
needs you still must always think about the consequences. Though you may
want to meet a good goal the way you may go about it can really negatively
affect that child. For example, your goal may be to help the child become
more social but the way you go about it is sending a group of children to play
with that child. You may also put the child in a big group for an activity.
Though your goal is good the way you went about it can cause negative
effects on the child such as them to become even more overwhelmed and
non-social. It can cause them to not want to come to school in fear they will
be placed into another large group of children they are not comfortable with
quite yet.
I found myself agreeing with the author of this article and I could not really
find any point she made that I disagreed with. I think the author did a great job
stating her point and backing it up. I appreciated the order she went in. First
speaking about her personal situation with her son and then talking about the
special ed preschools and finally going into how choosing to do nothing still
has consequences because it introduced the idea of looking at outcomes and
then grew that idea from there and expanding it to how that would look in a
classroom and the child’s future.

Concluding Summary:
Overall the article did a good job of making the point clear. Actions and goals
may be good but everything has consequences. If we learn to think about the
outcomes of our goals and actions we can learn to control them in a way that
benefits us and the children we work with by making sure more good
outcomes come about and less negatives happen. It also opens the eyes of
the reader because it makes them realize goals and actions are limited to the
classroom and nor are their effects. The outcome can affect the child in many
different settings and areas in their lives. We are in charge of helping students
with special needs. We help them set goals and guide their families to help
set goals. It is also our job as educators to think about outcomes of these
goals and help the child and their family do the same so that the child can
benefit from these goals both in the present and also in the long run. We start
by training ourselves to think this way.