Teacher Candidate Support
We are excited to announce a new cohort for teacher candidates in the last year of their preparation program during the 2024-25 academic year. Please go here to learn more and join the cohort today!
Welcome
Welcome From Dr. Ruby Owiny
Chair of Student Teacher Support Work Group
Register Here for Sip & Chat and Office Hours
Teacher Candidates,
The TCSN workgroup, composed of special education professionals with extensive experience in schools, is offering a monthly office hour exclusively for you! Each month’s office hour will be accessible via a zoom link on the third Tuesday of each month (two weeks after the monthly Sip and Chats). This is an opportunity for you to ask questions about anything related to teaching, getting a job, one of the resources provided to you in the network, a strategy you would like to implement, a challenge you are encountering, etc. We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity!
For the fall semester, office hours will be offered from 8 - 9 PM Eastern time on the following dates, sign up below!
Register below for our monthly office hours:
September 17th, 8:00pm Eastern Time, With Dr. Jane Strong
October 15th, 8:00pm Eastern Time, With Dr. Bethany McConnell & Dr. Ruby Owiny
November 19th, 8:00pm Eastern Time, With Dr. Jennifer Sears
December 17th, 8:00pm Eastern Time, With Dr. Ruby Owiny
Register below for our monthly meetings:
October 1st at 8:00pm eastern: How are the IEPS, Hosted by Dr. Jane Strong
December 3rd at 8:00pm eastern: HLPs & More: Strategies for Student Success! Hosted by Dr. Ruby Owiny & Dr. Kyena Cornelius
January 7th at 8:00pm eastern: Self-Care Strategies: Let's BREATHE! Hosted by Dr. Jen Walker
February 4th at 8:00pm eastern: Let's talk about transition! Hosted by Dr. Karin Fisher
March 4th at 8:00pm eastern: CEC Month- Planning for a fabulous CEC experience! Hosted by Dr. Jennifer Sears & Dr. Carlos Flores
April 1st at 8:00pm eastern: Landing that Dream Job: Interview skills and more! Hosted by Dr. Bethany McConnell
May 6th at 8:00pm eastern: What to expect in your first year as a NEW teacher! Hosted by Dr. Clara Hauth & Dr. Carlos Flores
July 1st at 8:00pm eastern: Your voice matters! Tell us more, a look back and a peak forward as you finish the TCSN! Hosted by Dr. Ruby Owiny
Weekly Resources
For the first resource read the article linked below. Once you have read the article print out the handout. Sort the handout in the order of what you think is important. This is a great exercise to do with a partner/ with your cooperating teacher and discuss your rankings.
As you are getting started on your student teaching journey, these 10 tips will help you have a great semester! Work Group member Adam Moore reached out to colleagues to get these great trips that you don't want to miss!
This week will support you as you learn more about Executive Functioning Skills. Executive function (EF) skills are the attention-regulation skills that make it possible to sustain attention, keep goals and information in mind, refrain from responding immediately, resist distraction, tolerate frustration, consider the consequences of different behaviors, reflect on past experiences, and plan for the future.
You will want to first read the Q&A Document below to get some ideas about what Executive Functioning is and how it impacts the classroom. Next you will want to read Chapter 6 (page 58) in the Executive Functioning Report linked below.
A very important part of your teaching journey is learning how to manage your caseload. This infographic is a great tool that shows you the top five tips of how to stay on top of everything!
Review the infographic below and think about ways that you can incorporate at least one (if not more) of these tips into your week this week. Evaluate your progress next week to see if it helped you manage your caseload.
IEP Writing is a challenge for many special educators and takes lots of practice to become proficient. It is vital that everyone in the field knows and understands how to create high quality, standards-based, legally defensible IEPs. That is why we chose to create this list of our top 10 resources and top 10 things to remember when developing an IEP. These are books and resources we use in our classrooms and share with others that have been helpful to others in learning to write quality IEPs. We hope you find them just as helpful!
Note for Student Teachers: We recommend discussing the “things to remember” with your cooperating teacher to ensure you are following all state/district guidelines. Also, ask them what other key tips they have to help making writing IEPs more enjoyable, yet attainable!
Note for Cooperating Teachers: We recommend that you review the “things to remember” with the student teacher and discuss how you write and develop high quality IEPs in your school and district.
This self pace module takes 30 minutes
This course is part of a series covering the legal foundations of laws supporting students with disabilities. Those who enroll in this interactive course will be able to do the following:
- Explain the difference between civil rights laws and funding laws.
- Identify where the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, fits within the continuum of federal laws.
- Identify other federal laws that have direct implications for students with disabilities.
- Understand how state laws may expand federal laws impacting students with disabilities
Take advantage of your CEC membership with this complimentary webinar!
Per the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), families of children with disabilities are equal stakeholders in IEP meetings. With the number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds increasing each year, working effectively with diverse families in the IEP process is especially important. Learn how to involve your students and families from diverse backgrounds in the IEP process, and ensure that all your students receive the educational support they need.
After this webinar, you will be able to:
- Identify family characteristics to be aware of when working with diverse students.
- Understand cultural and linguistic challenges to address when working with diverse families at IEP meetings.
- Identify ways to facilitate involvement from diverse families.
- Share strategies to help families of all backgrounds feel welcome and respected at IEP meetings.
Click the two short presentations for the “Top Ten Tips for Successful IEP Meeting Facilitation.” Dr. Jane Strong has been a special education teacher, building administrator and large division director and attended and led many IEP meetings! See and hear some tried and true ways you can use to be a successful special education case manager!
Collecting data on student learning and behavior, as well as their progress towards IEP goals, is a vital part of being an effective special educator. However, it can be challenging to find time to collect effective data. With this in mind, we recommend the following five tips for making your classroom data collection more effective and efficient.
1. Make a plan for data collection. Schedule a day and time for each type of data you must collect. Put this on your calendar and plan your lessons for the day based on the data you need to collect. Then, follow your plan!
2.Use efficient data collection tools. Select or create data collection tools that are designed to track the exact information you need, nothing more and nothing less.
3.Ask for help from colleagues. You are not the only person who can or should collect data on your students’ learning and behavior. Solicit the help of paraprofessionals, general education teachers, instructional coaches, and school volunteers. Just be sure to train them to collect data in the same manner you do so that it is consistent.
4.Use technology as appropriate. Technology tools can simply your classroom data collection. Consider using smartphone applications, Google Forms, and QR codes.
5.Teach students to assist. Your students can assist you in collecting data on their own learning progress and behavior. Teach students to self monitor and graph data. Even the youngest students can learn to do some of their own data collection!
Classroom Management can be a challenging part of your job, but one of the most important aspects. This short PPT provides you with some quick tips and resources to help you prioritize some of the most important aspects of classroom management. In time classroom management will become second nature and you can begin to focus more on the academic part of your job. Never be afraid to ask for help and/or ideas, no matter how long you teach and remember – it is okay to make changes to your classroom management plan as you learn and grow as a teacher!
Note for Student Teachers: We recommend discussing theses ideas with your cooperating teacher to see how they incorporate these ideas into their classroom management system. Also, ask them for additional tips that you might want to incorporate into your own classroom one day! Note for Cooperating Teachers: We recommend that you review this PPT with the student teacher and discuss how you incorporate these and other classroom management tips into your classroom
Constant time delay (CTD) is an evidence-based response prompting strategy that can be effectively implemented with any student who is learning discrete concepts, such as math facts, spelling words, or anything students need to memorize or know with automaticity. This makes it a versatile intervention requiring minimal materials – index cards or paper slips and a data collection sheet. As you become more efficient in your implementation, you can use it with a small group with each student having their own cards. To help you learn how to implement CTD, if you do not already know how, several resources are provided by clicking on the button below.
Transition planning is required under IDEA (2004) for students at least by age 16 and often earlier in many states. Unfortunately, many teacher preparation programs do not include a required course specific to transition in their course of study for future special educators! This practitioner article explores how to support students from a variety of backgrounds through the lens of being a culturally responsive special educator. Most important to note is the work to use culturally responsive/sustaining transition practices must fall on our shoulders as educators. This article includes suggestions to personally reflect and explore your own cultural competence framework as it relates to students you support in the classroom and on your caseload. Thinking about setting goals for ourselves as future educators, what is one post-teacher-preparation-program goal you can write for yourself to incorporate culturally responsive/sustaining transition practices into your future teaching? P.S. Transition doesn’t just begin at the “age” of transition, but these skills and supports can be implemented as early as preschool!