I Am Special Ed
Special Ed of "I Got It Made" Fame
I have a confession to make: at one point or another, at some point in my life, maybe even this one, I am “special ed.”
No, not the rapper, but the title we give to students who have specific needs that can’t be met in a 30 student to 1 teacher classroom. As I look around my classes over the last few years, none of the “special ed” kids looked any different from the other kids in my class. Only by looking at their IEPs (Individual Educational Program) and using my own assessments do I realize that certain students needs a little more attention than most … which is to say that I pay a lot of attention a lot of the time to even my most self-motivated students.
Thus, my mother added another layer to what I do in the classroom when my fiancee and I sat down with her and her friends for dinner. She started telling her friends that, in my youth, my school informally assessed me and
