NUMBER 20 • 10 MAY 2002 • TEACHERS AND SPECIAL KIDS

	Another concern mentioned by all the teachers was how to meet the challenges which students present, whether those challenges have to do with classroom behavior, students’ moods and emotional lives, academics, or school attendance. There also was strong consensus on this issue. All teachers expressed strong beliefs that it was their responsibility to respond to the problems that students present with a questioning, open-minded response. Teachers talked frequently about the need to be flexible, to adjust and re-adjust plans, goals, and schedules. They talked about the need to circumvent obstacles to learning by identifying and building on strengths, thereby allowing progress in new or different areas when learning breaks down in one area. In addition, teachers talked about the need for empathy, for continual reminders that these are students who have failed and who find learning difficult. These are kids on whom other people have given up. And I feel like they need our help the most because they do have positive qualities. They do have potential to do more than they’ve done. And if people look at them in a negative way and look at them in a way assuming that they’re going to keep doing wrong, that’s what they’re going to do. If we can find a positive moment or a positive quality within a kid and keep that in the back of our mind, then there is hope for us that we can help them. Unlike somewhere else, where it’s almost predetermined that they’re going to fail when the professionals around them have given up. In brief, teachers felt strongly that it was their job not to give up on students, no matter what obstacles might arise. This point of view is contrary to the notion that a teacher’s job is to set standards and procedures for learning and that students who fail to meet these standards are failures who need special help, usually from someone else. In other words, Bay Cove teachers believe that the teaching-learning situation should be continually adjusted to meet the students’ realities, not that the students should adjust themselves to the realities of a teacher’s structure. Although Bay Cove teachers expect students to adjust to school norms, they believe that the teacher, not the student, should be the primary source of accommodation in teaching and learning.
	— THE BAY COVE SCHOOL RESEARCH TEAM Bingay, W., et al. (1994) Lessons from Special Educators. Reclaiming Children and Youth: Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Problems. Vol.3 (3) Inclusion of Troubled Children p.34