Journal Of Emma Collins

Wednesday, March 13, 2002:
I started the day out just like any regular day. I got up at 6:00, took my shower, got dressed, and started to have breakfast. I always get the paper and read it while I drink my coffee and eat my breakfast. My favorite part of the newspaper is the comics, but I was unable to get that far today. I was reading the letters to the editor when one letter to the editor caught my attention. When I read the article it made me think of the students that I have in my class that have communication disorders. Right now, I only have one student in my 3rd grade class with a communication disorder. I notice that the students do constantly tease him because he has a communication disorder. I constantly have to tell them to stop teasing him, and explain to them that he is no different than them, and that they should stop making fun of him. I usually will take their recess away but that does not seem to make them stop. It seems like I have tried everything to get them to stop but nothing I do seems to work. What I have noticed is that with this student and many others that I have had in the past is that they tend to withdraw themselves from class. This could be from the fact that they may feel different than the other students or from the way the other students treat these kids. I realize that often I do not encourage my students with communication disorders or students with learning disabilities to participate in class discussion or group work. This could be a big part of why they may feel left out and do not feel like anyone is trying to be friends with them. They really aren’t active participants in class so they are not given chances to get to know other students except for at lunch and the playground. We do not eat lunch with the students, so, I really do not know how this student interacts with his classmates. The 3rd graders do share recess time with 3rd through 6th graders and many students are out playing, so, you don’t really get a chance to see how the students interact with each other on the playground. While many kids are out playing on the court and swinging or climbing on the gym equipment, it looks like everyone is interacting with everybody. I hardly ever see a kid sitting by themselves on the playground. This only happens when a kid is sick or if they got hurt and they are sitting at the picnic tables. Reading this letter to the editor has really made me think and realize that I need to change the environmental setting of my classroom and make the classroom environment more pleasant and inviting for all students. I think that if I change the classroom environment there will be more interaction between all of my students, regardless if they have a communication disorder or not.

Friday March 15, 2002:
After reading the letter, I have thought about an activity that I want to incorporate in my lesson plan today that will allow me to learn more about the way kids view themselves. I think that in order to change the classroom setting, I need to really understand how my students feel about themselves. I wanted to get an idea of how my students with communication disorders feel compared to the rest of the class. So, their homework for today was to complete an "I am" poem and turn it into me on Monday. The kids really were not thrilled with this assignment as, many complained about how they did not want to write about how they feel about themselves. Many complained that I should not give them assignments to do during the weekend, they said homework will ruin their weekend fun. They begged me to not assign them this homework, but I told them that it was something that needed to be done. I told them that it was going to be a fun activity, but they just rolled their eyes at me. But, being a teacher you just can't please your students all the time.

Monday March 18, 2002:
First thing today, I collected the poems and I read them during my lunch break. Many of my students wrote positive things about themselves, but Johnny, my student who has a communication disorder, did not write positive things about himself. While reading Johnny's poem, I really did not know that he felt that way about himself. Even though he tends to be quiet and shy towards other students, he is always very talkative to me and he appears to be happy. When he is doing his work, he does not seem bothered that he is not working with the others. He does not even appear to be unhappy in class. But, I guess looks do not always express how a person feels. I know that sometimes I can appear to be happy, yet I am really sad. His poem really made me think about what I need to do to help my students with communication disorders feel better about themselves. All Johnny wants is his fellow students to realize is that he is no different than them.

Wednesday March 20, 2002:
I decided if I wanted to help Johnny and other students feel better about themselves, I would need to talk with the school speech pathologist. I thought since she works with him in therapy that she could help me. She told me that she could meet with me on Monday and explained to me that in order to help him and other students to feel better about themselves that I needed to really learn more about how communication disorders can affect the child(Glenn,E., & Smith,T., 1998). She also told me that she was giving a presentation about communication disorders at the local community center on Thursday night. She suggested that I go to the presentation because she will talk about how communication disorders affect the child and how teachers can help them feel better about themselves.

Thrusday March 21, 2002:
I decided to attend the presentation at the community center. This presentation really helped me learn a lot about communication disorders and how they can affect a child. Basically, if a child in my classroom has a communication disorder, I will now know what it is and what it effects. However, this presentation let me understand that communication disorders affect more than just the language or speech of the child. Knowing more about communication disorders will help me address them more appropriately in the classroom. I think it is really important for me as a teacher to understand how children with communication disorders feel about themselves and how their peers view them. This presentation was real informative and helpful as it helped clear up a lot of things that I did not know about communication disorders. Still, I want to learn more about how I can help my students who have communication disorders improve their self-perception, help their classmates to interact more with them, and to help students to not see children that have communication disorders as different.

Monday March, 25 2002:
Today, after school, I went and met with the school Speech Language Pathologist. We had an interview and discussed various activities that I can do with Johnny and his classmates to help increase Johnny's self-esteem and help his peers interact with him more. I really am glad that I was able to have this interview with the clinician. Before, I really did not encourage Johnny to participate in class and in group work. I thought that Johnny just felt more comfortable working alone. Sometimes kids who are shy just simply want to be left alone, so I did not think anything of this. Now, I know differently and understand how important it is to help encourage students with communication disorders and other students to interact with each other and help each other to understand one another. If I do not start doing something about the way people feel about themselves when they're young, then they will carry this attitude with them for the rest of their life. Ms. Puig was real helpful and told me that if I needed any more information about communication disorders that I could go to her website and there I should find some more information on communication disorders. I know that if I need to continue to learn more about communication disorders that I can look at the clinician’s web page.

Wednesday March 27, 2002:
I decided to take a notion and go to the clinician’s web page and see what kind of information was available. I was able to learn more about the clinician as well as find out more about what kind of services Speech Language Pathologists can provide. Also, there were a lot of research sites that provided information on how communication disorders can make a person feel and what to do about this. I found all of this information to be very valuable.

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