Special Education Teacher: What are the key traits?
There is no job as noble as teaching. It is especially true when it comes to being a special education teacher. To be a teacher means to be a role model whom the children look up to and thrive to become like one in terms of principles, behaviours, inspiration etc.
Have you been wandering what will keep you floating in the world of special education teaching? Surely, you need to possess a few tricks up your sleeve. We are here with five top traits that we believe must be in you in order to excel in this job.
Going through a special education teacher training course is not enough. It takes a little bit more than that. Scroll down to know what we have gathered for you.
Being calm and composed
Being in a class full of children with special needs, various disabilities can often take its toll on your nerves and it is quite easy for you to lose your temper. But that is not going to take you anywhere. So, a special education teacher needs to be calm and composed behaviourally in a classroom environment.
Remember, your learners are dealing with learning or behavioural issues. The pace at which they learn will never match that of mainstream children. So, it is your calm nature that is going to pacify them and assure them of their ability to learn what is being taught.
Eventually, this will reduce the stress level in a classroom and make it a safer place to carry on with the learning process. Maintaining a classroom like that is one skill that enables the teachers of special education climb the ladder of success.
Being organised
Being highly organised is something that is a must if you are eyeing being a special ed teacher as a job. As we already mentioned, the classroom environment can very often turn out to be challenging. Maintaining an orderly atmosphere there is a trait that can help you go a long way.
Colour coordination is something that attracts children with special abilities and encourages them to do what is being asked of them. Lining up folders in a colour coded way or marking the important things in bright and eye-catching manner is sure to engage the children in a positive way.
Preparing a communication notebook and handing them over to the children is another way of getting things done in an organised way. However, it is not only the classroom or things as such that would keep the class in order. Your skill of record keeping needs to be polished perfectly also.
It is only then that you know how to manage the class, which lesson plan to implement and also make small notes about the requirements. Thus you stay updated. With the help of advanced levels of technology, your job is more smoothly done.
Attentive towards detail
There are some traits that no teacher training institute is going to teach you and you need to have them in you. One of these is detail-oriented trait. This is particularly important in this field of work for you have to give rapt attention towards even the minute details of your learners.
Your assessment of the children in your class will be inclusive of both formal and informal. This is exactly why you have to be extra careful about details. In fact as you come across vacancies and eligibility criteria listed in the ad, you will find “attentive to details” positioned around the top of the list.
It is the details that will make a lot of difference in your career.
High on intuition
As you have to deal with children who might find it difficult to communicate what they wish to. Thus, the importance of intuition on your part. Frustration will set in among them and eventually they will break down weighed down by confusion and inability to express themselves.
In addition to professional training from teacher training course, you need this trait for matching the communication skill level of the children. Before they start to withdraw you have to get an understanding of what they want to convey.
Implementing this, you will be able to identify what exactly is causing the distress among the learners or whether there is any other underlying reason behind the behaviour they are exhibiting.
Creative skill
Innovativeness and creativity, though we mention it at last, but they are certainly not the least. Remember, the attention span of the learners you teach is not like everyone else in a mainstream classroom. So, you have to be creative in planning lessons and delivering them in various ways to ensure they remain attentive.
With a classroom full of varied learning demands you have to deliver your teaching lessons differently also. The lesson, teaching materials, knowledge to be imparted will remain same. But the technique you follow to make the special needs children follow them, call for creative ideas.
In a nutshell, these are the top 5 traits that help you excel in a job of being teacher for special needs children. All children are surely gifted but with these children as your learner you need to explore various nukes and corners of teaching. Have them, polish them, be more successful- that is all there is.
