HI Tamazin! After speaking to our SEN officer, I was lead to believe that should we pick up on regular occurrences of things that 'concern us', then the process of 'flagging it up' as such, would begin. Like you, I am a complete beginner in the position, and perhaps experienced teachers forget how overwhelming everything is, and we 'don't know' what we 'don't know'- if that makes sense! Everything is a learning curve, and automatically, being the specialist in this particular field, as you- the first person I would question is the SEN teacher, rather than know what codes of practice and existing policies are- you tend to seek them out as these things arise. For me, the three issues that I struggle with the most are as follows: I am not sure what concerning behavior I am looking out for as so much of the behavior our SEN officer described daily- I would have benefited from some workshops possibly in relation to this, and this is not available to us); you begin as the new teacher, and in your bid to 'fit in' and chat, teachers are often highlighting students who have behavioral issues- this could be planting seeds in relation to your expectations of students behavior- which is obviously detrimental. It would be far better to form your own opinions. And thirdly, it would obviously be ideal to be given lots and lots of reading on policies, guidelines, common practice, etc, etc, when you start the job, otherwise you are just tripping along figuring these things out. If you have never work in this profession, these are just not the things you immediately think of.
Furthermore, our school often talk about SEN students during meetings, to raise awareness among teachers, which is good, however, I find that from there, there is no further guidance. We are not given much help in the lines of how we can make class time more productive for children with needs. Also, we have a whole class of children that are together as they are SEN (variety of issues and needs, with some children that are ESL), and I feel like I am completely failing them in lessons as they would all benefit from much more one on one focus, which I am not able to offer ( we have no TA's).
Anyone is reading and can offer any suggestions as to how to make the lessons more productive for students who are really struggling in these classes or find themselves not engaged for whatever reason (struggles, low concentration, material too complex, too much reading, etc, etc) - please post!! ( bearing in mind that other students need to be stimulated, and finding the correct pace is therefore challenging.
Click to expand...