Teaching children with special needs came as a second career for Joyce Harai, who has taught elementary-level classes in special education for about 10 years.
“What I do in the classroom is the best part,” Harai said the morning of the first day of school at Central Special Education School in Edgewater in Anne Arundel County.
She generally teaches the same students every year.
Students start attending the school as early as age 3 and don?t graduate until age 21. Her class of seven ranges in age from 8 to 12, and all lack most basic language and communications skills.
One student is deaf and blind and uses an aide in the classroom. All of Harai?s students are in wheelchairs.
“A huge part of what we?re working on is the functional skills ? how to feed themselves,” Harai said.
“Some are working on their gross motor skills, and we have several who are learning to walk.”
To help the nonverbal students interact with each other, each child has a device with a button the children push to announce their names. The devices are color coded and have tactile symbols specific to the child.
Harai wears a large beaded bracelet to help students who are deaf, blind or more tactile to identify her.
And all those devices and tools are needed just to run a classroom on a daily basis.
Like all special education teachers, Harai also must work with each student?s individual education plan and develop individual alternative Maryland State Assessments, which are required under the No Child Left Behind Act.
For example, to test a student?s reading skills, she would read a few sentences and the student would draw a picture about what is being said.
“A lot of the curriculum isn?t for my students, so I have to modify things,” Harai said.
“That?sbefore school, after school or on the weekends.”
Harai said a crew of two full-time classroom volunteers has been critical to helping her manage the class and meet the lesson objectives.
Despite the state testing standards and evolving needs of her students, Harai said the work has its rewards.
“Watching my students grow, they?re very inspiring,” she said.
