How have connections with other professionals improved your practice? Today's entry is from Sara Zook, Special Education Teacher at La Costa Canyon High School:
One cleat is planted into the turf, the other swings back waiting for the perfect angle of precision to make the ball graze over the goalie’s fingers and into the wide net behind him.
The moment comes. But it is a miss, bouncing off of the post to the right.
He goes for it again, but this time he will fake out the goalie out to pass to the right forward at the last minute. He taps it to the forward for the goal and… no one is there. Another miss.
“Okay,” he thinks, “I will jump over the ball just as they think I am about to shoot and then my center midfielder will come from behind for the goal.” Just as he hops over the ball, nobody comes. Miss number three.
If there were only one person on a soccer team, it would be pretty evident that the team is headed for a loss. They would have no backup, no support, and they probably would start to get disheartened when the losses started to add up.
If you can’t tell, I have been on one or two less-than-championship-bound soccer teams! And, no, I am not just talking about soccer here. Teamwork is not something that is unique to sports fields. We can imagine an educational team without all of its “players” and it would not work!
The teams that I work with most are IEP teams and team-taught classes. I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be a part of these groups. I have found that these groups allow us to put our heads together, solve problems, and support students collectively in a way that not one of us could do individually.
In collaborating with teachers, school psychologists, speech and language pathologists, program specialists, interpreters, therapists, parents, administrators, tutors, and the students themselves, we see transformations.
Sometimes it is minor (“yay, they are calling out less in class!”), sometimes it is gigantic (“yay, they are participating, gaining confidence, turning in work, and advocating for themselves!”), but whatever the change, it is due to the input and interaction of a team of professionals who care!
