5/6/2022
Topic:
Students With Disabilities
Jeff Grove
|
I taught a freshman in a high-school Theatre 1 class who had just moved to the U.S. from China specifically for treatment of cancer. His treatment affected him physically in a number of ways. Chemotherapy had made most of his hair fall out, and he was sensitive enough about his appearance that he wore a baseball cap to cover his head. Our district's dress code prohibits students from wearing hats or head coverings indoors except for religious observance, but I never enforced this with him. That may not seem directly related to instruction, but his comfort level with his own appearance - especially in a theatre class, where he would be expected to perform in front of the class - actually related to his ability to meet course standards. His treatment was also physically debilitating, so each time he went in for chemotherapy and returned to class, he had impaired motor control for several days afterward. I usually tried to postpone his performances beyond those days, allowing him time to regain more normal control over his movement, but when course pacing wouldn't allow that, I adjusted my grading standards for the physical aspects of his performances, taking into account what he was able to do in his specific circumstances. To my mind, this did not involve holding him to a lower standard than other students; instead, I expected him to challenge himself to perform as well as he could in the face of his physical condition, rather than having him sit out those assignments completely. This student had language issues, as well, being an English-language learner who was new to the U.S., and I did work with him in that area - and even advocated for him to our administration when I heard that some other teachers were not being as helpful in this matter - but I won't go into the details of that in this forum, since his language issues did not derive from any type of disability. |
5/6/2022
Topic:
Students With Disabilities
Jeff Grove
|
Kea McElfresh wrote:
I have an autistic student that has other disabilities. She has been my student for the past three years. She has a habit of going through spurts of energy where she runs around the class mixed with other moments of inability to participate. I think it's been incredible that we've been together this long because I have really been able to understand her mannerisms and habits and work with them. When she is able to work, we work. She is always happy to help and has received many accolades from our school and community about her participation in roles she's performed and technical theatre abilities. In our last show, she became overstimulated and began to cry. The show was only ten minutes from going on. Her fellow cast and crewmates sprang into action and created a space for her to collect herself and start the show. Sometimes we have to help classmates help each other. It was a beautiful moment I will never forget.
I particularly like that you keep using the word "we" here - not just "I." You see the theatre as a family, and the other students in the class as a resource, so that in serving a particular student who had an issue on a particular occasion, you drew on that resource to assist, rather than trying to impose a solution by yourself. In a way, that ties directly into state course standards involving ensemble performance. It certainly seemed to have helped this student to overcome a momentary challenge resulting from a disability and to perform up to standard.
edited by Jeff Grove on 5/6/2022 |
5/6/2022
Topic:
Students With Disabilities
Jeff Grove
|
Jeremy Henry-Dixon wrote:
Think of a student with a disability you have now, or have had in the past. Identify their disability. Describe the way in which their disability affected their learning. Describe at least one or more ways you successfully accommodated or modified instruction for this student:
I have a student who is dyslexic in my advanced theatre class. Knowing that we read plays out loud, she generally needs to have the play at least a week in advance to read through it and make notes that help her be confident, and then I encourage her throughout the process to take her time. She generally chooses roles that have less lines, and has been successful in not letting the disability get the best of her. She has been in the theatre class for all 4 of her high school years.
Those are really good strategies. Sometimes when working with dyslexic theatre students, I have anecdotally shared stories of a close friend - a former teacher himself - who performed in community theatre, but who had difficulty with cold-reading auditions and with line memorization because he was dyslexic. He learned to speak up for himself at cold-reading auditions, letting a director know about his condition, and asking for a little time outside of the room to look over a passage before getting up to read. I worked with him to help him memorize lines, reading them aloud to him so he could learn by ear rather than through visual stimuli on the page, which led to more accurate memorization. I recommend these strategies to my dyslexic students, and sometimes pair them with line-coaching buddies from the class to help out. I also like to point out to them that some very well-known actors, such as Tom Cruise, have openly discussed the challenges they have faced with dyslexia, and how they worked to overcome them - having such role models lets students know that they can succeed. |
5/16/2022
Topic:
Tools And Strategies
Jeff Grove
|
- Option 2: Describe at least one way you have used technology to meet the needs of a student with a disability in your classroom. Be sure to identify or describe the specific technology and the student's disability. Share your response in the threaded discussion.
I had a student in Theatre 1 whose extremely limited English skills - a true beginning English language learner in high school - were exacerbated by the debilitating effects of ongoing cancer treatment which affected everything from physical mobility to focus and concentration. His parents had obtained a translation device for him, and we worked on various ways to use it for note-taking, line-learning, contributing to discussion, etc. At one point he thanked me for allowing him to use it, and for helping him to apply it in different ways. However, he said that he was having trouble in some classes because other teachers refused to allow him to use the device on many tests and assignments, fearing that he would use it to cheat in some way. I approached our school's administration about this, and we used a double-tiered intervention with those other teachers, where the administrators told the teachers that the student was entitled to use the device on any and all assignments, including tests, and that I was willing to share some of my experiences with the student if they wanted to have a colleague who could serve as a sounding board for integrating the device into instruction. The student turned up in my Theatre 2 class three years later as a senior, still learning some of the finer points of English, but showing much greater skills than before, which he used to take even bigger steps in his theatrical performances. |
5/16/2022
Topic:
Assessment of Learning
Jeff Grove
|
Option 1: Provide/Describe one or more examples of adapted or alternative assessments you have successfully used in the classroom for students with disabilities. Be sure to identify the student's disability. Share your response in the threaded discussion.
I keep going back in these posts to one particular student whose absolute beginner-level English skills in a high-school Theatre 1 class posed various issues for him. In one instance, he failed a fill-in-the-blank quiz that concentrated on some skill-related vocabulary terms that would be essential to upcoming scene rehearsals, performances, and critiques. He had seemed quite attentive during my presentation of the material, had asked appropriate questions during the session, took notes with the help of his translation device, and said that he had studied very carefully for the test. Suspecting that his skills in writing English might be lagging even behind his skills in speaking English, I took him aside privately and simply began talking with him about the content of the test. I asked him questions about the terms that were on the test, and as we talked he demonstrated true mastery of those terms - not just enough to pass the test, but at virtually A-level performance. Having demonstrated through oral responses that he knew the material even when he couldn't put it together in written form, I accepted his spoken responses in place of his written ones, and recorded the appropriate grade instead of an F. Whether he could recognized printed definitions of the terms and then write those terms didn't really matter here; what was important was that he understood the terms and could use them with me and with other students as he worked. A shift in assessment format proved that he could do that. |