EDUC320 - Final

Collaboration Station:

A Comprehensive Guide for Special Educators

Website Goal: Give special educators a resource for group work, conflict resolution, and to analyze team dynamics.

Accessibility Statement:

We are committed to supporting all special educators, regardless of needs. So, we have included the following elements of inclusive design. As special educators, we know that everyone benefits from a Universal Design for Learning!

Click here to see specific features

Note: On every page, the top right corner has an icon that looks like this to show you where to click to view the interactive components

Administrators

General Education Teachers

Your Network as a Special Educator

Click each category to learn more about their role

Social Workers/DCF

Families

Paraeducators

Specialists

ELL Teachers

Third-Party Therapists

SPED Coordinator

Adapting to Diversity Within Groups Members

Potential Challenges:

• Ingroup bias.
• Communication breakdowns.
• Lack of undertsanding of each other's backgrounds and values.

Benefits of Diversity Within a Group:

• Wide bredth of lived experiences.
• Varied skill sets.
• Educators can potentially speak to the cultural backgrounds of diverse students.

Bottom Line: Diversity in a group always has the potential to be beneficial, but this can only happen when the facilitator and group members are knowledgeable and open minded.

As a Facilitator:

• Adapt activities and communication to support the identities of your group.
• Intersectionality plays a huge role in how an individual perceives the world. Click the images to the right to learn more about how to adapt group facilitation to meet the needs of people with varying identities.

Ability/Disability

Race

Gender

Conflict Resolution

When you are in a group that disagrees, which is your first instinct?

• Initially give your input, but concede quickly if others disagree.
• Become quiet and let everyone else hash it out.
• Proudly stick to your ideas. You don't let others change my mind easily.
• Always find a middle-ground, even if it was not your original plan.
• Plan how to hear everyone's ideas and prioritize working together

How to Communicate when Conflict Occurs

• While emails can be helpful much of the time, because every teacher/specialist has a different schedule, discussing areas of conflict is not a time to use technology.
• In-person conversations when all group members are present is the best way to resolve conflict.
• This allows for tone, body language, and real-time discussions to best collaborate and come to a resolution.

Cultural Considerations:

Tuckman's Stages of Group Development

Norming Stage: Culture can cause group members to have varied expectations of norms.

• Individualist cultures:
• Prioritize structure and efficiency.
• Value recognition for individual achievements.
• Collectivist cultures:
• Prioritize closeness and openness.
• View individual achievements as an achievement of the whole group.
• Read more about cultural influences here.

For a real-world example, click here

Test your knowledge with this matching game!

Resources for Personal Development

Podcasts:

• Group Trust

Videos and Articles:

• Social Influence
• Collaborating with Specialists
• Professional Ethics
• Collaborating with Families
• Teachers and Admin: Power Imbalance

Transcript

Meet the Author! - Personal Experiences

Time 6:53-9:59

Transcript

We want your feedback!

Social Workers and Department of Children and Families

Skills:

• Can speak to the child's environment and emotional well-being.
• e.g. if a child does not live in an environment in which they can do homework, they can give you insight to support them.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Communicate to support a child's social-emotional development.
• e.g. the special educator shares the child's behavior profile and the social worker describes why these reactions may be occurring. Together, you can help the student feel safe and supported at school.

General Education Teachers

Skills:

• Expertise in benchmarks and the daily demands of non-differentiated instruction.
• Can describe the environment and possible modifications within a gen ed classroom.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Use your unique strengths to co-plan lessons.
• Trust each other to make decisions that best support the child.
• Both professionals must be open to supporting all students, not only the ones with whom they spend the most time.

Accessibility Features:

1. All images and website navigations have alt text to support screen readers.
2. All slides include an audio alternative to reading in the bottom left corner as a button. It looks like this:
3. Multimodal (audio and visual) learning format.
4. Audio/video elements have captions or transcripts.
5. Modes of engagement on every single slide.
6. High contrast text to background.
7. Zoom enabled.
8. Does not rely on red-green colors.
9. No animation for page elements.

Specialists

Skills:

• Varied areas of expertise (SLPs, OTs, PTs, School Psychologists, Behavior Specialists, BCBAs, etc.)
• Each role has unique training and a unique skill set.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Work together on an IEPs to support a student within each domain.
• Align goals.
• Each specialist is not working independently. As a special educator, you can also plan activities to support growth in other domains.
• e.g. if your goal is for a student to sort and the OT's goal is to cut a square, you can have the child cut out boxes to sort.

Third Party Therapists

Skills:

• Specific specialties (Speech Therapy, Feeding Therapy, ABA Therapy, etc.)
• Less burdened by budgets, so they often have high-quality materials and supports to aid a student.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Even though you and the third party therapists do not work in the same location, you can still align goals and share weekly data with each other.
• This gives the child consistency and the data will show more progress towards their skills.

Families

Skills:

• Unique insight of motivators and challenges of an individual child.
• They know their child the best.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Build a relationship with parents/guardians by sharing stories about their child’s strengths before their challenges to build rapport and trust.
• In every IEP meeting, make it clear that families have the final say in what the IEP includes.

Administrators

Skills:

• Knowledge of the school budget and a big-picture undertsanding of the school.

• This can help them to share what services and modifications are feasible to support a student.
• More leverage with the district to advocate for a student.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Communicate with administrators clearly and professionally.
• While they may have more power, you have more one-on-one time with the student.

• Work together to determine what supports are essential for the student to have a Free and Appropriate Public Education.
• You and admin are a team, not in competition.

Special Education Coordinator

Skills:

• Deep knowledge of strategies, interventions, and modifications available for your student.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Ask for advice when you are unsure of which interventions to support a student.
• Respect their professional opinion and expertise.
• Request guidance in mediating conflict between families and educators.

English Language Learner Teachers

Skills:

• Supporting communication for students and families.
• Provide insight about alternative communication for students who do not yet know English.
• Guide familial communication when parents/guardians do not speak English.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Discuss supports within the classroom to improve belonging of your ELL students.
• Be open to the accommodations they suggest (e.g. bilingual dictionaries or visual aids), even if you will have to learn how to establish them in your classroom.

Race

Race is a highly visible identity. This can cause daily oppression of non-white presenting individuals. If you have a dominant racial identity, understand that you can use your privilege to ensure that other group members are heard (i.e. saying "Joe had a great point about this student. I'd love to hear more about that, Joe"). This strategy, called amplification, addresses racial disparities without directly othering a specific group member or members.

Latine Educators

Black Educators

In the U.S., 25% of students identify as Latine, and only 8% of teachers share the same identity. This is problematic because students benefit from representation of diverse perspectives. One educator described that administration only valued her being "good with students of color". But, they wanted to be appreciated for supporting all students. Read more here.

Black educators tend feel less appreciated in their careers despite spending more time and emotional labor than their white colleagues. Read more here.

Strategies as a Facilitator:

• Give individualized recognition for hard work.
• Challenge any implicit biases or microaggressions from other group members.
• Connect Black educators with community resources and groups.

Strategies as a Facilitator:

• Send monthly surveys to measure support and perceived belonging.
• Open leadership roles to give Latine educators a voice.

Ability/Disability

Ability/Disability is a very broad identity, and individual differences play a critical role in personal experiences. Often people feel social pressure to mask their disability, so meet them with openmindedness and an accommodating environment.

Motor Impairments

Autism

The members of your multidisciplinary team may have a temporary or permanent motor impairment. Which of the two they experience will change their perspectives regarding accessibility and inclusion. But, the permanence of their disability does not change how you can adapt as a facilitator.

Autistic people may have diverse comfortability in group environments. Lack of eye contact, use of a fidget/headphones, or removing oneself from a loud environment are all self-regulating tools that should available to group members at all times.

Neurodiversity Affirming Approaches:

• Schedule meetings in a quiet/sensory friendly environment.
• Give access to meeting agendas in advance.
• Allow wait time for autistic group members to share their ideas.

How to Adapt Meetings:

• Make available speech to text, flexible seating, and schedule meetings in a room that has elevators/ramps to arrive.
• If a person dependes on an AAC, provide meeting notes in advance so they can prepare.
• Ensure that every group member has a voice within the group.

Gender

Gender impacts experiences from birth. People of all genders experience social pressures to act in accordance with societal expectations. In a group, two individuals can have identical behavior, but men are labeled as "assertive" or "confident" while women are deemed "aggressive". A group facilitator can work to ensure that everyone's voice is being heard despite any internalized biases group members may carry.

Transgender

Female

Due to the lack of acceptance in society, trans people are often margainalized and excluded. Learn more here.

People who identify as female are often predisposed to be more passive and conflict-avoidant.

Adapting Facilitations:

• Include your pronouns when introducing yourself and making a name tag.
• Make it clear that there are titles outside of Mr. and Mrs. that are gender-inclusive, such as Mx.
• Click here to learn more about gender-affirming labels.

Humanizing Methods: Brainwriting

• Each group member silently writes their ideas on a paper
• Read ideas aloud one at a time.
• This method ensures that all voices are being heard.
• Great when planning accommodaitons, modifications, or behavior management plans.

Paraeducators

Skills:

• Spend significant time one-on-one with a student.
• They can describe specific triggers for that student
• Provide insight about the student's strengths and what supports they need.

How to Best Collaborate:

• Include them in discussing behavioral interventions/determining modifications.
• While you may have a different level of education, remember that schooling is not indicitive of knowledge or skill.