Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.
Two weeks before I started my experiential practicum in grade 2, one of the students fell at school. We’ll call him Luke (not his real name). Without getting too into the details, Luke ended up needing surgery and had a concussion. My CT filled me in on this while I was still observing, as, in conversation with Luke’s parents, it looked like Luke would be returning to school around the same time I’d be starting the teaching part of my practicum.
Luke did return to class a couple days after I’d started. He was cleared by the doctor for low energy activities, but still had to keep his concussion in mind, as well as the fact that moving too much too quickly or taking a hit to the spot he’d had surgery could cause complications and would send him to the hospital. For the most part, this meant that Luke went to the library at recesses instead of outside, that he couldn’t do most gym activities, and that light and noise could bother him, as well as having to look between the board and anything on his desk too often.
These were all considerations I took into account when planning my lessons. It wouldn’t have been fair to Luke to not consider these new challenges he was facing, along with the fact that they were new to him, myself, and my CT. It took a bit of trial and error to figure out what worked and what didn’t for Luke, but my CT and I were determined to make sure he had every chance to be successful in our lessons even with his concussion.
This was started with dimming the lights in the classroom. Classes at the school I was placed at all come with a wall of windows, so on the days that it wasn’t stormy—surprisingly quite a few for late winter-early spring on Vancouver Island—just the natural light coming in was enough for the class to function. If we did need additional light, we were able to turn on just some of the classroom lights on the side of the classroom that Luke was not on, and it was more than enough. We also made sure the students knew that Luke needed it quiet in the classroom, and they were more than accommodating to keep their voices low. Luke was also given the freedom to leave the classroom and go for a walk outside if he needed a break from the noise, or to the medical room in the office if he needed to sit in the dark for a bit.
When planning my lessons, I made sure to have a copy of any information I was planning to write on the board to give to Luke. Looking between his page and the board too often made him dizzy and nauseous, and this was a simple enough workaround. One specific example of this was a lesson I did in which students drew, labelled, and coloured their own diagrams of the water cycle. We’d covered the water cycle quite a bit by this point, so the students were familiar with what occurred in each step of the cycle, and we brainstormed different things that could be drawn for each step. The words for the steps are pretty long for grade 2s (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection), so I assured them I’d write them on the board for them to copy down. I also had them written on a sticky note already that I gave to Luke so that he could have the words in the same visual area as his diagram, lowering the possibility of him getting dizzy and nauseous by having to look up and down.
I taught a few gym classes during my practicum as well, which meant each student’s success had to be taken into consideration in planning, not just Luke’s. Two gym classes I taught, I made the decision to not go to the gym during our scheduled time, and instead to do a yoga class in the classroom. We pushed the desks to the side, and I found yoga classes for kids on YouTube—one was Minecraft themed and the other Star Wars, both of which went over very well with the students—and they spent half an hour or so doing yoga. Luke was able to participate in these gym classes. He could do the moves, the lights were turned off, and he was able to be active while still following his doctor’s orders. This ended up being very beneficial for Luke, as well as the rest of the class, as it calmed the students down and brought their energy to a level where they could concentrate on the next round of lessons. As Luke wasn’t able to be particularly active, this was even more beneficial for him to have a chance to move around in a controlled environment. The other gym class I taught was on a day that Luke wasn’t there, so we went to the gym and played bench ball, which is another instance in which I had to take the whole class into consideration when choosing teams to ensure that every student had an opportunity for success. This was on my third week of practicum, which meant that I had gotten familiar with the students’ physical activity strengths, so I was able to separate the class into fairly even teams for the game. Through use of things like calling for a jail break or jumping in on occasion to throw a few balls for students on benches to catch, I moderated the game as it was going on as well to ensure everyone was given a chance for success and no one felt like they or their classmates were causing their team to lose.
Giving all students the chance for success is so important, and when those students have additional challenges thrust upon them, it’s even more important to make sure they are getting as much of the same opportunities as their peers as possible. If you’re not doing everything you can to act in your students’ best interests, why be an educator in the first place? School is a place where students come to learn, so we should be giving them all the tools they need in order to accomplish that goal.
