Articles

 1. Understanding parents and families of children with disabilities: considerations for adapted physical activity __[] __  BNET health publications Palaestra, spring 1996 Jennifer Fiorini, Kathleen Stantron, Greg Reid  This article, “Understanding parents and families of children with disabilities” is mainly about explaining that now days; there are more and more children with disabilities in communities and regular school classrooms. Of course there are specialized programs for these children, such as individualized educational plans (IEP), to help these students have a smoother learning process. This article stresses that it is crucial for these students to have major support from their parents for their education, because there are more demands for these types of students as opposed to the average student. The main support often comes from the parents and not always the educational system so the families have to help their child in their learning development and this article discusses two different types of views of how families cope with having children with disabilities as a part of their family. The first view considers the birth of the child with the disability to cause high stress and concomitant coping. Then the second view centers around a family system theory, which views all families as having stresses, regardless of their children’s abilities, and seeks to explore sources of stress and how to mediate stress according to family resources. However, neither of these views are exclusive, but they may address some of the families who have children with disabilities.  In the future, as a teacher I know the possibility of having a student with a disability in my class rises higher and higher every year. It is my job as their teacher to reach out to their parents the best I can to get them to be more involved in their children’s learning process. It will be easier if the parents work with me as a team than to just work alone with the student. Of course I will do everything I can to get these students to participate with the mainstream students in my classroom for more interaction and I will also have to accommodate my lessons according to their learning styles and what works best for those students.
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 2. Children’s learning disabilities: what are they and how do you help your child? __ [] __  This article defines what a learning disability is, explains how to help that child, and the different types of disabilities. This article tells that a learning disability is a neurological disorder, which means that the person’s brain and cognitive processes are just wired slightly differently than other people. These children with the disabilities are just as smart as their peers, however they just learn in different ways with different techniques. This article expresses that if your child does have a learning disability then the parent just needs to step up and get involved. It is said that one of our every seven people have a learning disability. There are many different types of learning disabilities and most all of them call for special attention from the person’s educator and their parents.  As a teacher, these statistics are good to know, considering the number of people born with disabilities continues to rise. When teaching a class, it is important to know which of my students have a disability and which they have so that I can provide support and educational attention when they need it. As a teacher, it is always good to know all the common types of learning disabilities because you are bound to have some of these kids in your classes.

 3. Successful transitions for young children with disabilities and their families: roles of school social workers __ [] __  January 1, 2007 Rosenkoetter, Sharon E.; Hains, Ann H.;Dogaru, Christian I. <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 14.0pt;"> This article “Successful transitions for young children and their families” states three early transitions that are significant for these children with learning disabilities and their families. The first is just early intervention, the second is between the program and preschool services, and the third is from Early Childhood special education into kindergarten special education. Each of these steps is crucial and extremely important when providing these children with appropriate and necessary interventions. It is especially important for the child’s parents to be involved as much as possible when building the foundations for the child’s learning. There are necessary roles that much be played by the educators as well as the parents and families when dealing with a student with a learning disability. The child’s teacher much provide extra help for the child and accommodate the lesson plans to suit not only the child with the disability but also the other students in the class. The parents also have to provide the most support and take actions to teach practice the learning material with their child outside of school to reinforce the information. <span style="font-family: Times New Roman; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 14.0pt; msobidifontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msobidifontsize: 12.0pt; msofontkerning: 14.0pt;"> As a future teacher, this article does in fact relate to me considering I am almost guaranteed to have students with disabilities in my classroom. There are always necessary steps and techniques that have to be done to help these children better learn the material from the lessons. I will have to accommodate my lesson plans to suit the child with the disability as well as the learning styles of my other students. The use of visuals and group work usually make a difference but sometimes that may not be enough and other accommodations will need to be made.