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6 Things About SEND I Wish I’d Known At The Start

Cherryl Drabble looks back on the lessons that a career spent working with SEND pupils has taught her…

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If you’re a teacher in any capacity, you’ll know that teaching is full on. The workload can be enough to break even the strongest of people, making it very hard to strike a healthy work-life balance and hang on to your sanity.

With that in mind, here are six things I wish I’d known about being a teacher of SEND when I started, in the hope of saving new SEND teachers some valuable time…

1. Relevant CPD can be hard to find

CPD is rarely aimed at special needs teachers; in fact, most of it is fairly irrelevant for us. I’ve found from experience that even if it says ‘SEND’ in the advertisement, it won’t be able to reach children on low P Levels or those who need specialist interventions.

I’ve lost many hours listening to professionals who are experts in their field, but who can’t help children with complex needs.

The solution:

Take the initiative by phoning ahead and enquiring as to exactly who the target audience is.

Ask if there’s a SEND focus to the course, and if so, whether it will address the needs of the children you teach. This simple act can be a real time saver and help to avoid much frustration later on.

2. Pre-empt behavioural issues

All behaviour is communication in one way or another. Extremes of behaviour, such as tantrums or violence, generally occur when a child is unable to express that they have a problem or an unmet need.

The solution:

You’ll save yourself time and effort if you introduce visuals into your classroom. Establish a visual timetable with symbols to help children follow the day’s routines, and introduce simple ‘Now and Next’ boards to help them know what will happen next.

These two easy strategies can calm anxieties and prevent such behavioural challenges from occurring in the first place.

3. Look beyond the labels

Ignore the diagnosis. On the face of it that’s a bold statement to make, but for a teacher of SEND, it’s fair. For parents, the diagnosis or label is significant and can hold the key to gaining much-needed help for their child. For teachers, the strategies you choose to use will be more important than the label assigned to the child. Remember – the label doesn’t define the child.

The solution:

Work with the child, find out their foibles and select your strategies according to what you’ve found. For example, one child on the autistic spectrum will not be the same as another child on the autistic spectrum; in teaching terms, the label is irrelevant. The best advice I can give is to always remember that no two children are alike, and that this is even more the case for children with special needs, irrespective of what their label might indicate.

4. Get to know the parents

I wish I’d known how to get the most from parents right from the start. It wasn’t a deliberate omission on my part; I’d simply never thought about the parents and their expertise. I’d spent years training to be a teacher and acquiring extra qualifications to be a teacher of SEND, during which time parents had simply slipped off my radar. Now I realize just how much knowledge and skill they have concerning not just their own child, but also quite often other children with special needs.

The solution:

As soon as you possibly can, do a home visit. Spend time forming a bond with the parents and tap into their personal knowledge and skills. Drain them of every strategy, resource and nugget of information. It will likely come in handy somewhere for another child with special needs in addition to their own.

5. Learn from others

As I’ve discovered to my cost, there’s not much training out there for SEND teachers and often very little support of any kind outside your own school. As a group, we must learn to help ourselves.

The solution:

Join Twitter and follow all the SEND teachers. I tweet as @cherrylkd, and am happy to introduce interested readers to Twitter’s SEND community. Read all the SEND posts you can for new and innovative ideas. Join Facebook groups. Contact other special schools and share ideas, planning and resources. Do whatever you need to do to get some support.

6. Get ready to wear lots of hats

All teachers find themselves with a variety of alternative roles to play, but it’s especially the case for SEND teachers. In a small special school, for example, you may be expected to lead as many as three different subjects, only one of which might be your specialism. You’ll be expected to quickly get up to speed with the requirements for other subjects and support teachers with their planning. As a class teacher, it’s probable that you’ll line manage as many as six TA and conduct appraisals for all of them.

Moreover, you’ll be expected to contribute to collaborative meetings with other professionals, while keeping up to date with the requirements of the national curriculum and possibly learning how to teach a sensory curriculum.

The solution:

Learn to accept that you’ll never reach the end of your ‘to do’ list. Instead, prioritise daily and re-prioritise as the day progresses. There’s no practical alternative to doing this. Don’t become anxious about your workload – just stay on top of those tasks that are imperative, and know that you’ve done your best. Don’t be tempted to overwork yourself by going in early and working late. Therein lies the road to burnout.

To be an effective SEND teacher you need your energy for the children. And remember that among your priorities, the children are the biggest priority of all.

About the author

Cheryl Drabble is assistant headteacher at Highfurlong School in Blackpool; her book Supporting Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities is published by Bloomsbury. For more information, visit cherrylkd.wordpress.com or follow @cherrylkd

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