Special education teacher here. Of course it is. Because nobody wants to be one anymore. It is hard, often thankless work. Not uncommon- new special education teachers lasting less than six months in the job. It’s a job with high burnout, a high degree of skill and education and low remuneration for education required. It’s a calling. Not something your average college graduate is going to be good at.
It warms my heart that animal/plant sciences and sociology (!) ranks ahead of computer engineering. All the takes in the past 20 years of "ditch the humanities, everyone needs to learn coding!" was dumb back then and is even moreso now.
Being a special ed teacher is so, so difficult. Not speaking from experience, but I was a public school teacher in Mississippi for three and a half years. Talking to special ed teachers about their work was sobering. I wanna cry just thinking about it. Let’s put it this way, teaching algebra 1 in a low performing school (my teaching experience) is soul crushing. Your odds of true success are about as good as they would be for trying to teach 25 average middle schoolers calculus 2 simultaneously. Teaching special ed (from what I’ve heard) is like that times a billion. It’s like every day at work you’re instructed to make a square peg fit in a round hole. You know it will never happen, but your boss and all the parents of your students are unrealistically hopeful that just maybe, just once, just this time you’ll be able to do it. No one is mad at you when you can’t do it, but man, it hurts when you have to sugarcoat the truth to make it seem like kinda sorta it’s working or shoot straight and tell everyone learning at pace (or even at 1/4 pace) for their student just isn’t occurring. It also really hurts constantly thinking about what kind of future your students might have. Some have strong, supporting families but others aren’t so lucky. You wish you could help, but in all honesty, in most cases, there is almost nothing you can do to help your students have a better future. If someone reading this is a special ed teacher, please correct me if I’m wrong or if this is only rarely the case. It’s just the impression I got from talking to special ed teachers at my school.
Special education teacher here. Of course it is. Because nobody wants to be one anymore. It is hard, often thankless work. Not uncommon- new special education teachers lasting less than six months in the job. It’s a job with high burnout, a high degree of skill and education and low remuneration for education required. It’s a calling. Not something your average college graduate is going to be good at.
I'm a high school teacher and teach some students with special needs, what do you think can be done to make job less burdensome?
It warms my heart that animal/plant sciences and sociology (!) ranks ahead of computer engineering. All the takes in the past 20 years of "ditch the humanities, everyone needs to learn coding!" was dumb back then and is even moreso now.
Being a special ed teacher is so, so difficult. Not speaking from experience, but I was a public school teacher in Mississippi for three and a half years. Talking to special ed teachers about their work was sobering. I wanna cry just thinking about it. Let’s put it this way, teaching algebra 1 in a low performing school (my teaching experience) is soul crushing. Your odds of true success are about as good as they would be for trying to teach 25 average middle schoolers calculus 2 simultaneously. Teaching special ed (from what I’ve heard) is like that times a billion. It’s like every day at work you’re instructed to make a square peg fit in a round hole. You know it will never happen, but your boss and all the parents of your students are unrealistically hopeful that just maybe, just once, just this time you’ll be able to do it. No one is mad at you when you can’t do it, but man, it hurts when you have to sugarcoat the truth to make it seem like kinda sorta it’s working or shoot straight and tell everyone learning at pace (or even at 1/4 pace) for their student just isn’t occurring. It also really hurts constantly thinking about what kind of future your students might have. Some have strong, supporting families but others aren’t so lucky. You wish you could help, but in all honesty, in most cases, there is almost nothing you can do to help your students have a better future. If someone reading this is a special ed teacher, please correct me if I’m wrong or if this is only rarely the case. It’s just the impression I got from talking to special ed teachers at my school.