Special Children, Special Care

Charles Xiaoxue Wang, Ph.D.

Professor of Educational Technology

Florida Gulf Coast University

&

Doug Carothers, Ed. D.

Associate Professor of Special Education

Florida Gulf Coast University

The impacts of COVID-19 on schools are obvious and severe. While many schools are rushing to provide instruction online, we must not forget our children with special needs. Children with disabilities are entitled to a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, and home is now the least restrictive environment for many children. For them to successfully learn online requires multifaceted measures using all available tools and approaches. This is best achieved when schools, teachers, and parents work together.

With that said, here are some general ideas for how educators can better fulfill their obligations to students with disabilities who are being educated online during school closures caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic:

1. Before putting instruction online, talk to students/parents about how best to help accommodate their disabilities when engaging in online learning. This will ensure access to online instruction and offer you a clear picture of technologies students have at home.

2. Modify instructional presentation to meet the individual or disability-specific needs of your students. For example, use highly contrasting colors for students with visual disabilities. Ensure that online lessons are provided in ADA compatible formats. Microsoft Word and many learning management systems such as Canvas, have the function to check your online instruction for ADA compliance. Also, work with school technology support personnel to ensure the access of your instruction to our students with disabilities.

3. Keep auditory disabilities in mind and ensure that audio recordings are high quality and provide captioning. Remember that media that communicate clearly to you may not communicate as clearly to others with sensory impairments.

4. Set up your virtual office hours to work with those students with special learning needs. Be flexible and accommodating. Provide instruction through both visual and auditory modalities and allow multiple ways of responding.

5. Provide timely feedback of student learning and offer students prompt encouragement. This timely communication with students increases your social, cognitive, and emotional presence of your online instruction.

6. If possible, assign workgroups of students with and without disabilities so they can learn from and help each other during this special time. Learner-learner interaction is as important and as crucial as learner-content interaction and learner-instructor interaction for online learning.

As teachers, we also need to work with parents more closely at this time. Here are some tips for how to work with parents of children with disabilities who are learning online at home.

1. Maintain clear and frequent lines of communication that are respectful of family schedules and that use means of communication that are preferred by families.

2. Make a schedule to communicate with them regularly and inform them of your virtual office hours.

3. Avoid the use of jargon when explaining educational practices and treat parents with the respect of equals, especially because they are being asked to help teachers do the teachers’ job. Most of the time, we find parents are willing and supportive of our instructional efforts.

4. Use free online resources to create an online parent community. Share relevant and useful resources with them that assist their children with effective online learning. At the same time, through this online community, parents can share their thoughts and ideas on how to better assist their children for online learning.

5. Provide parents with information that will enable them to ensure that they are using needed accessibility features on their computers. Sites like Office Accessibility Center ( https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-accessibility-center-resources-for-people-with-disabilities-ecab0fcf-d143-4fe8-a2ff-6cd596bddc6d) and UsabilityGeek ( https://usabilitygeek.com/10-free-screen-reader-blind-visually-impaired-users/) can be especially helpful.

6. Offer parents useful and relevant online learning resources so they are better informed of how to help their children with disabilities learn. Sites such as LD OnLine (http://www.ldonline.org/educators) provide information about instructional techniques while Special Education Degrees (https://www.special-education-degree.net/top-12-websites-children-learning-disabilities/ ) includes links to specific online instructional activities that will enable children to practices skills independently.

7. Provide examples of how typical household tasks can be used as instructional activities. For example, use recipes when cooking family meals to reinforce concepts related to measurement, have the child watch/read the news, and have discussions about current events to promote concepts related to civics, government, etc.

The impacts of COVID-19 are far-reaching and are changing current approaches to educating all children including those with disabilities. Within every challenge is an opportunity, however. As the nature of interactions between teachers and parents change, effective teachers can increase the credibility of their profession and the respect with which they are viewed. Even more importantly, they can help parents play an increasing role in their child’s long-term educational success by better implementing the home-school partnerships envisioned in IDEA.