Roles and Responsibilities of a Special Educator

The role of the special educator is to encourage learning. The techniques that the educator will apply may vary depending on the students needs. For example, students may need accommodations (tests, homework, and curriculum), small group work, individual instructions, etc. They help students in their social, behavioral, academic development, life skills, and personal care.
The responsibilities of the special education instructor will include helping develop individualized education programs (I.E.P), designing and adjusting the curriculum to meet each student’s needs and skills. They also need to maintain close communication with parents and meet with them in order to provide updates on their student’s I.E.P and goal progress. If the students have severe disabilities they must assist them with toileting, transitions, and/or feeding with the help of the teacher’s aide.
Since I have experience working as a special education paraprofessional I was familiar with the roles and responsibilities of the special educators. However, now that I am a general education teacher, my perspective on understanding the teaching responsibilities has changed dramatically. One thing is to know about it, and it is another thing to experience it. After reading about the nature of work the special educators perform I have even more admiration for them. They are the key to their student’s success because they directly participate and take responsibility on what is the best in order to meet those children’s needs.
Working with special education students is a challenge that has heartwarming results. A special education teacher must enjoy working with the special education community because in order to be successful you need to have love and passion for what you do. Patience is extremely important in the primary list of qualities that special educators need. If you do not have patience then teaching is not your field and special education is even farther beyond what you can accomplish. Lastly, in special education there is a lot of paperwork and follow up. You have to be organized in order to keep track of all the tasks you are performing. Special educators are constantly monitoring progress and organization plays an important role when you have to monitor student’s abilities, skills, meetings, and parent conferences.
In conclusion, I would have to say that special education has all my respect, and after knowing all the challenges they face every day in order to help those students succeed, it personally took me to another level of admiration for their hard work.