Diverse Learners and Making Accommodations

In a high school setting, there is a lot of diversity in the art room. All of the students have very different styles of learning as well as differing artistic styles. Establishing a sense of community with the students will help me get to know them, how they work and how they learn. When I’m a planning lesson, I try to think about where students might have difficulty and what might need to be adapted for students. Usually it’s that I’m making room for more time for a process, but it’s also good to consider what specific problems students might have. Some students in my cooperating classroom have IEPs, most of which suggest they get more time or hands on instruction. I had never seen an actual IEP before I started student teaching, and I was surprised at how little information was included. In my future classroom, I’d definitely take the time to talk to the other teachers about how those students with IEPs are doing in other courses and what other accommodations might help those students.

So far, most students have been pretty on track and few accommodations have had to been made. One student in a graphics design class has difficultly cutting paper and keeping her work neat, which results in good work that comes across as messy. My cooperating teacher told me that she expects the student to usually turn in messy work, but is always giving her positive feedback on how to improve the quality of her designs. These expectations for her improvement are fairly gradual, but there are other students who are messy out of laziness. Those students are hit with a higher expectation because there is a lot more certainty in their abilities. Again, this should stress the importance of getting to know the students and their individual needs. Most of the time in the art room is spent working, so there is a lot of time to go around the room and work with each student on specific individual goals for the project they are working on.