Jen Koenig, a K-12 autism teacher, shares how to help students with special needs succeed in general education settings. She uses visual supports on lanyards and portable cubbies, previews routines weeks ahead with visual schedules, and schedules sensory breaks before and after inclusion activities to help students self-regulate.
Let's talk about how we can make our students more independent so they are successful outside of the special ed classroom. I'm Jen Koenig and I am a K-12 self-contained autism teacher, and to be honest, I have behavior pretty well under control in my own classroom. I control what happens in my four walls, but I don't have that kind of control outside of my classroom. So let me share some strategies that I use to help my students succeed outside of the special ed room. You already know I'm a sucker for visuals. I have so many in my classroom and I set up and organize them in these little cubbies over here and I can link that video for you where I show you what I do. But that gives me easy access to any visuals I might need while we're in general education. Also, I print core language boards. I laminate 'em and I bring 'em along with me. And my favorite, I put visuals on my lanyard. These are fantastic and I don't just use 'em with my students. I use 'em with regular ed students when I'm supervising recess or lunch or gym duty, whatever it is, I can use these. And it not only gives a visual, but it connects the special education classroom to the general education classroom because these are the same visuals I'm using in my classroom. Next, preview what's going to happen before you go. Start previewing a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks before you even attempt going. So this is a music visual schedule. I love this. I had a student starting going to music. I loved it. I was so excited. So for 2 weeks prior, we walked through what going to music would look like, and then before the expectation, we walked it. I took the student over, I said, look, we're gonna walk in a line to music class. Oh, we're gonna take a seat in music class. We're gonna do a music activity. Now we're going to leave. By the time we went, the student was so well prepared for what was going to happen, and we brought this along, and then the student knew exactly what the expectations were. And there were no issues. Finally, schedule sensory breaks. This is our sensory room. I love this swing. We've got a bunch of different activities and things in here, and this is a room that we go to before and after we push in. We allow our students to regulate before we go and after we get back. It's so important to success. One last note: it's okay to start small, and it's okay if things don't go 100% according to plan. Just keep trying. If something doesn't work the first time, don't push inclusion off. Keep trying. Our students are valuable and important members of the school community, and they should be treated as such. And because of that, they have the right to be with their general education peers as much as they possibly can.
