A special education teacher's new adventure!

I have been busy over these school holidays as every teacher is. Spending countless hours planning for the classroom on what I'm going to teach and creating resources to go with the lessons. But, I must be crazy as I decided to throw myself even further into the deep end and start a new store in TeachersPayTeachers and TES-Australia. You might ask why are you doing this to yourself?

I had a moment of reflection in the last 2 weeks of Term 3 about resources and lesson plans for special needs teachers. I remember the first day I walked into my special needs classroom and I have to say it was a steep learning curve. Although I'm very passionate about the field and also worked as an Education Assistant at a special needs school. However, when I was working as an Education Assistant the teacher had everything planned and resources ready to go. Little did I know back then that my teacher had spent her whole holidays from morning to night planning and creating resources as you have to do from scratch most times for her class and she only had the first 2 or 3 weeks sorted, not a whole term! No wonder she never went anywhere on holidays!

So, going back to when I first walked into my special education classroom as a teacher, I was shocked that there was nothing much in the classroom. I was walking in on a blank slate, nothing left behind from the previous teacher and nothing much available from the school either. That was when I had the sudden realisation I would have to spend all my spare time making resources for my students from scratch. You can't simply use workbooks that you can get for grade 1-12, these levels are much too high for many special needs students also not accessible due to their disabilities. Several years passed and I realised I was not alone, my colleagues and fellow Uni students who do the special needs degree with me have all complained about how hard it is to find resources for special needs without too much work and how expensive they are. 

This is why I thought 'something has to change'. So, I have spent my last 2 weeks organising a store called 'Inclusivity' on TPT and TES-Australia to upload my lessons and resources that I have created for other special education teachers to use with their students. I have 22 resources uploaded so far which is a big effort to get them together, even though I already had them, I still had to spend many hours to get them to a professional standard. So if you are a special education teacher and like me, walked into a classroom that is a blank slate then visit my stores it will certainly give you a head start and give you your hours back!