| Description of good practice: |
Resources rooms are a very good practice created by pilot schools. The resource room is a separate remedial classroom, either a classroom or a smaller designated room, where a special education program can be delivered to a student with disability individually or in a small group. The resource room is a placement choice for many children with specific learning disabilities where children are pulled out of comprehensive education classrooms for small group or individual instruction.
The pilot schools have adapted one class or a smaller setting to a resource room to support the learning needs of CwD in order to keep them in regular schools during the day and not transfer them in special schools. Resource room support is for the student who qualifies for either a special class or regular class placement but needs some special instructions in an individualized or small group setting for a part of the day. Individual needs are supported in resource rooms as defined by the student’s IEP. The resource room is a very useful place for students with educational disabilities, learning difficulties and special educational needs, because in resource room they are provided with direct, specialized instructions and academic remediation and assistance with homework and related assessments as individuals or in groups.
The resource room is part of the placement process within regular schools and is considered necessary for children who are easily distracted in the comprehensive education setting, especially when new information is being introduced. Resource rooms also support the social needs of their students in the small group setting and provide behavior interventions. The resource room tends to be less distracting than the regular classroom setting. This type of support helps ensure that the inclusion model is still in place.
Children who need intense one-to-one instruction or who are easily distracted in a regular classroom with active students may be most successful in a resource room. The resource room can also help students with specific disabilities in language or math, receive the support they need away from their peers, and then succeed in a comprehensive education setting. In resource room they get individual support in studying materials which their comprehensive education peers are studying. Secondary (6K-9K) students who need a program with significant modifications may receive reading and math instructions in resource programs.
Subject teachers of grammar (language) and mathematics provide co-taught classes to these children, where the subject teacher and the supportive teacher provide them special education and share responsibility for instruction. The teacher in the resource room is, therefore, able to concentrate on the specific area of need with some consistency.
Because the resource room removes a child from a comprehensive education classroom for even part of the day, it increases the “restrictiveness”, which goes against the principle of placing the students in the Least Restrictive Environment. For that reason, the placement of the child in the resource room is temporary. The class teacher and the supportive teacher decide on time allocated to the child for resource room support, usually a minimum of 3 hours a week in time increments of 45 minutes, depending on the age of the child. It will be very rare for a child to spend more than 50% of their day in the resource room.
The pull-out resource programs are allowed only for short-time periods to provide students with learning difficulties a tailored teacher support. In general, students might be able to receive services in a comprehensive education classroom from a special education teacher or a supportive teacher. RED/ EO and school staff should be making those decisions in the best interests of the students. Usually, a child needs to have significant difficulty with attending instructions with typical peers around them in order to qualify for a more restrictive placement of a resource room.
Often the special education teacher and the supportive teacher provide CwD support in the
comprehensive education classroom with their typical peers. In the cases where resource rooms are bigger, they are used for meetings with parents as well as for training of the parents and staff for the staff related with IE.
Supportive teachers in the resource room have a challenging role as they need to design all instruction to meet the specific needs of the students and to maximize their learning potential. The resource room or supportive teachers work closely with the child’s regular classroom teacher and the parents to ensure support is indeed helping the student to reach their full potential. The supportive teacher that works in the resource room follows the IEP and takes part in the IEP review meetings. Usually, the resource room teacher works on one-to-one, but it works with small groups as well. Students with learning disabilities are usually assessed and tested in the resource room as it provides a less distracting environment and a better chance for success. Some older students feel a stigma when they go to the resource room. However, their individual needs are usually met in the general classroom
when supportive teacher closely works with the regular classroom teacher to help support the child as much as possible.
“In our school we have created a resource room for CwD and children with learning difficulties. They work on individual basis with the supportive teachers or in group. The resource room is an ample space that allows physical movements for agitated children, who do not want to stay in the classroom. The room is furnished by the support of the project of Save the Children. The project has provided a lot of didactic and school materials for children. In the resource room, the supportive teachers work with three students with IEP. They have learning difficulties that were identified by class teachers. The children were sent for assessment to RED multidisciplinary commission, which provided us with the recommendations to provide them the support in education with IEP. In our school there have been more children with IEP but due to considerable progress they are not in IEP anymore, but are supported with differentiated education plan. One of our students with IEP has finished the compulsory school and is now attending the high school. The school commission has provided him with IEP for high school. Our school staff has benefited a lot from the training on Inclusive Education. RED of Korça has created the supportive teachers network and we are members of it. We have enrolled all CwD in our area in school. We identified them and worked for their enrollment with the civil registry office and the health centres. The school aims at becoming a champion of inclusion. In order to improve the inclusion practice, the school has done the self-evaluation with index for inclusion. The school principal and the deputies were trained by the expert contracted from the Ministry of Education and Science and Technology of Kosovo about Index for Inclusion (IFI). They organized the self-evaluation project and worked out the questionnaires for teachers, parents and children. Bullying came out as the main problem in our school. In order to fight discrimination and bullying we have worked out a plan of activities with awareness raising activities and we have involved students’ councils as the main actor for countering school violence” – Focus group with the staff of school “Agimi” in Maliq, Korça. |
