As I have mentioned I teach elementary music for an at risk school district on Long Island. My duties involve grades 1-2 and special ed classes in 3 different buildings. 14 periods out of 36 a week end up being a special learning environment. I teach students from all different scopes. This includes speech and hearing problems, multiple learning disabilities, emotionally disturbed children, and my personal fave- the autisim spectrum.
Mondays tend to be one hell of a day because I have 4 special ed classes in a row. The first two periods are the students who lie somewhere within the autisim spectrum. These classes tend to be like night and day. One week they will just be so into whatever lesson I have prepared, the next they are banging their heads off of a desk and screaming. Today just happened to be one of those off days. Both classes were like walking into a vortex of hell. No music making took place. Every time we tried an instrument went flying.
While on the one hand this situation can be thoroughly entertaining because kids say and do the darndest things, for the most part, it is very sad. I want to do nothing more than to help these kids. I feel even worse for the parents. Often times it is just one parent, a single mother, who is at her witts end with what to do. I wish I was more prepared to teach these children. I wish doctors would find out more about this sad condition.
On the other hand, it can be very rewarding. Last year one of my Aut classes ended up working up a choreographed dance to be put into a show. We brought down the house! After the concert a mother came up to me in tears and told me how she was just so amazed because her child didn't speak a word until he was 4 and now he was performing in front of the entire school. That statement was the highlight of my 4 year teaching career.
I just wish my undergraduate degree prepared me on how to teach music to special learners. I just find it so fascinating.