Meighan Quinn

Final Growth EDUG 789

Due: Wednesday May 7th 2014

I am so happy that I took this course. I feel that I grew as an educator during
this semester because of this course. I am currently a first year teacher in the Bronx. I
am teaching in a general education class and I hope to one day be in a special
education setting. I think overall this class was interesting and very educational and I
learned not only from the teacher, but from the entire class. Learning how to write and
IEP was the most beneficial part of this course for me. Before this course I had no idea
how to write goals for an IEP. I struggled at the beginning when I started writing the
goals. I know how important the goals are based on the students I have in my class. I
have made personal goals with them that are related to their IEP so that they can feel
they achieved something if they cant finish a task. I had logged onto SESIS before, but
I did not know how to create my own goals for an IEP. Starting this month I have to go
to annual review meetings and update IEPS. I feel better equipped to add comments to
my students IEPS after writing one for my student. I am also glad that we not only
wrote goals, but we wrote a lot of pieces for an IEP! Hopefully I will be in a special
education class one day and I will need to write countless IEPS. I am glad I took this
course and learned how to write one.
I love that I got the opportunity to give Isaac the WIATT and write an IEP for
him. I have been tutoring Isaac for the past year and he has grown tremendously. He

is such a wonderful student to work with. Last year he was in a yeshiva school and his
mother decided to put him into a special education school in the city. I think it was the
best decision she could have made. Since he has been at this new school he
comprehends so much more and remembers almost everything! I learned so much
about him as a student after giving him the WIATT, and I think if I gave it to him now he
would do so much better. Since I only tutor him, I am not able to see him in a classroom
setting. Now that I have test results as well as an IEP, it will be easier for me to drive
the focus of my tutoring sessions. Having actual goals for Isaac will make it easier to
work with him. I know that he needs to specifically work on reading comprehension so I
have set a goal for him that targets where he needs to be with reading comprehension
by the end of the year. I have shared that goal with him and his mother so she can work
with him when I am not there. It makes the focus better for him as well because he has
an attainable goal and he knows that he has to be able to reach it by the end of the
year.
I also loved that we got to experience so many different hands on lesson
plans. It was great that we did it in math and in ELA. I feel like it is easy to do a handson reading lesson in the lower because you can have a read aloud, but it is difficult for
the upper grades. I am so glad that so many groups did lessons for the upper grades so
that I can use them with my class! It was great to see all of the different teachers in the
class give lesson plans based on their population. Since I have so many students in my

class it is very difficult to do hands on lessons with them. There were so many great
ideas that I learned from this class that I want to use in my classroom!