During my placement I was given a Year 9 Mathematics class to teach.

In this class was a student

with severe learning difficulties, placing them at around Year 3 or 4. As part of an integration
program this student would come to my classes once a week to socialise with other students in
addition to a learning aide. Part of their participation in class involved doing worksheets covering
early year level content, differentiating them from the rest of the class. Working with this student
made me realise how difficult differentiating to such an extent would be. My mentor recommended
that I use worksheet and materials surrounding more life based skills rather than attempting to
catch them up on the curriculum at the Year 9 level. So instead of trying to get them to reach the
ability of other students, I was making sure that they would be getting some life skills from my
classes, such as: money or tender identification and shape recognition.

At first, I felt quite out of my depth, unable to be sure of what my role is for this student. Having
seen this in multiple other placements, with at least one student among my classes with a learning
disability, its been a slow progression to confidence.

The main issue with my lack of confidence was the lack of targeted training for students with
learning disabilities. Differentiation is a big driver of different kinds of pedagogy, but different
learning styles is quite different from different levels of progression. Pedagogy often opens different
ways of conceptualising a topic, but with students with learning disabilities the issue is not that they
are learning it in a way that is not easy for them, but rather they have difficulty with conceptualising
and applying knowledge in general.

Although we often try to get students to the same equitable state, it might be necessary to shift the
goals for different students to ensure they are achieving in their own way. In the future I think I will
maintain the focus on life skills or basic skills for students with severe learning disabilities. It also
allows them to work on social intelligence with the rest of the class as well. Different students have
their our challenging goals; students with mental handicaps are no different in this respect.