General Ed Teachers are Great

The meeting with the gen ed teachers went very well. As I walked into our meeting room I saw a gentleman sitting at a table with a laptop...I was hoping he was one of the teachers I'd be working with...and he was! Yay for me! His name is Vince and I'm excited about showing him some ways he can use technology to help his 5th grade students that are struggling. The other teacher is Carol. She confessed that she doesn't know a lot about technology but can see it's potential with her 4th graders and is just as excited about integrating technology as I had hoped. Vince was able to pull up his students' reading performance data on his laptop to show me that over 25% of his class is not reading at grade level. Carol's class has all male students and she also has more than 25% of her class that is struggling in all areas. The Special Ed supervisor wanted to try the UDL approach with these classes not only because the teachers would be great to work with but because their Middle School MEAP (Michigan's Educational Assessment Program) scores were so poor. We are hoping that by adding technology into their curriuculum we can meet the needs of more students and that will be reflected in their performance in class and on the MEAPs.