Understanding Special Education Terms

Video Transcript

"If a child is LD, they're learning disabled. If they are OHI, they're health impaired and that's usually your things like a significant ADHD diagnosis or it could be Tourette's or any other medical diagnosis would get you an OHI label. You can also be BED which is behaviorally and emotionally disturbed and then we're kind of getting away from the mentally retarded label which is MR or just make it a little bit more politically correct and so now we just say that you are entitled to have an IEP. But when I'm teaching my kids, we don't really have special terms or anything that we use with them because we do want them to feel as much as a part of the regular classroom as they can and so we teach in a similar way it's just simplified. Some of them are smart enough to know that they struggle and some of them hate coming here because it sets them apart from their peers. Others are really frustrated in the classroom and so whenever I show up at the door it's like finally I can go do something that I can actually do and I found that a lot of the kids they kind of feel like this is a safe space and so when they come in here they know I'm not going to give them work that's too hard for them and that I'm going to help them whereas sometimes in their regular classroom the expectations are so high that they just can't meet them."