Home | Donate Now | FAQ en Español | Tell a Friend |

In their own words
Katy Frey

Katy Frey attended the University of Pittsburgh and majored in linguistics. Katy joined Teach For America after working as a program coordinator for the America Reads Challenge Tutoring Program at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a 2004 Phoenix corps member and she taught K-4 Special Education Resource at Valley View in the Roosevelt Elementary School District.

September 30, 2005

I am teaching five different grade levels of curriculum. My students are diagnosed with everything from learning and language disabilities, to behavior disorders, to cognitive impairments. And yet, things seem to be coming together. We are building classroom community, and they all seem eager to learn. All of them, that is, except one of my first graders: Acasia.

Acasia's Individual Education Plan, or IEP, states that she has mental retardation. Her previous teacher set her goals for this year: to write her name and identify 15 letters of the alphabet.

This year will be critical in shaping the rest of Acasia's school career. If she can read simple words and do some addition by next May, she will earn herself another year of inclusion. If she continues to have difficulty with these skills, we will likely place her in a separate class designed for children with more severe disabilities. Some children flourish in these classes, and I often advocate for this placement, when it is right for the child. Special education teachers have to look at each child holistically, not just as a set of test scores. I need more time to figure out the best place for Acasia.

Acasia's huge eyes follow me around the classroom, but she refuses to speak. She hits and scratches her classmates. She shouts out in class, but never with any answer or comment that makes sense to me. But even though she won't name any letters for me, I see a flicker of recognition in her eyes when other students are naming letters. I saw her foot tapping in time to our chant when we were counting to 100.

I have little to go on but intuition at this point, but I made some ambitious academic goals for Acasia anyway. I want her reading by May. I repeat this silently, as we painstakingly trace the letters she does not recognize yet. I want her reading by May. I repeat this silently, as she sorts through our class binders, struggling to find the one that says A-C-A-S-I-A. I want her reading by May.

December 5, 2005

The energy in my class was renewed after I posted goals for everybody on the largest bulletin board in the room. I stayed after school to make a model of the solar system, and cut out tiny rocket ships and pasted pictures of the students on them. Everybody started on the sun, and is flying towards Pluto. Each time they master a goal; they can fly to the next planet. Suddenly, Eddie is reminding ME that he needs to learn 300 sight words, and Althea knows that when she finally gets a 20/20 on her subtraction test, she will be off to Venus! More students are stopping by before school to get some extra practice in, and everybody is asking for homework. The added bonus is that they are learning about space. Every Friday, when we move the rockets for any student who has mastered a goal, we read a little about the planet they are going to next.

My students, who have experienced so much failure in school, who have never made the honor roll, who are used to seeing lots of red ink on their papers, are working with goals in mind, and working hard.

We had Acasia's IEP meeting this week.

We have been tracing, singing, chanting, acting out and writing the letters of the alphabet every day and she can now identify over half of them. We set up a behavior plan in September, and she is less disruptive in class, even volunteering answers after we read a book together. When I hand out papers, the first thing she does is carefully write her name across the top, and then proudly show me.

The excitement I felt when Acasia finally wrote her name by herself in November was diminished somewhat in the context of the IEP meeting. It seemed like such a small thing there, not the result of months of hard work. She is definitely making progress, but will it be enough?

I want her reading by May. But I'm starting to worry that the goals I set for her are out of reach for this year.

March 10, 2006

We have only ten weeks of school left. The year has gone by quickly and there is still so much to learn. Most of my third and fourth graders sense the urgency also and signed up to come to special classes that will be held during spring break to prepare for the AIMS test.

My week was busy, because I had to move my classroom again. We are now sharing space with speech therapy, adult literacy, America Reads, the school bookstore and the coordinator for Federal Programs. It's also the room where they store the pickles for the lunchtime sales. My students have been awesome about the disruption, although they did ask me why we had to move into such a tiny, and noisy, space. What could I say to them? Why have we been in four classrooms in two years? Why are the students who have the most challenges with staying focused and organized, the first ones to get bumped around when space gets tight?

And of course, they asked about their rockets. There isn't a lot of room in our new classroom to dedicate a whole wall to a solar system bulletin board. I showed them the page in my grade book where I record the goals they have accomplished, but it just isn't the same for them. I have to find a space for those rockets!

Luckily I spent a lot of time going through my students' folders, to prepare for parent-teacher conferences, and this was exactly the medicine I needed to change my mood. It's hard to believe how far they have come.

Althea and Erica can subtract with double digits! Luis memorized his multiplication facts. All my fourth graders mastered long division and the scientific method. Every single child has made progress towards IEP goals, and some have completely mastered them, months ahead of schedule. But nobody has come farther than Acasia. She can count to 50 and add single digits. She has learned all the letters and sounds of the alphabet and can blend sounds together to read words like cat and jam. She can read some sight words from the first grade list! The look on a child's face the first time she "cracks the code" and suddenly recognizes a word on a page is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Seeing that look on Acasia's face was like winning a marathon.

I want her reading by May. It seemed so ambitious and far away in September, but now it is just around the corner.

Note: Some names have been changed in order to protect the privacy of individuals.

back to top