My name is Jessica Huffer and I am a senior at the University of Tennessee at

Chattanooga preparing to student teach in the spring. The plan so far is to graduate in May with a
B.S. in Early Childhood education with endorsements in Middle Grades and ESL. I was born and
raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee although I call Winchester, Tennessee my home because that is
where all my family is from and I have a farm there! I have always had a passion for teaching,
going back all the way to elementary school when I used to rush to get my work done so I could
help my peers who were struggling. For my observation placement, I spent time in several
general education, inclusion classrooms and pullout classrooms at Battle Academy. Battle
Academy is a magnet school on Market Street and Main Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It
educates students pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. Battle has a 13:1 student- teacher ratio
with demographics consisting of 71% African American, 28% Caucasian, and less than 1% being
Asian and Latino. The majority of the students who go to Battle have chosen to go there by
applying for the magnet school, but there are also the percentage of students who are zoned for
the school based on their address.
My observations were very insightful and eye-opening to the vast options of learning
strategies and available programs for special education enrichment. I had placements in two
kindergarten classes, one first grade class, one fourth grade class, and two fifth grade classes. In
addition to these placements, I also spent time observing Ms. Swoop and Mrs. Wollams pullout
one-on-one lessons with kindergarten and fourth grade students. For the purpose of this portfolio,
I am going to focus on my time observing the kindergarten students since I spent the largest
amount of time with these three students.
In kindergarten, I saw more general education adaptions and accommodations than in the
rest of the grades I observed, in particular in Mrs. Challengers classroom. In her classroom there

were two young boys, age four, one of the boys already had an IEP and the other was currently
being accessed for his IEP. Of the two boys, both had behavioral problems, one with a cognitive
delay and the other with early onset Autism Spectrum Disorder. For the student with the
behavioral problems and cognitive delay, he had been given an assigned seat at the carpet which
Mrs. Challenger had marker with yellow tape. Every day, he would enter the classroom as the
bell rang, hang up his backpack, and then go and stand directly on the yellow tape and sit down
behind the line. On the days when his behavior was beginning to adversely affect the rest of the
class and his ability to participate, he would sit in his chair, which was a foldable beach chair
which was placed on the carpet in his spot, which helped to set a personal boundary and focus
his attention. In the case of the other young boy, he struggled with peer and adult interaction. For
example, he would quickly complete his assignments, but when it came time to work with a
buddy or show and share his work he would shut down and become withdrawn. Mrs.
Challengers response to helping meet the needs of this young boy was allowing him to explain
his work by either drawing a picture with labels or working the problem out in front of the class
showing every step. Both of these options where shown to the rest of the class using the ELMO
projector which was hooked up to Mrs. Challengers computer at the front of the classroom.
Now in Ms. Agees kindergarten class, I observed a young girl who was working through
a severe speech impairment, communication delay, and cognitively disabled. Now, she tried her
best to still participate in all of the classroom activities, although none of the other students could
understand anything she would say, and even Ms. Agee would struggle daily to interpret her
speech. To help build her alternative communication abilities and skills, Ms. Agee implemented a
picture exchange communication strategy, PECS, to allow her to actively engage in classroom
exercises. In the beginning, she would use the cards that Ms. Agee had given her, but as time

went on she started to draw new cards that more accurately conveyed her thoughts. This process
seemed to really work for her because over the time period I was observing her, her abilities to
interact and communicate developed and by the last observation I was able to interact and
communicate with her. Ms. Agee also built time into her morning discussion time when the
young girl would go and use a computer communication program that was programmed to help
build basic communication skills and written language.
Throughout all these observations, I gained an extraordinary amount of information and
ideas into strategies and programs that I would use in my future classroom. The most important
idea that I witnessed throughout all of my observations in the different classes was that to be an
effective and efficient special education teacher you must remain positive, calm, and reassuring
while trying to teach through even the most trying educational moments. Mrs. Challenger, Ms.
Wollam, and Mrs. Swoope would all remain smiling when no matter what trials they tried to
teach the letter w to the two young boys. They all tried different strategies to help the boys
understand the different methods to write the letter and how to pronounce it. When the boys
finally understood these skills, you could see it in all their faces, teachers and students, how hard
they had worked and how everyone found it to be rewarding.
Before this class and its observation, I had done PDS at Battle and had gotten to know the
amazing teachers at the school. What I had not been exposed to much of was the special
education and intervention portion of the school. This observation has opened my eyes to all the
different struggles of finding the right method to individually teach all students with disabilities
and/ or delays. Mrs. Swoope and Ms. Wollam, both have found that giving their students a
learning inventory helped to not only engage their students in learning, but to also help them
build intervention plans that would meet their educational and developmental needs. This

summarizes the majority of what the last two semesters of education classes have taught me. The
most important factor of planning effective lesson plans is differentiation which allows you as
the teacher to reach the maximum number of students with one lesson. This also means that for
special education teachers and resources professionals the ability to create a lesson that has the
ability to help a child in numerous different modalities.