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RUNNING HEAD: Individual Differences Student Profile

Individual Difference Student Profile

Bryton Bogart

Instructor: Natalie Raass

EDUC 230 Intro to Special Education

Fall 2018
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Individual Differences Student Profile
Individual Difference Student Profile

During this fall semester, I had the opportunity to observe a little girl whom I will refer to

as Suzie. I was able to observe Suzie in her 3rd grade classroom in one of the public schools in

Eastern Idaho. Suzie is a 10 year old girl who learns in a general education classroom. Suzie is

deaf, but uses hearing aids in both ears. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss Suzie’s

general information, physical development, cognitive development, socio-emotional

development, and provide a summary of my observational findings.

General Information

As before mentioned, Suzie is 10 years old. Suzie has a hearing disability. She is

hearing impaired in both of her ears. I wasn’t able to find out specifics on her deafness if it was

congenital or not. This requires her to wear hearing aids in both ears. She relies solely on these

hearing aids to do anything in the classroom. Suzie is in the general education 3rd grade

classroom. She arrives at school around 8:00am and eats free breakfast provided by the school.

She’s at the school from 8:00am to 4:10pm. Suzie lives with her mother, but there wasn’t much

mention of her family members. She mentioned that she had a brother, but from the context that I

gathered, the brother doesn’t live with them. I wasn’t able to get much information on what kind

of family life that she lives from Suzie herself. Suzie’s teacher, whom I will call Mrs. Jones,

stated that Suzie’s mom was not very helpful with Suzie’s education. Suzie never stated anything

about her father in her life, so I assumed that Suzie’s father has no part in her life.

Physical Development

Suzie is physically the same as her classmates and her peers. Because Suzie is deaf, her

speech isn't as developed. She has a hard time with "ch" sounds and "st" sounds. She has pull out

times with a speech therapist to help her speak better. She doesn’t have any scars from a cochlea
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that I could see-I looked for that because she is very good at speaking so I figured there might be

an implant. From what I observed, she didn't have a cochlear implant.

Suzie is deaf/hard of hearing. She has FM hearing aids in both ears that help her to hear

things better. Her hearing aids are pink and purple with a blue cord that sits behind her ear. One

day that I observed her, her hearing aids weren't working. This made it harder for Suzie to hear

and she wasn't as focused. When talking to Suzie, you had to make sure that she was paying

attention or looking at you or she wouldn't be able to understand. She reads lips very well.

Suzie is right handed. She writes very well and her writing is legible for being a 3rd

grader. She doesn’t have the greatest handwriting, but writes easily with her fine motor skills.

Suzie has regularly functioning small muscle development. She holds a pencil, scissors, and a

glue stick correctly. She can open doors and pull her hair into a pony tail.

Suzie doesn't have very good physical and nutritional habits. She eats a lot of sugars and

candy as she gets them for doing things as a reward often. She doesn't enjoy running in PE, only

when she has the opportunity to compete with someone in her class. She runs normally so she

doesn’t have any atonic muscles. Suzie plays in PE with her classmates and peers. She can jump

up and down on a big ball for a full court length. Suzie can roll a ball into a hula-hoop, toss a

beanbag, and (attempt) to shoot a basketball. She gets tired often because she doesn't have good

health habits, so she will often take a break and sit for a few minutes before joining into physical

activity. During recess, she does a lot of imaginative activities such as pirate ships and plays with

toys she brings from home.

Cognitive Development

Suzie is in a regular classroom for most of her day. She goes to a resource room for

speech for about 25 minutes every day, but has been in the mainstream classroom for all of her
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schooling. She is smart in her classwork and gets B grades on just about every assignment. She

does very well at reading and decoding words that she doesn't know well. Alongside her reading

skills, she excels at multiplication facts. She enjoys doing her classwork in all of her areas. One

of the struggles that Suzie has in her work is she does work by a lot of memorization. For

example, when they were doing math, she copied the structure for each problem but changed the

numbers to fit the situation of the problem.

Suzie has motivation to do basic work. She doesn't whine or complain when she's given

work to do and doesn't have any significant behaviors that need to be monitored constantly. Her

attention span tends to be short on some lectures. She does a lot better when she can just do her

work independently, but then she struggles getting the right answer. She doesn't like to sit and

and listen during a lecture because she says she doesn't understand. I think that this is because

she can't hear and when the teacher goes to write things on the board and she also can't read her

lips. When she knows her answers are right, she is excited to answer and participate in classroom

discussion. She has good initiative when it comes to staying on task and getting her work done in

a timely manner.

Suzie is in the concrete operational stage in Piaget's cognitive development. When Suzie

thinks about things, she thinks very visual. Because she doesn't hear well, she understands things

a lot better than if she can physically see them. During her mathematic thinking, she has to use

her fingers and counters rather than putting the numbers in her brain. She is good at

memorization when that is the only topic they're going over. For example, she started to multiply

things when they needed added because she was so focused on multiplication and couldn't add as

quickly as she could multiply. When she is learning, she has to see physical examples and have it

in front of her to copy. She catches on quickly and connects ideas well. When we were in the
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general classroom, she was able to connect ideas in the resource room that were discussed in the

general classroom.

Socio-emotional Development

Suzie has the socio-emotional development of a regular child in some aspects. When

Suzie interacts with those around her, she has a hard time expressing her feelings in a way that

the other person can understand. Her interactions with adults is slim, meaning she doesn't

interact often with adults other than her teacher and her special education teacher. It frustrates

her when she can't talk to someone because they don't understand her. In one circumstance, Suzie

was in PE class and was trying to tell the teacher that one of her classmates were cheating but the

teacher didn't understand. The teacher just nodded and acted like she knew what was going on

when in reality, the teacher had no idea what Suzie was saying. With her interactions with the

adults that she trusts and that she likes, she interacts normally and asks questions. She enjoys

having conversations and is very excited when she talks to someone who is interested in hearing

what she says. As far as peer interactions, a lot of Suzie's peers treat her as if she is a baby or has

a handicap. When they talk to her they talk as if she's a baby and she can't understand what they

are saying. This makes Suzie feel like all of her peers like her, but you can tell she doesn't enjoy

being babied by her classmates. She interacts and plays with them just as a normal kid

would. She has a great imagination and is very creative in making games and playing with other

students.

Because Suzie is so confident, she has very good self-esteem and self-concept. Suzie

knows that she has a disability and she uses it to her benefit. When Suzie doesn't feel like doing

an assignment, she will pretend to ignore the teacher or will act as if she doesn't understand.

Later, Suzie will go in the resource room to catch up and she will fully understand and not need
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any explanations because she feels as if she can work. This is kind of a learned helplessness that

she has learned to manipulate. Suzie is a happy student and knows that she is smart. While

during pull out time, Suzie told her special education teacher that she was a genius, confidently.

She has good self-concept and self-esteem and she isn't afraid to show strangers how happy and

confident she is.

At this stage in her life, I think that Suzie is in the Industry vs. Inferiority stage in

Erikson's stages of socio-emotional development. In this stage, she feels a lot of pride in the

work that she does. There were a lot of things that Suzie would do in the classroom and stand up

and make sure that everyone saw. I received multiple pictures and drawings that Suzie was proud

to draw for me and sign her name. I think that Suzie is very confident and is in the industry part

of this stage.

Summary of Findings and Implications

Suzie is smart and is being taught well in the general classroom. She struggles in her

home life in having support in her education. Once she starts to get older, I think that Suzie is

going to struggle understanding her disability. With her hearing aids, they are the only thing

helping her to learn. Because she is only in the 3rd grade, she is still in a important learning stage

where she is still susceptible to different learning styles. With her home life, she is not receiving

the extra help that she needs to develop a well rounded education. When Suzie is listening to her

teacher give a lecture in the classroom, it is hard for her to understand what the teacher is saying

when her hearing aids aren’t working so she tends to not pay attention. Because of this, she falls

behind in her classwork causing her to have a large pileup of work that she has to do. With her

work not being completed in class, she has to then take that work home. The lack of support in
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her schoolwork, her mother doesn’t help with homework so it doesn’t get finished. This seems to

be a problem that is on a never ending loop for Suzie and Mrs. Jones.

The areas in which Suzie learns and is, lies on the lines of a typical student. Generally,

Suzie learns at the same rate as the students in her class. She has the same cognitive

development as her classmates from what I could observe. As far as physical development,

Suzie has bad health habits causing her to be less healthy than the rest of her classmates. When

Suzie goes out to recess, she tends to sit a lot and not run and play with her friends. Suzie does

have friends, but from what I saw, they tend to pity her for having a disability. They treat her as

she is a baby and they only play with her because they feel like they have to please their

teachers. This plays with her socio-emotional development because she doesn’t have friends to

support her. That social support would help her to gain confidence in multiple different areas in

her life.

Suzie is smart. She knows how to manipulate the educational system to work the best for

her benefit. She is also very creative and artistic. She loves to draw and do art projects. Once she

left school early in the middle of an art project that the class was doing. She wanted to do the

project so bad that her teacher finished one for her and made an extra so that when she came

back to school the next day, Suzie would have one that she could take home and color. With her

artistic creativity and her smarts, I think that Suzie has so many educational strengths that are

going to help her later in life. Although Suzie has many strengths, there are also some

weaknesses that tend to show with her.

Alongside Suzie’s exceptional talents, she struggles most with her speech when it comes

to physical struggles. Suzie has pull out time at least twice a week where she goes into the

speech therapy room and practices words and word sounds. Her teacher makes sure that she is
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forming her mouth to make the right noises and that the letters make the right sound when they

are placed together. This is the implication where I would assume that it states in her

Individualized Educational Learning Plan (IEP) that she needs to have speech therapy to help

her speak more clearly. She speaks as though she has never heard words before and what they

sound like, therefore her speaking isn’t as clear and concise of that of a regular student.

From an observer, I feel that there are many different strategies that can be used to make

sure that Suzie is receiving the most out of her education. I think that the main one I would

recommend is allowing Suzie to learn and use sign language. This oralism-manualism debate is

highly argued in school systems, but I feel that she would be more able to pay attention and not

have to worry about the technical difficulties that come along with the use of hearing aids. This

could also help her to feel more included in conversation and discussion with her teacher if she

was to have an interpreter that would help her to make sure that she was fully understanding

what the teacher was saying. This would be the most beneficial if, in the home, Suzie’s family

would use it to speak with her and to communicate different thoughts and emotions that Suzie

might not understand. Another strategy could be for her to have a person to constantly guide her

along in her work because she has a hard time focusing. The teacher said that as I sat with her,

Suzie was more interactive with the class than she had ever been because I was there to remind

her to watch and to help her when she didn’t understand. I feel that just having someone there to

guide her in her schoolwork would make all of the difference in her education.

In conclusion, I feel that the time that I spent with Suzie was valuable for both her and

myself. There are many different areas in which Suzie excels in her learning, but because of her

hearing impairment she chooses to segregate herself from the world. The teachers and students in

her school see her as disabled, meaning unable to carry out any mental function. Suzie is smart
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and talented, and she deserves to have the greatest education that can be provided for her. I feel

that if there is a jumpstart in Suzie’s education now, while she is younger, she will be able to

succeed to her full potential through her educational career.

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References

Hallahan, D. P., Kauffman, J. M., & Pullen, P. C. (2019). Exceptional learners: An introduction

to special education. NY, NY: Pearson.