Innovations Adds School Resources for Special Education

There is a wide range of students who attend the Innovations project sister schools. Not only are students from preschool to third grade included, there are also students of different developmental trajectories. Pre-k special education teacher Jennifer Auler at Brentano Elementary and K-3 special education teacher Melissa Holland at Jordan Elementary both implement ideas from the Innovations project in their special education curriculum, and their results have been significant.

Classrooms with special education concerns pose their own specific challenges. Auler’s classroom, for example, exemplifies the scope of the entire Innovations project itself. It follows the blended preschool model, in which typically developing children share a classroom with a number of students with special needs. The students are taught by a team comprised of a special education teacher and a regular education teacher. Auler and the class’s other teacher, Jenab Patel, alternate weeks leading the class with help from classroom assistant Claribel Gonzalez. Their class also spans a wide range of ages, from two-year-olds all the way to five-year-olds.

“There is an extensive range of math ability levels among these students,