By Kyle Erway
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
“A perfect fit” is how first-year teacher Megan Gardner describes her special education placement at Edgewood Elementary School in Harford County.
“I love watching children grow,” says the 24-year-old Gardner who works with Pre-K children with cognitive development disabilities. “I love working with kids through play. Seeing them learn things is one of the most amazing things you can ever witness.”
But then COVID-19 began its deadly crawl through Maryland and the rest of the country and world last year, forcing Gov. Larry Hogan to shut school doors and force teachers and school children onto the internet.
Gardner told The Baltimore Watchdog she saw her intersectional identity as a special educator in her first year of teaching challenged. Young children learn by touching, interacting with peers, exploring, seeing, and examining tangible objects. The pandemic nearly decimated the children’s typical world and forced Gardner to think creatively to find ways to connect over the internet.
Her 3- to 5-year-old students found it difficult to understand that their teacher was trying to instruct them on the internet, a device many use for merely play. Teaching virtually is a bit of a challenge for any student of any age, but especially for one under the age of 6 who doesn’t grasp the concept of remote learning, Gardner explains.
In addition, it was “very difficult” for Gardner to learn the curriculum for in-person instruction then translate that to a virtual environment. To assume students would be able to learn at the same rate virtually as they do in an in-person setting is unrealistic, she insists.
A consoling thought for Gardner, however, is that students, parents, and teachers alike – everyone – have experienced major growing pains in the nationwide effort to ensure students learn during the pandemic.
“At such a young age, it took a while for my students, in the beginning of the school year, to understand that their teacher was trying to teach them through a computer screen,” Gardner explains. “A lot of it was gaining the parents help and attention as much as possible for their children to attend to what we were asking from them from the computer screen.”
Gardner says that despite the children’s earlier confusion about virtual learning, she did see in retrospect considerable improvement in her students’ attention span towards the latter stages of the virtual learning period.
Relief came at a press conference on Jan. 21. Hogan and Superintendent of Maryland Public Schools, Karen Salmon, announced on that day that schools would reopen to hybrid learning by March 1, mainly because of the increase in vaccinations and decrease in Covid-19 cases and deaths.
Pre-academic learning skills have been soaring since the return to in-person learning, Gardner says with a mixture of pride and relief. The children no longer must balance learning how to operate and navigate a computer along with their regular classroom instruction.
“The most amazing thing I’ve seen throughout the school year is seeing how easily my students can transition and acclimate to the two types of learning that we’ve done throughout the school year,” Gardner exclaims.
“A lot of our curriculum that we teach is play-based and social interaction-based and having to do that through a computer screen was not easy, so a lot of the time I felt my students weren’t making any progress. [However], being able to see them in person and see the things that you taught them through a computer screen first-hand and being able to be with my students and have that social interaction with them has definitely been the most enjoyable thing with this school year,” she excitedly shares.
Gardner lives in Abingdon in Harford County and began her teaching career this fall at Edgewood. She earned a bachelor’s degree in science of elementary education and special education from Towson University’s North Eastern campus in the fall of 2019.
Gardner taught in a pre-school setting throughout her four years of college. She loved her special education placement training at Harford County’s Fallston Middle School. It was at this school that she realized her passion for teaching young students with learning disabilities.
“After I did my special education placement at Fallston Middle School in my last semester of college, I realized how much I enjoyed working in the specific field of special education,” Gardner declares. “My mentor was a great leader and gave me such great insights on the special education world and it just felt like the right fit for me.”
Last summer, Gardner says she “made the jump” and applied for a special education position.
“I got offered a Pre-K position and felt very lucky considering I had a lot of experience working with young kids with my previous job,” she says.
Kelly Williams, a fellow first-year Edgewood Elementary special educator, says she shares Gardner’s enthusiasm.
“Meg [Gardner] has been really great dealing with the craziness of the school year,” Williams says. “Especially with our kids being so young, she’s taken on the multiple roles of being a teacher while balancing a whole new virtual world while just starting a new career.
“Now that our kids are back in person, it’s really great to see what she’s been able to teach virtually has come to fruition now that they are in person and are showing those skills. She’s been positive this whole time and it’s really nice to be surrounded by that,” Williams adds.
While there is no set curriculum or material special educators must teach their students, Gardner admits there is a specific methodology that’s used to teach anything and everything. This approach is called the “Applied Behavior Approach,” or ABA, which is based on improving communication and social interaction skills.
ABA is most effective when working in conjunction with another methodology called, “Errorless Teaching,” which entails introducing a new skill such as interacting with other students. Teachers explicitly teach that one skill until students become familiar with it, then, once that skill is taught, teachers will distract students with other skills they’ve previously mastered and then reintroduce the previous skill to test if it’s been retained by students.
“We use ABA [Applied Behavioral Approach], for the Pre-K program,” Gardner explains. “Our curriculum is focused on communication. There is not set curriculum, but we use an ABA approach with everything we teach.”
Communication is one of the most foundational aspects of early learning that special educators must teach their students, Gardner says. She explains that most often the children lack the cognitive capability to communicate their needs and thoughts to whomever is around them – whether a parent, teacher, etc.
The arrangements of classrooms for special education students are like those of general educators, Gardner says. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought modifications to ensure the health and safety of all students once the transition from virtual to in-person learning was made.
Gardner’s classroom has taken on a new look. Cabinets filled with toys and other learning materials, which in the past were go-to spots for energetic youngsters are now kept shut and locked to avoid student injuries. However, the traditional alphabet, numbers, and shapes posters still are plastered around the room to create a livelier learning space. A birthday poster hangs from a popular spot on the wall to proclaim the birthday of every student in class. And, as parents fondly remember from their childhood school days, common objects are labeled throughout the room.
“A typical day in my Pre-K special education classroom is very busy,” she says. “When I arrive, I first have to make sure the room is spotless and clean and COVID-friendly especially now as we’re in the midst of a global pandemic.
“I need to make sure all my students’ materials and toys are all in their bins as during the pandemic our children are not allowed to play in the same areas together or have that peer interaction, which is sad, but also it is in the best interest to keep our children healthy and safe,” Gardner says.
However, one longtime tradition has been tabled until COVID-19 clears. There is no carpet around the white board where students typically gather around for “circle time.” Gardner says students find it difficult to sit for long periods of time. The carpets had symbolized freedom the children once cherished.
Also, Gardner says students now interact at two group tables where they also eat their snacks separately from each other. Four tables with dividers in between keep students separated while they do their work.
Students also only attend in-person classes Mondays through Thursdays and each student in the Special Education Department has a teacher who works one-on-one with them to help them learn pre-academic skills and concepts.
“Once our kids arrive to school, we work with them for half the day as I have two groups of children who’re both half days since they’re in Pre-K,” Gardner explains.
The COVID-19 changes have not been a picnic for teachers either. There are five teachers in the room at one time who share an extended desk space where they keep their personal belongings as well as student files and school calendars.
Teachers get a 2 ½ hour break between their sessions and use that time to analyze student data, answer emails, make phone calls to parents, ensure the room is clean for the next group of students, and collaborate with other special educators to bounce around ideas and teaching techniques.
As a first-year special education teacher, Gardner says she has learned to simply ask for help from more experienced special educators when she needs assistance on how to go about handling specific situations because, “coming out of college you have this sense that I got this job. I know what I’m supposed to do. I can be independent, but, in reality, there aren’t a lot of things you get to learn in college because you have to be in the actual setting to be fully immersed with what you have to do as a teacher.”
Assistance for Gardner came in the form of veteran special educator Erin Hood when she helped Gardner navigate a crucial part of being a special educator, the Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings. During these sessions, teachers draft specific personalized plans tailored to each student’s particular cognitive disability.
“In the beginning of the year, I was able to show Megan the ropes of booking IEP meetings on the excel sheet that we use as an agenda,” Hood explains. “Giving her names of support and staff and staff around the county to have as a reference to book IEP meetings that would be able to chair was super beneficial to her and for the future when meetings need to be held.
“As a new teacher you understand that IEPs are a part of the job description, but the mundane tasks of booking meetings, filling out forms for meetings, etc. you have to be explicitly taught,” Hood adds. “With this school year being crazy, [with virtual learning], that skill gets forgotten, especially as a new teacher when you don’t realize what you have to do to book those meetings. I’m glad I was able to help, and now we all know how to hold IEP meetings properly.”
Gardner stresses, “It does help [to ask questions] throughout your day and throughout your career because you’re able to prioritize what is important and what’s not.”
One strategy of Gardner’s is to constantly create ‘to-do’ lists and mark calendars for important dates to keep organized with all the tasks that should be completed.
Although teaching during the pandemic was a challenge for Gardner who talked candidly and openly about how she felt physically and emotionally drained when forced to communicate through virtual means during the darkest days of the pandemic, she now sees her own growth.
“It makes you get in your head a little bit; this isn’t what teaching is supposed to be,” Gardner says, “and I’m not being a good role model for my students.”
Gardner’s father, Steve Gardner says he’s witnessed his daughter working through various issues during her time as a virtual special educator. These issues are wide-ranging, but primarily centered around technological difficulties such as showing parents and students how to use Zoom for class meetings and circumventing scheduling issues with students when the parents were being unresponsive.
Gardner acknowledges she has room for growth and has set a personal goal “to continue to be as confident as I can in myself personally and as a teacher.”
Although she says, “it’s easy for anyone to lose confidence when operating in a new environment because not knowing exactly what to do in any given circumstance can evoke feelings of incompetency.”
The biggest piece of advice Gardner says she’d give to aspiring future special education teachers is to “be confident in what you’re doing and don’t be afraid to ask questions.” Don’t expect, being fresh out of college, to know everything, she says. Ask questions.
Educators are used to teaching their students new information, but Gardner says the one thing that her students this year have taught her is to be more patient and understanding because “especially with their language barriers you kind of have to take a step back and take things slow and in a step-by-step process.”