Collaboration among Parents, Professionals and Paraprofessionals

1. Collaboration among Parents, Professionals and Paraprofessionals

2. Collaboration • To be an effective teacher of learners with severe disabilities you have to be able to work collaboratively with other teachers, related professionals, parents or other family members and paraprofessionals. • Teamwork is therefore critical to successful teaching.

3. There is a great need for parents, teachers, paraprofessional and other professionals to not only communicate but to work together as a collaborative team. • It is necessary for teachers of learners with severe disabilities (LSDs) to be aware and sensitive of parents’ concerns and needs, by making use of the collaborative teams in the schools.

4. Meaningful collaboration What parents want - Hearing positive things about their child and being proud of them - Giving their child a good education and a successful chance in life so they can have abetter future than they had - Having a good relation ship with their child and feel that they are good parents POSITIVE EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES • What teachers want • - Providing all learners with the best learning opportunities by giving learners new challenges and experiences through different activities • - Build positively on the learners self image and having a good relationship with parents and learners • - To feel satisfy about their teaching ethos and feel they are good teachers What learners want - Pleasing their teachers and parents and to make them proud - Learning new things and being able to make choices on their own when given the opportunity e - Being accepted as part of a group and being active involved in activities with their peers Strong relationship Effective learning

5. These circles are of equal size to indicate that they all play an equally important role in the education process. • It is also important to realize that each of these role players bring their own beliefs, attitudes and values to the situation, and that they need to feel safe in order to explore, share, challenge and rethink some of them. • If role-players understand where each other come from, it is easier to plan how to work together (Bornman & Rose, 2009).

6. In order to be an effective team member, educators should also be able to understand the roles of other professionals such as the special educator, physiotherapist (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs), psychologists and speech-language therapists (SLPs). • Only when it is understood what each profession can contribute to the teaching context can we start to work together collaboratively.

7. Group work - Be creative! How can parents be encouraged to participate in collaborative team activities? • Case discussions on their child with severe disabilities • Open days at school • Parent evenings • Training workshops and courses for parents - understanding severe disabilities, helping the child at home • Support groups - other parents with LSD child • School-related activities - Parent Teacher Association, school trips, attendance at assembly programmes, fund-raising.

8. Collaboration is a process by which people with different levels and areas of expertise work together to identify needs and problems and then find ways to meet these needs and to solve problems.

9. Collaboration may occur between two people e.g. the special educator and general teacher, but ideally collaborative teams should consist of parents, paraprofessionals and several other professionals who work together on behalf of individual students. • It is also important not to forget the child as part of this process.

10. Effective collaborative teams have no single leader; leadership roles are distributed and rotated among all members. Specialists or experts have no extra authority; they are “only members” of the team. Everyone in the group engages in collaborative consultation/expert and consultee/recipient role and modelling learning as well as teaching.

11. Features of successful collaboration • Collaboration requires of all involved to listen to each other • Good communication • to respects each other’s right, • to create safe learning environments where teachers strive to support learners and where parents support teachers, • and finally to strive to help and assist each other Working as a team

12. Sharing expertise and resources is by far the more economical and sensible way to problem-solve your teaching difficulties.

13. Read these features again and then define each one in your own words. • Concern for mutual goals means…. • Recognition of diverse areas of expertise means… • Sharing expertise means… • Equality of team members means…… • Decision-making by consensus means….. • Shared responsibility and accountability means….

14. The initial step in collaboration is deciding which particular goals or objectives are suitable for the LSDs. Starting off to imagine it……………..