Special Education and Youth Sports

Mark S.

I have over five years of experience utilizing both academic and athletic training to establish an environment where the student and I work as partners to establish an environment where I can be assured that the student maximizes his or her potential. Of course, the road to success is different with each student, and there are often bumps in the road which can cause frustration along the way, but I found that when the student fights through that bump, the learning is maximized.

For 5 years, I dedicated one and a half hours per student per week day, or seven and one half hours total,tutoring five special education students. The students, four boys and one girl, ranged in age from twelve to seventeen. Focusing on basic mathematics, reading, and writing lessons, I achieved positive results by adapting those lessons to each student's interests and personality. This did not happen over night, however, as it took time to learn about each student and what motivated them. As an example, I had one boy who was distracted by his parents impending divorce. I was brought in to help him study, as his grades fell off, and he lost complete interest in any studying. I helped turn his results around by discovering his love for baseball, and how it related to his studies. Fortunately that lead to a sharp increase in his grades, and he was competing with the best students by the end of the school year. As a direct result of my work with him, I received six referral's all whom I taught as well.

Whether I choose to use more academic or athletic training to help get the message across is different with each student. The student is often very helpful in the beginning pointing out his or her interests, and I develop a lesson plan that takes advantage of these interest, and how I relate them to the subject matter at hand.

Obviously, I also have to like tutoring, and there is no better feeling than when a student crosses a borde