Kelly (Adler) Saad
Ralph Waldo Emerson | Self-Contained Autism, third to eighth grades
How long have you been teaching? 14 years
What inspired you to be a teacher? When I was little, my best friend and I would play school and I knew I wanted to be a teacher then. When I was in junior high, my mom was a secretary at my school and she always worked summer school. Her friend was a speech therapist but taught a self-contained preschool class during summer, and I always volunteered. It was my first summer working with that class that I knew I wanted to teach students with special needs.
What is your greatest joy in teaching? As a self-contained teacher, I often get to keep my students for multiple years. Throughout the years we have together, I get to see them grow and achieve their IEP goals and become independent learners.
What about the greatest challenge? The greatest challenge is having such a wide age/grade span in my class. Not only am I balancing all the different curriculums, but I also have to ensure that there is a wide variety of high-interest level games, activities and tasks.
What if a student can have only one takeaway from time spent in your classroom, what would it be? To have confidence in themselves and know that they are capable of anything.