Certificate in Educating Deaf Students with Disabilities

This course uses a disability studies approach to familiarize students with major trends and issues in special education, including: historical roots, perception of disability, policies impacting students with disabilities, labeling, overrepresentation, and discipline. Other topics in the course include developing Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), examining instructional practices, and working with families. This course will prepare teacher candidates to work with children and youth with a broad range of disabilities and educational needs.

This course introduces students to a variety of classroom management approaches and techniques, with an emphasis on working with students who have disabilities. Students are provided with a foundation and background in behavior management and discipline in special education. They will also consider theories and techniques that apply to individual students, classroom communities, and schoolwide communities.

In this course students will examine current trends and concerns which characterize the changing American family and draw implications for education, students with disabilities, and their families. They will examine family, community and school structures, patterns and relationships. Students will explore a variety of theories, concepts, principles and models utilized when implementing effective family, school, and community partnership, in addition to collaboration among IEP team members and when working with other professionals regarding students and families with special and diverse needs. Students will identify and discuss the uses and applications of community and school resources in supporting families and students with disabilities. They will also learn and simulate techniques for interacting with parents and examine collaboration strategies for interdisciplinary team efforts. In addition, students will focus on topics/challenges that face families with children with disabilities such as: sibling support, respite care, financial planning, transition planning, independent living and IEP meetings.

This course is designed to prepare graduate level students to address issues of language and literacy development for students with disabilities, with an emphasis on deaf children with disabilities. Topics include language and communication disorders, augmentative and alternative communication systems, cultural influence on language and literacy development, and how language and communication impact classroom performance. The course will inform students about augmentative and alternative communication systems for use by individuals who do not have or are limited in expressive language, whether it is ASL or English.

This course provides an overview of functional academics for deaf students with disabilities. Topics include teaching vocational skills, teaching life skills, supporting motor development, supporting social-emotional development, developing transition plans, and selecting assistive technology devices. Course assignments are designed to allow students to apply these concepts in their current teaching setting.

This course reviews what it means to be an effective teacher and introduces the concepts of universal design for learning (UDL) as well as differentiation to meet the needs of deaf students who have disabilities. Further studied is the concept of multiple literacies and access to content and opportunity for the development of literate and metacognitive thought. The lesson plan format is augmented with the development of tiered lessons by addressing three levels of content, process and/or product expectations as determined by interest level, learning style, or readiness. In addition, candidates will become familiar with a variety of instructional strategies for evidence-based practice in general and special education, the hierarchy of cognitive applications in Bloom's Taxonomy, Barbara Given's 5 natural learning systems, Robert Sternberg's Triarchic Intelligence model, as well as Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences. Candidates are taught to encourage a) self regulation and other self-determination skills in their students, b) social interaction and true discussion as a method for developing metacognition and c) developing receptive and expressive learning pathways for academic discourse.

Students will focus on concepts and methods of assessment in special education with an emphasis on administering, scoring, interpreting, and reporting on standardized educational tests. Emphasis will be placed on administration and interpretation of formal and informal diagnostic procedures, diagnostic reports, IEP development, and professional ethics.