Jessica Saum is a passionate, empathetic, inspirational teacher. It is quite obvious why she is the 2022 Arkansas Teacher of the Year. There is nothing typical about a typical day in her classroom. She is creating an environment where students will feel empowered, challenged, and supported to succeed. Jessica prioritizes providing her students the experience to participate in general education classrooms as well as real-world experiences. She shares what inclusion should truly look like, not just putting someone in the room.
In This Episode We Cover
- Starting every day with a morning meeting, a song, and movement together. Remember why we are at school and what to expect for the day.
- Navigating different learning modalities and designing best practices to support students.
- Creating real-world experiences to practice skills students are not able to enjoy outside of school.
- She vividly describes what inclusion is NOT and how we can best create environments to help students reach success.
- Stories of how raising the expectations for students can have a massive impact.
- Strategies for regular education students to successfully included special education students.
- Using key cards for each student to identify important information to help that student reach success.
- Setting realistic expectations of growth so we can gradually pull back support from students.
- Efforts to support our military families.