How All Teachers Can Support Students With Disabilities

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How all teachers can support students with disabilities

By Alexa Quinn, Lindsey McLean and Susan Aigotti

Categories: Advocacy/policy, Coaching, Equity

October 2023

Martin Green is a passionate 5th-grade teacher with four years of experience. He co-teaches with Tina Murphy, who supports students with disabilities. Despite their best efforts to improve all students’ mathematics learning — including strategies using visuals and meeting with students in small groups — Green worries his instruction is not meeting the needs of all his students, especially students like Jeremy. Jeremy is a bright and charismatic student with mathematics and attention difficulties who tries his best but often becomes discouraged when facing most word problems. Jeremy gets support from Murphy for about 30 minutes a day, but she and Green know that time is not sufficient to cover all the mathematics concepts in depth. Green wishes he and Murphy could better support Jeremy

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