Catherine Danielczyk Interview

The first part of the interview focuses on Catherine’s background including how many years she has been a teacher and why she chose to work with special needs children; she answers questions regarding the size of the class and how the special education classroom is structured at her school; she talks about why it’s important to integrate special needs students with the other children and how it helps them socialize; Catherine then talks about the many challenges to teaching special education including learning how to handle when children misbehave and dealing with being treated and looked at differently than other teachers by parents, administrators as well as other teachers; the next segment of the interview discusses individual education plans or IEPs and who is involved in the process of making them for each student; she also talks about what happens when children move onto middle school and high school and how their progress is evaluated as they reach higher levels of schooling; education funding as it pertains specifically to the school which Catherine teaches as well in the state of Illinois across other districts is discussed next; she makes it clear how important adequate funding is for schools especially in the special education department; the last part of the interview goes into technology and how it has changed from when Catherine first started teaching to where it is now and how it has helped students learn; the interview closes with Catherin’s feelings on being a special education teacher and why it’s important to her that she makes a difference in the lives of children.