Special education can be defined as specially configured instructions and other education-related services to meet the educational, social, emotional, and vocational needs of students with disabilities. Special education teachers educate students who have various types of disabilities, including speech or language impairments, mental retardation, emotional distress, hearing impairments, orthopedic impairments, multiple disabilities, specific learning disabilities, visual impairments, autism, combined blindness and deafness, traumatic brain injury and other health problems. A special educator has to work with students of all ages, from infants and toddlers, elementary, middle, and high school students, as well as youth. The job of the special educator also involves working with a team of professionals, that is, doctors, speech therapists, social workers, orthopedists, psychiatrists, counselors, etc. Teaching methods and techniques in special education would vary depending on the disability and would also vary from individual to individual.
Teaching methods include individual instruction, problem solving techniques, group work, and special assignments based on individual needs. They may also develop individual educational programs for each student to help with the child’s activities of daily living. Since technology plays an important role in special education, a teacher is expected to instruct students and their parents in the latest instrumentations and their use in disabilities, as the case may be. For example, interactive software and talking computers are now available on the market, which would be of great help to students with speech problems. It takes a lot of enthusiasm, optimism, patience, tolerance, and perseverance to be a special education teacher, since the job involves a lot of interaction with students of all ages and with other people.
In the United States, all states require special education teachers to be licensed. The special education teacher must complete a teacher training program and must have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. As they deal with students with mild to profound disabilities, their work requires specialization in one or another area of the disability, which would allow them to develop their own curricular materials and teaching techniques to meet the needs of students.