There’s something people don’t tell you about being a special education teacher: It can feel lonely. We’re often left out of schoolwide instructional conversations. We don’t always have mentors who understand our setting. And there’s still resistance in some buildings to true inclusion and co-teaching, presenting barriers to teaching reading to disabled students.

But when it comes to reading, especially in special education, we celebrate small victories. A student decoding her first word. Another raising his hand to read aloud. A reluctant reader smiling as she opens a book. But those moments — joyful as they are — shouldn’t be rare. And they shouldn’t feel miraculous. They should be common.

I’ve been a special education teacher for seven years. And I’ve seen firsthand what happens when we as teachers believe in students with disabilities — and give them structured, high-quality reading instruction. I’ve also seen what happens when we don’t.

Far too often, we quietly accept that some kids, especially those with individualized education programs, just won’t learn to read. That they’ll always struggle. That their reading growth will be slow, if it comes at all. We build systems that manage that failure. We adjust our expectations. And we wait.

This year, I stopped waiting, and decided to dive straight into teaching reading to disabled students.  

For years, I cobbled together lessons from online worksheets and Pinterest printables, trying to meet each student’s reading needs during 30-minute blocks that felt shorter every day. I’m often responsible for more than 40 students across kindergarten through fifth grade, with service times ranging from 30 to 300 minutes per week.

I had no curriculum, no sequence, no scaffolding — and worse, no results.

That changed this past year when, for the first time, I began using an evidence-based, structured, supplemental foundational curriculum. I’m not in the business of promoting one curriculum over another, but you can find programs like this from Heggerty, Reading Horizons, Really Great Reading, Wilson and others. Whatever you choose, ensure it’s research-based, structured, focused on foundational reading skills, and proven-effective for the resource room population.

My program followed a consistent daily routine, built-in review, and offered skill checks that I could actually use to inform my IEP goals. Once my students understood the structure, they knew what to expect. They knew where we were going. And they started to believe that they could get there.

Many of my students went from dreading reading instruction to asking to come early. They saw their own progress and became more motivated by it.

This was the year I saw the most academic growth of my career.

Students with disabilities face daily uncertainty in school: instructions they don’t understand, tasks they’re not ready for, expectations that shift depending on the classroom. This is why routines and procedures matter so much.

Read the full article about teaching reading to disabled students by Kaci Rodriguez at The 74.