Why Special Education Students Should Get A Choice In Their Classes: A Teacher’s Experience
It’s 2 p.m. on a Tuesday in April, the conference room window is fogged over from the heater, and I’m pushing crumbs of a lemon granola bar around my notebook while we go through 13-year-old Leo’s 7th grade schedule. Leo is non-speaking autistic, and he sits next to his mom, tapping a blue pencil against the edge of his communication device, scrolling through his saved photos of prehistoric reptiles. Our school counselor taps her screen, says, “We’ve got him down for two periods of functional life skills and a targeted study hall, that keeps his load light enough to work on his IEP goals.” That’s when Leo taps his screen once, hard, and the robot voice cuts through the room: “I WANT ART.”
The room went quiet for a beat. The assistant principal said what I’ve heard dozens of times in 8 years as a special education case manager: “Art’s pretty unstructured. General ed moves fast, he’ll get frustrated. That period could be used for fine motor practice that directly hits his goals.” Leo’s mom pulled out a crumpled sketchbook from her bag, flipped through pages of sharp-lined T-Rexes and triceratops, all drawn during his free time at home. “He draws for an hour every night after dinner,” she said. “I think he should get to try.”
I agreed. I’d seen this pattern too many times: we slot kids into classes based on their label and their goals list, never stopping to ask what they actually want. We treat general ed electives like a privilege for kids who “can handle it,” instead of a right every kid gets to have a say in. We signed off on a three-week trial, added one accommodation: the art teacher let Leo keep a folding chair in the storage closet if he needed 5 minutes away from the noise to reset.
What happened next wasn’t some big, sweeping inspirational miracle. The second week, a kid knocked Leo’s sketchbook off his desk, and he ended up spending 10 minutes in that storage closet breathing. But by the end of the trial, he never wanted to leave. He came in every day with his sketchbook already out before the bell rang. When the class did a clay sculpture project, he made a foot-long T-Rex with textured teeth he scraped himself with a plastic fork. At the end of the semester, I was updating his IEP progress, and I realized he’d hit his annual fine motor goal three months early. He’d gotten that practice not from sorting colored beads into muffin tins in life skills class, but from scraping clay and pressing pencil to paper to make something he cared about. He also started exchanging dinosaur stickers with the boy sitting next to him in art, something he’d never initiated with a peer before. That hit his social communication goal, too.
This isn’t a one-time thing. Last year, Mia, an 8th grader with dyslexia who read two grade levels below level, told me she wanted to take honors science fiction writing. The team said no immediately: “She’ll fall behind, it will hurt her self-esteem.” I suggested a trial, with simple accommodations: all texts as audio books, extended time on essays, permission to type instead of write by hand. She finished the semester with a B, and turned in a 12-page fanfiction story about a space dragon that’s now taped to the wall of the classroom. She told me last month she’s started writing every night before bed, something she never did when she was stuck in a remedial reading group that only used short, boring passages about picking apples and going to the park.
Over the years, I’ve pulled together small, concrete changes that parents and teachers can implement to shift this dynamic, no big district overhauls required. First, check in with the kid before any scheduling meeting, not just their parents or the team. I started doing 10 minute pre-meeting chats with every student on my caseload, regardless of their disability label. For kids who don’t use words to communicate, I print out pictures of all the electives, lay them out, and let them point or tap to pick their top two. It takes 10 extra minutes, and it changes everything.
Second, do a short trial instead of a permanent no. Most of the time, the pushback is based on assumptions, not actual experience. A three or four week trial, with 1-2 small accommodations, doesn’t disrupt the whole schedule, and it lets everyone see how it goes. Accommodations don’t have to be big: an extra set of books for home, a seat near the door, a 5 minute break pass, that’s all most kids need.
Third, stop treating elective choice as a distraction from goals. The whole point of IEP goals is to help kids build skills to live a life they care about. If a kid wants to take art, that’s fine motor practice. If they want to take drama, that’s speech and social practice. If they want to take auto shop, that’s problem solving and math practice. Motivation makes all the difference. A kid will work way harder on a skill when it’s for something they care about, than when it’s just a worksheet in a separate class.
It’s not all perfect. Last month, I had an IEP meeting for a 9th grader who wanted to take choir, and the team turned him down because they said his anxiety would make performing too hard. We’re still negotiating for a trial, and it’s exhausting. Some teachers still see accommodating a special education student in their general ed class as extra work they don’t have time for. District scheduling policies still default to separate blocks for kids with IEPs more often than not.
But Leo’s clay T-Rex sat on his mom’s kitchen counter all last year, and his latest dinosaur drawing is hanging on the bulletin board by the main office this year. He joined the after school drawing club, and he brings new sketches to my room every Friday to show me. He’s not a “story of overcoming adversity” or anything that neat. He’s just a kid who likes drawing, who got to take the class he wanted, just like every other kid in the building. That’s all any of them should need.
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