The Special Education department at Bendale BTI services around three hundred and fifty students. We provide service to three different groups of students:

1. Communication Students;
2. Adjustment Students;
3. General groups of IPRCd students.

    Students who receive special education status are intelligent people who have difficulty being able to apply what is in their heads. Some special education students have difficulty monitoring their own behaviour so they require special strategies designed to help them adjust and integrate into the work world. All Special Education students have the intelligence to succeed when they graduate if they are given the appropriate strategies and thinking skills to help them overcome whatever is blocking them from succeeding. Students serviced by the Special Education department receive different types and levels of support in different types of classroom environments.

    Communication students are those students who have difficulty with reading, writing, listening or speaking. Some Communication students are placed in College courses and supported by a teacher who monitors their progress. Other students are placed in Communication classes where a Special Education teacher and a class Education Assistant support them.

    Adjustment students are those students who have difficulty monitoring their own behaviour. Some Adjustment students tend to be overly aggressive in their social interactions, others need help with personal discipline and others need guidance to help them make appropriate decisions when they interact with other people.

    Students enrolled in Special Education classrooms receive help from both the classroom teacher and the classroom education assistant. The teacher and the education assistant work together as a team to deliver strategies that enable students to succeed. There is no hierarchy of power or authority here: both adults work together. The Special Education department at Bendale BTI views education assistants as valuable helpers, not as gophers or photocopy lackeys. Both the teacher and the education assistant are in the class to help the students: the education assistant is not in the classroom to do the teacher’s photocopying or marking; the education assistant is in the classroom, like the teacher, to help the students!