Therefore, it was impossible for her to fit into a regular education. However, after meeting her governess Sullivan, she strived to get better herself, and finally, she could become a heroine. It is believed that many people still remember the love and efforts of the governess Sullivan, who often was overwhelmed and able to gain strength by Helen’s changes and improvements. What is a special teacher?
Special teachers are the ones who teach handicapped people like Helen Keller, whose improvements cannot be expected through a normal education environment or the method. Due to the fact that the people whom they teach are the handicapped, they are called special teachers. However, they are not different from the teachers in general preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, since they are educators as well.
They are permitted to teach preschoolers as well as the students of elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. However, to be permitted to teach students of middle schools and high schools, they need to have a degree in a certain areas, such as Korean, mathematics, music, etc.
It is the special teacher’s job to lead handicapped people who usually have a hard time to be adapted to the society due to physical pains and social prejudices to the world. The places where special teachers can teach and live together with children are schools, all kinds of welfare agency, houses of children, hospitals and so on.
Among them, one place where a teacher’s degree is necessarily required is the school, and on other places, the people with a degrees in social welfare, a infant teachers, a infant nurses, treatment officers or many more can easily become a special teacher. To be a special teacher, you need to have a degree in Special Education or its relating areas.
And there are levels of special teachers similar to that of regular teachers, and they are assistant teachers, and the second-grade of licensed teachers, the first-grade of licensed teachers. The second-grade of licensed teachers can be easily acquired by simply getting a degree in Special Education after spending 4 years in a university.
A qualification of first-grade of licensed teachers can be earned by passing a test after a certain amount of time of experiencing as a second-grade of licensed teacher. However, to teach in the national or public special schools, you need to pass another test called a test for appointment.
To be a special teacher To understand more in a concrete way about special teacher, The UOS Times interviewed a teacher Ms. Seol Jin-sun, who makes an effort to educate the handicapped in Milal school. It is located in Ilwondong, Gangnamgu Seoul and it is a Christian mission school.
Nowadays, the number of handicapped people in South Korea is over 1,053,000. And we should be aware that there is always a chance to be one of them.
We tend to treat the handicapped differently from the normal. For some reasons, it is very hard for us to take a step closer to them. But we should know that those kinds of feelings are from our dishonest and pride. They are ahead of us showing purity and innocence, which enables them to accept love. But we always tend to run away from them.
We should think about the darkness they would face in society when they realize our ugliness. And the special teachers deserve to be called a creator of new life due to the fact that they lead the handicapped from the darkness to the light of the world. Their love and efforts make us respect them.
Kang, Byeoung-ju Cub-reporter
bjkang01@hanmail.net