{About Me}

Hi! I'm Brie, the creator of all things you see here at Breezy Special Ed. Thanks so much for stopping by! You can also find me on Instagram @BreezySpecialEdFacebook, and Pinterest for even more special ed ideas.


I love being able to help other teachers, because when I started I didn't have the materials that my students needed so I spent most of my time making them. Now you don't have to! With Breezy Special Ed resources, you can get your prep time back with relevant and differentiated BSE resources that your students need and you can easily implement in your life skill special education classes.


I taught special education for 5 years at the high school life skill level. Now I stay at home raising my two sweet littles and continue to create resources to help special education teachers and students.
_______
previous bio
I've taught special education for five years. I just absolutely love my job and my special education students! I teach in a regular high school, but in a very small and special section of that high school. We have a small multi-needs program of about 40 students and 5 teachers. Since we are in a regular high school we follow the typical bell schedule for our classes - 50 minutes a class.

The 5 teachers in our program all share our students throughout the day (meaning I don't have the same students each class period, I see just about all 40 of them each day) but we all have a caseload of students who we see for Language Arts, Math, and Resource. I teach the lowest of our multi-needs population in Language Arts and Math. I have six students and five 1:1 aides. Most of the activities in this class are individualized and each student is doing different things at different times. I feel this allows them to be the most productive.

The different electives I've taught throughout the years are: daily living skills, US history, health, consumer economics, vocational resource, and fine arts.

Last year I got extremely lucky this year and taught two sections of our fine arts which was a blast!

*I do not teach in this class, but I love the program my school has for P.E. so I'm going to share. Regular Ed students who are interested in going into special ed can apply to be a PE tutor. They need to have good grades and recommendation letters before they are considered. They then go through a semester long course on working and understanding students with disabilities. Then, the second semester, they are paired with a special education and help them participate in their PE class. This is such a fabulous way to encourage acceptance and interaction with ALL students in our school.

You can find even more materials and ideas on my TpT store! I love being able to share my ideas and materials with other special education teachers!

11 comments

  1. I just found your blog through Farley's Currently Linky. So glad to find other special ed teachers!

    Angelia
    Extra Special Teaching

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Brie!

    Just found you through http://fifthinthemiddle.blogspot.com/p/blogs-by-state-midwest.html website. Basically she lets everyone know where bloggers are from! I am so excited to find another special ed. Illinois blogger! I co-blog with my co-teacher, Carrie, and we are absolutely loving it! I have been teaching special ed for 5 years. Now I am teaching in 2nd grade which I absolutely love! Happy to be your newest follower!

    Carrie and I would love for you to join us on our "Sunny Summer Days" linky party and share what you have been up to this summer!
    Sunny Summer Days Linky

    -Caitlin
    Table Talk with C & C

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great blog please add me to your resource list. www.EnrichmentU.com
    Thanks,

    ReplyDelete
  4. Just found your blog and it is awesome! I am currently doing my student teaching in Special Education. I am super excited and nervous all at the same time! I look forward to looking more into your blog!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Melissa! You are so sweet! Student teaching is a great experience! It's so nice to feel like you can finally actually teach :) And it only gets better when you have your own classroom. Good luck and keep me updated!

      Delete
    2. I am really excited to find your blog!! I teach a Comprehensive Developmental Class in the public school system. I have ages 14-22 in my classroom. Your comment about the PE teacher in your school sparked really made me smile. We have a PE teacher that hand picks seniors to do their senior project on service learning. They work 4 days a week with our students in PE on PT needs and upcoming Special Olympics events, and 1 day a week they go into the classroom and tutor our special needs students on academic, social skills, and/or vocational skills. It is an amazing program and we love it. I enjoy going in and watching the interactions and life-long friendships that come out of it. Some of the seniors, with parent permission of course, pick up our students at home and go to movies on the weekends. It's wonderful watching them ALL grow!!

      Delete
  5. Hi Brie,
    We are doing a blog hop for Thanksgiving and I sent you an email but I'm wondering if you received it. If you are interested, email me at drchrisreeve@gmail.com as soon as you can and let me know. THanks!
    Chris
    Autism Classroom News

    ReplyDelete
  6. Just found your blog. I always have a hard time finding other high school special education teachers, so it is nice to finally see a blog for the kids at the high school level. I am always intrigued to see what other do in their high school classrooms. Looking forward, to browsing your blog.

    Danielle Park (Regina, SK., Canada)

    ReplyDelete
  7. What a wonderful and comprehensive blog! I have enjoyed seeing the activites you do with your students and I feel like I have barely skimmed the surface of your blog. Keep up the good work! I am excited to continue to browse through your blog and find activities that will be useful to me.

    -Baylee (Topeka, KS)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Brie,
    I love your blog and use many of your TPT resources. I moved into a middle school life skills position creating a new program at the school. This year went really well but there is definitely more work to be done and changes to be made. I'm curious about the fine arts classes you do. My program will be grades 5-8 eventually but I currently only have 5th and next year will be 5-6. Our unified arts (specials) are too difficult for my students so we modified this year and only had them attend music keyboarding, general music and art. All were heavily modified by amazing teachers, but I felt that my kids still weren't getting much out of it. We just couldn't meet their needs well enough in that setting and make it meaningful teaching for them. We do have peer mentors that help with gym which is awesome and I was trying to push for the same model for our own art and music for next year. We also only have small rotations of 18 classes per special so most of the year my kids didn't have one to go to since most other unified arts weren't appropriate. I know there are so many skills I could include in art and music instruction if done correctly. I would love to hear how you teaching fine arts came about and any advice on getting started and getting admin on board. I know the push I will be against is inclusion time and my point of needing to be on one schedule not several grade levels. I appreciate any words of wisdom!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Love the blog and store! I'm a spec. ed school social worker (Middle and High School). Could you please add me to your Life Skills - Special Education Pinterest board? I left a comment on one of the pins, too. (https://www.pinterest.com/sscentralk12/)
    Thanks!
    Brad
    https://studentstrategies.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete

(C) Brie Holtrop- Breezy Special Ed. Powered by Blogger.
Back to Top