Teaching preschool is a daunting task for anyone, especially when teaching students with special needs. Robin Nelson is one of the people that participate in that line of work and has been doing it for 38 years.
Nelson got involved in special education at a very early age. She had a cousin who was severely mentally handicapped, which sparked her love for teaching children like them. In high school, she volunteered to work with the special education program, and that is how she decided that that was the right path for her. She graduated from college with her degree in learning disabilities.
“I had a cousin who was severely mentally handicapped that I grew up with. When I got into high school, I was very involved with music, but I also thoroughly enjoyed working. I did some volunteer work with the special education program in my high school, and I decided that that was the direction that I wanted to go. When I got into college, I ended up with a degree with learning disabilities. At that time, you had to hone in on what certain group you wanted to work with, and that is just what I chose,” Nelson said.
After taking a break from teaching, Nelson was determined to start again. When Porter County Education Services reached out to her to become a special education teacher, she gladly jumped at the opportunity. She later wanted something more self-contained, wanting her own classroom. She was offered the opportunity to work in a preschool special education class, where she would get her own classroom, and she happily accepted the offer.
“When I went back to teaching, I really wanted something that was self-contained. I liked the idea of having my own classroom and also of teaching my own group of kids - kids that were mine. At that point, things were really changing in the special education world. The only thing that they had available was a preschool position. I had never taught preschool, but I accepted the offer, and I ended up absolutely loving it,” Nelson said.
Something that Nelson enjoys about her job is that she gets to figure out what the kids that she teaches need. She enjoys being able to help students not only develop mentally but also academically and socially. A main goal of Nelson’s is to help her students to be on the same level as their age-appropriate peers.
“I have a big variety of disabilities in my classroom. I have 3 to 5-year-olds, but they can be developmentally anywhere from a year old to age appropriate. My goal is to enable the kids to advance as much as they can. That means both academically and socially. A lot of the time, kids come into my room and can’t do the same academic things as their peers, but they can also learn social skills. I want them to be able to go into the community and be able to do things that kids their age can do. It’s a goal of mine to get them to be as typical of their age-appropriate peers as I can,” Nelson said.
Nelson’s favorite part about teaching is the fact that she can watch her students progress over time. She loves the fact that a student will enter her classroom as a 3-year-old and will be able to go to kindergarten by the time they are 5 years old. She also just enjoys the fact that she can watch as the kids realize that they understand the lesson at hand.
Outside of teaching, Nelson enjoys spending time with her husband. Their favorite activity is antiquing, finding unique things that she would never have had. They have traveled all over to go to different antique stores. She also enjoys quilting. She has made quilts for both of her kids and daughter-in-law and also her two grandchildren.
“My husband and I love to find antiques. We like antiquing a lot. We go to a lot of different areas – we sometimes even drive hours to do some antiquing in places like Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. I also love to quilt. I hand-quilt all of my quilts, and have given one to everybody in my family. I like to relax, and those things really are just relaxing to me,” Nelson said.
Nelson got into antiquing after her grandmother passed away. She took one of her grandmother’s antiques, a sewing machine, and has kept it to this day. It makes Nelson think about her and reminds her of her grandmother. Ever since she got her grandma’s antique, she has collected hundreds of unique artifacts.