The Harris County Department of Education recently hired Darlene Breaux as its new director of special populations for their teaching and learning center.
“Special populations” is a term that covers a range of different needs students have. It can be kids for whom English is a second language, children with dyslexia, those who are gifted and talented, kids in the foster care system or migrant students. It also focuses on Section 504, which is an anti-discrimination civil rights statute that requires the needs of students with learning difference to be met as adequately as the needs of those who don’t have learning differences — which gives you just a tiny glimpse of the different needs teachers in classrooms deal with on a daily basis.
To learn more about the challenges of teaching these days — and how individual needs are met — Houston Matters producer Edel Howlin sat down with Breaux.