Interview with Dr. Angle

I did my site visit and then my interview with Dr. Susan Angle this morning from 10:15 to 11:15. It had been really difficult to set up because the staff are overrun with students who need appointments! Getting an appointment for just an interview was a big task. But after a lot of scheduling, I got my interview. 

The interview itself went really smoothly. My computer recording worked, but I also took notes on important details. Dr. Angle was really nice and really accommodating. By the time I shut off my recorder, I was still talking to her about interesting facts about SSD and special education in general. 

I was really interested to find out that SSD does presentations for classes about disabled services when teachers are out of town. They recommend that everyone go see one of their programs, since many students see the examples of disabilities and realize that they themselves could use the help of SSD. 

Anyway, I let her know that I wasn't sure what my research topic was going to be, so she actually expanded on a lot of the questions I asked her, going into a lot more detail than I expected, which led me to asking a lot of follow up questions that I think may help me come up with a research topic. 

Another interesting thing she talked about was how different Tech is now from when she began working here in 1995. She said the staff are much more willing to work with students with disabilities and provide or create alternative assignments for students with special needs than they were before. 

All in all, it was a really good interview. I think I will be able to use a lot of the information I got to form more questions to research or even to cite in my paper. Since I recorded it, I can even use direct quotes, which I am very excited about.