Job Check
Special Education Teachers, Middle School
Teach academic, social, and life skills to middle school students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Includes teachers who specialize and work with students who are blind or have visual impairments; students who are deaf or have hearing impairments; and students with intellectual disabilities.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Develop or write Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for students.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 02Establish and enforce rules for behavior and policies and procedures to maintain order among students.Mostly human for now
- 03Develop and implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of handicapping conditions.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 04Prepare materials and classrooms for class activities.Mostly human for now
- 05Instruct students in daily living skills required for independent maintenance and self-sufficiency, such as hygiene, safety, and food preparation.Mostly human for now
- 06Teach socially acceptable behavior, employing techniques such as behavior modification and positive reinforcement.Mostly human for now
- 07Modify the general education curriculum for students with disabilities, based upon a variety of instructional techniques and instructional technology.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Employ special educational strategies and techniques during instruction to improve the development of sensory- and perceptual-motor skills, language, cognition, and memory.Mostly human for now
- 09Confer with parents or guardians, other teachers, counselors, and administrators to resolve students' behavioral and academic problems.Mostly human for now
- 10Coordinate placement of students with special needs into mainstream classes.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job loss13%of this job’s work time goes to tasks that people already do with Claude at work, counting tasks where AI only helps as half (2026).Anthropic, 2026
31%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 57% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 38% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Establish and enforce rules for behavior and policies and procedures to maintain order among students.
- Prepare materials and classrooms for class activities.
- Instruct students in daily living skills required for independent maintenance and self-sufficiency, such as hygiene, safety, and food preparation.