Job Check
Special Education Teachers, Preschool
Teach academic, social, and life skills to preschool-aged 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 implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of disabilities.Mostly human for now
- 02Communicate nonverbally with children to provide them with comfort, encouragement, or positive reinforcement.Mostly human for now
- 03Maintain accurate and complete student records as required by laws, district policies, or administrative regulations.AI could speed this up a lot
- 04Teach socially acceptable behavior, employing techniques such as behavior modification or positive reinforcement.Mostly human for now
- 05Attend to children's basic needs by feeding them, dressing them, or changing their diapers.Mostly human for now
- 06Teach basic skills, such as color, shape, number and letter recognition, personal hygiene, or social skills, to preschool students with special needs.Mostly human for now
- 07Develop individual educational plans (IEPs) designed to promote students' educational, physical, or social development.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Prepare classrooms with a variety of materials or resources for children to explore, manipulate, or use in learning activities or imaginative play.Mostly human for now
- 09Meet with parents or guardians to discuss their children's progress, advise them on using community resources, or teach skills for dealing with students' impairments.Mostly human for now
- 10Modify the general preschool curriculum for students with disabilities.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 loss1%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
20%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 60% 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 42% 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.
- Develop or implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of disabilities.
- Communicate nonverbally with children to provide them with comfort, encouragement, or positive reinforcement.
- Teach socially acceptable behavior, employing techniques such as behavior modification or positive reinforcement.