Teaching the Learning Disabled. Thoughts, Strategies, Revelations.

[ddeubel]

As an educator, I've done a complete 180 when it comes to my teaching philosophy. I thought as a young teacher, that the teacher's role was to help those that can. Now I believe, firmly believe that we are here to help those who can't. Radical maybe but let's be honest -- those that can will succeed no matter what we do. They really will! However, if we can pull a few of those who just seemingly can't - up by the bootstraps, we will be doing our proper job. To improve the world from what might have been otherwise....

Enough of my preaching. I'd like to know what others think about learning disabilities (do you even agree that they exist? or maybe like I believe - that every kid should have an IEP , we are all learning disabled, it just depends who is doing the evaluating?). I've been doing a lot of thinking on this and research in the realm of ELLs (English languguage learners). I believe and will finish up a paper sooner or later - that all those who are over 9-10, have a learning disability when learning a second language.... What I'm really interested in are the strategies or surprises you all have had along your teaching road/path - when it comes to the "learning disabled".

I've also in a dedicated fashion, put online a film that I think EVERY teacher should see - F.A.T. - Frustration / Anxiety / Tension. A workshop that really gets teachers to feel how it might be like to be a learning disabled student in a regular classroom.

If you have any other films/resources to share that is also welcomed. I really need the perspective.

[scott smith]

Hi Connie,

Great comments and questions. Ideally, I think everybody should have an IEP. Though this does add a large organizational burden. I don't have a real idea of how many student currently have IEP's--but let's say it's 10%. That would increase the IEP workload of teachers, administrators and specialist, by a factor of 10. I can't think of any schools that would say "Oh, please, give us more paperwork." I don't have a good answer to that particular change-management issue.

My minor in grad school is special education. Prior to my first course in that area, I had never really considered that we all have disabilities. Nor had I ever realized the contextual nature of many disabilities, even though I had personal experience.

When I was 19 (actually this time of year), I underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor. Medically, the operation was a success, though I didn't anticipate the post-surgical issues. I was told that everything would come back, all I needed was time. That was partially true, everything came back (in this order: short-term memory, vision, mobility and motor skills,) time. But I realize now that I needed more than time.

I needed scaffolds, many of which weren't available at the time, or were just overlooked. When I took some classes in the fall, I still had a problem with fatigue, and occasional tunnel vision, so reading was sometimes difficult. However the textbook was the only game in town back then. Man, I coulda used an e-book.

One of the great things that is happening with the rapid emergence of consolidated devices, is that we are seeing more and more assistive technology that meets the 'Best Buy' test. That is, the availability of devices that are marketed to the mainstream and thus reasonably affordable.

While that the technology are wonderful, there is still much that can be one on the content-side.

A few months ago I blogged about why we will start to see more-accessible content in the commercial sector.

I think these advances in hardware and content accessibility in the commercial sector are certainly great for the education space as well.

A while back I mentioned the Universal Design for Learning and this book . I can't say enough about this book; it really changed so many of my perceptions about accessible content. I think it worth a good skim (though doesn't take that long to read, either).

Finally, I mentioned in recent post that I was 'breaking up' with master's project which focused on learning continuity planning. In lieu of that I am planning to design a framework for creation and delivery of accessible content. I should have the new proposal in my advisor's hands in the next few days. More on that story as it develops; very interested in feedback from my Fireside friends.

[Connie Weber]

Hi Scott,

Good to hear from you. Very grateful to you for your perspective, including the wisdom you've gained from personal experiences. Nice links and references. We'll want to be hearing a lot about your design work, "the framework for creation and delivery of accessible content."

[scott smith]

Thanks, Connie. Your words are kind as always.

I am excited about this endeavor. I had been mulling over many of these ideas for years. A few months ago a friend had called me and described some of his research findings regarding autism. I had struggled about how to adapt content for learners having autism; he gave me a missing puzzle piece. Seemed like a great time to finally start extracting some of the ideas from my gray matter and putting them on paper.

[Mike]

Hi All... hope this finds you all well.

Working on finishing up another school year here....

What do you think, everyone? Should everyone have an IEP--or maybe a highly specific individualized learning plan? ( Connie )

New Jersey is starting to play with this right now Connie. Our new code calls for every student to have a Personalized Learning Plan. Next year we will be doing a number of districts that have volunteered.

Here is some stuff about it:

What are the proposed amendments that require Personalized Student Learning Plans for all students in the near future?

N.J.A.C. 6A:8-3.2 (Standards and Assessment for Student Achievement) proposes that the department shall conduct a two-year pilot project and evaluation of Personalized Student Learning Plans beginning in the 2009-2010 school year. The department intends that district boards of education shall develop and implement a Personalized Student Learning Plan, for each secondary school student in grades six through 12, according to a schedule developed by the department following review of the pilot project.

What are the essential components of a Personalized Student Learning Plan?

The three main components of a plan include a process that helps students identify their personal, academic and career goals. This can include, but is not limited to, assessing student learning styles and personality types, selecting courses based on personal interests, values and skills, in addition to participating in activities related to academic planning, career awareness, exploration and preparation.


be well..mike

[Ian Carmichael]

Tasmania have a part of their senior high school requirement called 'Pathways' where students do construct (and own) a learning/futures plan which they review, reflect over, refine and revise with a mentoring teacher. (At least, I think we have it - there have been so many changes of direction so rapidly that I don't know whether this chair is still in the game, or whether it disappeared just before the last time the music stopped.)
That's kind of an IEP/ILP - with the major planner being the individual concerned.

[Ian Carmichael]

IEP's for everyone? Sounds good. Also sounds like another bale of hay for the camel to carry - and this one thinks he's already gone past the last straw. I won't participate professionally unless either compelled, or relieved of something else -like class time, or student load. (But, I suspect this is a high school perspective speaking, just as I suspect yours is an elementary school one. I can't frame an IEP for each of my 100 students. I can't participate in a team meeting for each of them, either. And I won't like to slot into somebody else's IEP dropped on me to administer. This is because I have an ingrained belief in ITPs - Individual Teaching Plans, the belief that I as a teaher am unique, with skills and interests, styles and strategies, resopnses and relationships that my dossier doesn't know, that my paper trail doesn't show, and therefore, that another organiser won't utilise.)

But enough of my bile, I'll be interested to continue reading the engaged responses such as Scott's and Mike's. Thanks guys, very helpful perspectives.

[scott smith]

Ian confirmed my hunches about the 'organizational burden' of saddling a teacher with dozens, or hundreds of new IEP's to contend with.

Ian--do you have an idea* of much time in preparing and servicing each IEP?



*Thought about writing IDEA, but the pun would only be relevant in the US ;)

[Ian Carmichael]

I don't even want to THINK about the time involved in preparing and servicing an IEP. (Who specs it out, for starters?) As I was driving today - and reboiling my bile, I think what is especially dispiriting in the paper warfare is that I am expected to prepare additional reams of material for the paper collectors about what should be happening with child X, whose skills, temperaments, strengths, weaknesses and foibles are...
And this work actually isolates me from time I should be spending with or preparing materials for child X, ensuring what the higher-ups want me to report on is in fact happening.
I don't want to do second-order education, talking about child X with the administrivia monster, I want to be educating child X. I'm tired of the fact that when the word pedagogy gets stuck on a debate, it very often requires a step (or several) away from engagement with students, and towards engagement with the word processor on a neatly standardised format report which can be categorised, filed, and retrieved at some point in the future for the registration board, or the grants commission, or the educational management Ph. D.
There's not so much time left in my teaching career to waste on these inanities.

[ddeubel]

Connie,

Great wood for the fire as always! I don't have too much time to write at length but want to say that I threw out the suggestion of "an IEP for every student" not as something to be practically implemented but as a suggestion for getting us thinking about the right things. Learning is the object not teaching. We too often focus on how to teach and not how we can learn.

So what I'm suggesting is that we throw out the useless labeling of IEP etc.... and start focusing on what environment we can create so that each student will be able to learn as they wish (at their own speed, time, level, desire, ability, emotion). We have to unwrap the process and free it up from the bureaucratic bowties it is bound up by.

We get in the way of student learning too much! We really do. Disabilities are just differences, however "special" they may be. What needs to be done is more, not less integration. Integration between the regular student body and those sent to the sidelines. All because, we are taking the focus off the social aspects of learning which are SO crucial. We have to concentrate more on the learning and less on the other stuff....

Ian, well said - Let's be educating child X!

Cheers,

David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

[Ian Carmichael]

David,
How dare you be so busy? It would be great for you to have the time to share more - widely and deeply as are your skills - instead of the brief 'guerilla raids' on our thinking. But, even at a short stretch thanks for your thoughtfulness, enthusiasm and incendiation (not a word yet, but let's run with it a while!)

[Ellen Pham]

David, have you ever been in a profoundly learning disabled classroom? To give you an idea, in a regular classroom one adult might have up to 30 (in bad years, 35) children under her care. In a profoundly learning disabled classroom, the ratio is one adult for every two or three students. That's in a controlled, protected environment.

As the children get older, they get physically stronger, and the ratio in some programs goes up to 1:1, for the physical safety of both the student and the teacher. For the few months that I took on subbing in profoundly learning disabled classrooms, all the staff I met were warm, kind, funny, good to the kids (very good) and deeply supportive of each other. For me, it was one of the most deeply disturbing experiences I have had. It disturbed something in the core of me, made me question what it means to be human. First I sobbed in the car on the way home. Next, I started sobbing at lunch break too. When I began sobbing in the car on the way to work, I stopped.

I think Tar Heel Readers, at its core, is for those students and parents. Not all of it, but I thought I felt something first time I went on, that kind of love and hope and desire and despair of a parent for his child. I wondered if that was the impetus that started the site.

Well, I am running out of time : ). From my experience in Portland Public Schools, most learning disabled children are fully included in the regular classroom. Perhaps they get pulled out for 1/2 hour of extra attention (hmm, sometimes of dubious worth) twice or three times a week. I think a push-in program is more effective, but also requires dedication from all the adults involved (reg teacher, spec ed teacher, assistants, parents) and strong leadership from one of them. If everyone doesn't buy into it, you might as well leave the program as it is. The kids are included for almost all of the day anyway, and sometimes it is a relief for them to be able to just relax and be who they are for a half hour, and not worry about whether they can do it or not. (Same holds true for newcomers in ESL- it's a relief to go see the ESL teacher for a little while.)

Anyway, in all but the most profound cases, integration is the standard. Kids with all kinds of physical disabilities, including needing to be toileted and having limited control over their bodies, are in the classroom all day, every day, with a part-time aide. Only the most medically fragile, who need constant monitoring by a medical professional, are sidelined. Mild mental retardation? They're in the reg ed classroom too, but have a harder time finding friends. Mild to moderate autism? In the classroom- if the kid throws daily screaming tantrums, with an aide most of the time.

Kids who eat the paper out of books at every opportunity, who bite, scratch, self-mutilate, or are profoundly mentally retarded (cannot feed or toilet themselves, are pre-verbal, act out in many various ways, or have extremely low affect all around) stay in the special ed classrooms. Severely mentally ill children usually have a program of their own. I haven't been in those classrooms, too much intentional and unrelenting confrontation for me, with the expectation (need?) for the teacher to be a real cop.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. Maybe it does come down to the quote I have been using as of late on EFL, “No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.” Emma Goldman.

That would involve a whole-scale changing of our society, I believe. I'm game : ). But for the moment, I think we need to at least be aware of what we are asking for... deeper and more profound than the words "disabilities are just differences" might seem to imply.

[Connie Weber]

Hi David! Good to hear from you. Are you winding your year down? Or are things getting busier yet?

Yes, I thought that's what you were getting at--that learning needs to be conceived of as completely individualized--and very social, too. Integration, integration, integration. Diversity is the great enabler. It enables the community. Yes, we need to be freed from bureaucracy, need to concentrate on the actual learning...

Oh, just have to mention, I've had a big blow this year. Next year my class will be less diverse; I've lost one of things most important to me in my teaching: mixed-age groups. All I can say is that I hope this is just a temporary situation. Getting back to mixed grades is my goal. I strongly believe in the power of diversity, including age (developmental level) diversity.

Thanks. Good forum you started here. Lots of directions to go with this.

(How is your local scenery--idyllic? Are the trees still flowering?)