At first glance, my blog looks just as it has for the past few months. If you’ve been here before, a closer look should reveal a significant change. I’ve given my blog a new name. Until yesterday, it was Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education. That name made more sense to me when I started the blog over three years ago. That was before several things that had long troubled me about education came into sharper focus.
After 16 years of teaching in elementary and middle school classrooms, I began working in “special” education in 1994. I worked first as a “special needs itinerant resource teacher”, responsible for the creation and implementation of individual education plans for learners with diagnosed low incidence “disabilities”. Since 2003, I’ve worked as an “assistive technology consultant”, using a wide range of powerful digital technology to support K-12 learners with documented low incidence “disabilities”.
My work in “special” ed has been far more rewarding than my work as a classroom teacher. That’s primarily because I’ve been able to focus my efforts on supporting the unique learning needs and challenges of individual learners. I never felt I was able to do this adequately as a “general” ed classroom teacher. In fact, it seemed completely impossible to cover the prescribed curriculum while supporting the unique learning needs, aptitudes, interests, learning styles, and giftedness of 30 individual learners.
[When it comes to appearance, it's obvious that each individual is unique. When it comes to learning needs, it is often less obvious!]
As I began my work in “special” ed, I recall thinking that every learner in every classroom ought to have an individual education plan, not just the select few who qualify by virtue of having a diagnosed “disability”. This has grown into a deep conviction. (For more on the absurdity of the hoops that learners must jump through to qualify for the supports they need, I encourage you to read Ira Socol on ‘Retard Theory‘.)
If we are ever to meet the learning needs of all the children in our classrooms, it is imperative that each learner be treated as a unique individual, with a unique set of gifts and needs. I’ve come to believe that, without exception, every learner is gifted and has special needs. I’m not referring to “giftedness” in the narrow sense of measurable “intellectual” prowess. I’m referring to the unique set of abilities, interests, learning styles, and personality that each learner possesses. Similarly, in the case of “special needs” I’m thinking broadly of any kind of barrier or challenge that hinders learning.
Perhaps I can best illustrate my understanding of special needs by continuing in an autobiographical vein. As a K-12 learner, and again at the post secondary level, I don’t believe I could have qualified as having significant enough “special needs” for any accommodations–even in today’s world. What I do know is that from the beginning I faced a major challenge with written output. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t write legibly enough to satisfy my teachers. I don’t blame my teachers for their frustration because even I usually had great difficulty reading what I had written.
I was told that my problem was the result of carelessness and lack of effort. That became true only after I realized that the situation would never change, no matter how hard I tried. Teachers need to be extremely cautious about telling learners that all they need to do to achieve success is to “try harder”. Sometimes that’s just a blatant lie that has damaging consequences!
In grade 9, I enrolled in typing class; and I learned to type on an old steel typewriter. In the process, I discovered one of my gifts. I could type 65 words per minute (accurately) by the end of my grade 9 year. So, since 1966 I have submitted almost nothing for anyone else to read that has not been written on a keyboard of one sort or another. The big exception has been for tests and exams. I believe my grades would have been a great deal higher if I’d been able to use a typewriter/computer to write tests and exams. I have horrible memories of running in near panic from university examination halls after 30 minutes when I’d been expected to write for three hours!
My point is that although I was not a student with designated “special needs”, I was indeed a learner with some special needs that required tools and supports that were not always available to me. I believe the same can be said of almost every learner everywhere. That’s why I’d like to see the arbitrary distinctions between special education and general education eliminated.
Let’s just do our best to provide each learner with the tools and supports that he or she needs in order to use his or her giftedness to learn effectively. I’m excited about the growing range of tools and supports that can be made available to all learners in our digital era. Many of these tools don’t cost anything, so money is not the barrier it once was. Perhaps the greatest barrier is the requirement that a person be diagnosed with “special” needs in order to qualify for the privilege of receiving the support that he or she needs. I’ve changed the name of my blog because I want to do my part to help dismantle this barrier.
I plan to continue to write here about digital tools and resources that have the potential to support learners. Some of the supports I write about will work well for some learners, while other resources will be more helpful for others. The key is to make sure that each learner has access to what he or she needs. If my efforts here result in helping even one learner, the investment will have been worthwhile.
