SPED Talks is an essay series dedicated to--like TED talks--sharing “ideas worth spreading” in the Special Education community. The topics, experiences, and points of view are all different, but the prompt for our writers--education professionals from all walks of life--is always the same: “What do you wish people understood about Special Education?”

Recently I took a job at another school down the road from the one that I taught at for the last seven years. It was a hard decision because the school faculty and administrators were my family and support system for a long time, but it wasn’t a decision I made lightly. Here is how I made that difficult decision and what factors impacted my journey in taking a leap of faith.

I recently invested in a new venture called …

SPED Talks is an essay series dedicated to--like TED talks--sharing “ideas worth spreading” in the Special Education community. The topics, experiences, and points of view are all different, but the prompt for our writers--education professionals from all walks of life--is always the same: “What do you wish people understood about Special Education?”

Our classrooms are a tapestry of students with different cultures, socioeconomic circumstances, race and abilities. Whether intentional or not, there is social, emotional, physical and intellectual diversity even within the most seemingly cohesive group of students. There is social, emotional, physical and intellectual diversity even within the most seemingly cohesive group of students, which means there are also challenges to teaching diverse groups and ensuring all students feel involved and included.

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SPED Talks is an essay series dedicated to--like TED talks--sharing “ideas worth spreading” in the Special Education community. The topics, experiences, and points of view are all different, but the prompt for our writers--education professionals from all walks of life--is always the same: “What do you wish people understood about Special Education?”

Awareness "should not be our primary focus as advocates"

As many of us already know, acceptance and awareness are common themes in the classroom, but they are very different. Awareness is having the knowledge of a situation or fact, and acceptance typically means having an understanding and approval of a person, place or situation; recognizing conditions and flaws exist and embracing them anyway. While raising awareness is important and meaningful, it should not be our primary focus as advocates. Instead, we should focus on building acceptance in and out of the classroom. As a special educatio…

8 QUESTIONS is a series of interviews with teachers who have effectively transitioned their classroom skills into new and exciting careers in the field of education. We at Teach.com believe that teaching is a rigorous and diverse classroom in and of itself; the skills learned “in the trenches” can translate into an exciting portfolio of professional options. From education tech to consulting, the only “X factor” is where you want to go — our interviews hope to shine a light on the steps it takes to get there.

1. What's your name, location and current career path?

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From Teacher to CEO: 8 Questions with Kelly Tenkely

As the 2016 presidential ballot becomes more and more like a clown car (with 22 candidates at the date this post was published!) politics is a hot national topic. And since education issues will be at the forefront in August 6th's first Republican presidential debate, we were wondering: what topics do Teach100 Mentors hope will get some air time? Here's what a few of our favorite contributors had to say.

(And as for the candidates? A little birdie, AKA our survey, tells us that Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Mike Huckabee, and Carly Fiorina are favorites among our teachers.)

TODD BLOCH, SWEAT TO INSPIRE

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