SPED Talks

On October 20, 2017 the Education Department, led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, released a listed of 72 documents related to special education that were to be rescinded. The initial announcement framed the move as one that should relieve “unnecessary regulatory burdens.” Upon further inspection, though, most of those documents had expired, been replaced recently, or been overturned by new laws and policies. Unfortunately, that truth didn’t mend the growing rift between special education and disability advocates and the Education Department.

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…