21 January 2008
Theater, religion, and Autism
In “A true rite of passage: Unusual theater project prepares autistic teens for bar and bat mitzvahs,” James Ricci of the Los Angeles Times describes an unconventional approach to helping children and youths with Autism learn to interact with others. He focuses his story on Elaine Hall and her son, Neal, explaining how Ms. Hall [...]
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Please review the thinking-skills poll
Folks, your not-so-trustworthy administrator failed to update one of the side programs for this blog when he updated the basic software. So, the polls haven’t worked right recently. Thanks to those who let me know (through public and private channels). I’ve updated the polling software and I think it’s right now.
Please revisit What is [...]
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20 January 2008
Spamdammit
As P. Z. Myers noted in a recent post, one of the plagues of blogging is handling the comment spam; not that Teach Effectively is anywhere nearly as popular as Professor Myers’ Pharyngula, but Teach Effectively does get hit with a lot of spam. People send robots to add comments to post for nefarious reasons [...]
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18 January 2008
Barbash on Reading First
The current Education Gadfly has a guest editorial by Shep Barbash entitled “Reading First’s Christmas massacre” in which Mr. Barbash decries the funding cuts to the Reading First program.
Reading First, funded at $1 billion per year, is among the most promising federal efforts to help the poor. Title I, funded at $12 billion [...]
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17 January 2008
What is critical thinking?
There’s a bit of talk about “critical thinking.” A post over on Instructivist prompted me to consider alternative meanings for the adjective, “critical.” There are several connotations for it, so I thought, hmmm… it being the season of lots of news about polls and this being a democracy, let’s vote on what sort of critical [...]
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16 January 2008
Autism Speaks Grants
Autism Speaks, the nearly 3-year-old advocacy organization that advocates for research and awareness of Autism, announced that it has awarded nearly $5 million for research to investigate the causes, biology, diagnosis, and treatment of Autism. According to Peter Bell, an executive vice president of Autism Speaks, “These grants will fund research projects that offer innovative [...]
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ACT 4 Juvenile Justice
Through ACT 4 Juvenile Justice (ACT4JJ), which is a lobbying group, National Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Coalition is seeking support for a statement of principles regarding reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). The organization compiled the principles in an effort to strengthen federal-state partnerships, ensure that states receive the federal [...]
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Baseline practices
Over on Snail-Snail, snail_snail has a couple of posts that illustrate fundamentals for behavior management. The recommendations, in the form of a list one should ask oneself, provide the basic background that should be in place before one attempts to employ more formal behavior modification procedures.
Under the titles “Onaway Elementary/Day N,” snail_snail raises questions [...]
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Liam Julian on scripted instruction
Liam Julian, who writes for the Fordham-sponsored Education Gadfly, has an editorial in the 20 December issue that amounts to a call for employing Direct Instruction. In “Check yourself before you wreck yourself,” Mr. Julian writes about the utility of checklists. He explains that when doctors use specific, scripted methods they are not criticized for [...]
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LD opportunities
On the off chances that one of LD Blog’s three readers is looking for a position in higher education or organizations concerned with special education and related areas of teaching and research: Check http://SpedPro.org/. Many universities and other agencies post announcements there are open positions.
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13 January 2008
Need for management training
Just in case anyone doubts the need for preparing teachers to manage classroom behavior, here are five illustrations:
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11 January 2008
College of Charleston, SC ? Asst. Professor
The Department of Educational Foundations, Secondary, and Special Education at the College of Charleston is seeking applicants for a tenure-track position in special education at the level of Assistant Professor to begin August 16, 2008. Qualifications include a doctorate in special education or a related field, a minimum of three ...
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TMAO?s ledge
TMAO, who blogs at Teaching in the 408, has a post discussing the semi-professional position into which many teachers feel they are pushed. TMAO proposes that abolition of some constraints (e.g., tenure) and adoption of some form of merit pay will help professionalize teaching. To be treated like a profession, though, teaching will almost certainly [...]
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Concord Review
I was pleased to happen upon a Web site entitled The Concord Review. The folks there—principally Will Fitzhugh—pitch the idea that academic excellence should be treated just as well as athletic excellence, so they have a varsity team of high school history writers. According to the home page, “Varsity athletics and athletes are celebrated everywhere. [...]
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Self-concept in dyslexia over the years
Professor S. G. Ingesson interviewed Swedish teens and young adults who have dyslexia to learn about their educational experiences. His informants suggested a lot of interesting things to him. I was taken with one finding indicating that, as they aged, students reported differing feelings of well-being. Generally, they recollected that their feeling of well-being had [...]
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Schools? legal responsibilities
Over on WrightsLaw, Sue Whitney Heath responded to a question from a parent about a school that made a questionable decision about a student’s school placement. Under the headline “Behavior Problems: It Isn’t Okay Just to Teach the Easy Kids,” Ms. Heath provides advice to the parent about how to address the problem.
Your son is [...]
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B mod NOT
In one more example of the mis-representation of “behavior modification,” another of those facilities aimed to serve (not the right word?) children and youths with behavior that their parents find unacceptable has been identified as a “behavior modification facility. Tranquility Bay, more accurately characterized as an extremely strict re-education camp, is the subject of a [...]
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Good Help is Hard to Find!
I just have to screech about how unexpectedly difficult it was for me to find a tutor for one of my students who lives in Victoria. It's not a huge city, but it's big enough that I thought it should be straight forward finding someone qualified to work with a little girl with dyslexia. I called seven different tutors and tutoring businesses, and was not satisfied with the methods described by any of them. Some were actually a little weird, I thought. There are lots of people out there willing to take your money!
At the last minute, a colleague found a name in the back of an education magazine. Thank goodness it was a wonderful woman who does the Lindamood program!
Hmmm. This feels more like a whine than a screech; oh well, I did have all day to get over it...
At the last minute, a colleague found a name in the back of an education magazine. Thank goodness it was a wonderful woman who does the Lindamood program!
Hmmm. This feels more like a whine than a screech; oh well, I did have all day to get over it...
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10 January 2008
Mr. Belshaw?s tips
Some time ago, blogger Doug Belshaw had a post providing guidance about managing behavior that I just discovered. In the post Mr. Belshaw gives tips about classroom management that are worth repeating. Although there are 10 items in his list, I’ll just illustrate them using a couple here:
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Anxiety as a Developmental Disorder
Few reasonable people champion the absolutist position that emotional and behavioral disorders are solely the result of biological or environmental problems. Still, when I come across work that re-emphasizes the mutual interaction of environmental and biological factors, I find it refreshing. In this review paper, Professors E. D. Leonardo and R. Hen present an integrated [...]
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