Happy New Year!
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31 December 2008
30 December 2008
Gaining Some Ground…
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all. I have had a nice break and have enjoyed having my children home for the holidays. While I have taken two weeks off from my regular duties at SelfDesign, I have been working on a new conference that I will be hosting in January on the "ABC's of Reading".
The basic philosophy of SelfDesign is that if we allow children to explore their own interests at their own pace, (which also means we don't impose our methods and ideas on them)they will learn everything they need in life, and will learn it better because they are intrinsically motivated. To be able to adopt this philosophy, parents (and some learning consultants, myself included) have to be prepared to adjust their perceptions of the timeline imposed from the system. We have to be able to accept and embrace that learning will happen in it's own time, and it may look very different from the school system with it's definite expectations from year to year.
I have found this very challenging as a "systematized" teacher. I have made excellent progress for the most part, but there is one area that I have stood firm on, and that is, early intervention for children who have learning disabilities.
I have had mild and not-so-mild discussions with administration and some parents over this- and I remain unapologetic- to no-one's surprise, I'm sure! The executive of SelfDesign Learning Community encourages me to adopt a "hands off" approach, believing that these kids will read when they are ready, and while I respect their combined body of knowledge and experience, I can't ignore my own. For some learners, remaining "hands off" is the worst thing you could possible do. It's akin to waiting for them to fail, before offering assistance. (check out the link on my page to Joe Torgesen's article, "Catch Them Before They Fall")The learners I will be focusing on have diagnosed learning disabilities, have had several interventions and have indicated they want help- as have the parents.
So I am very grateful that the exec team and my special ed cohort within SelfDesign is supporting me in this endeavor... I am hosting a conference, to offer practical assistance for parents who want to understand the nature of their children's struggles with reading, and to workshop techniques and strategies that teach parents how to teach their own kids. This is NOT what SelfDesign is usually about- but I believe it's a move that acknowledges that there are all types of learners, and some have brain structures that make learning to read with casual or intermittent exposure impossible.
I am now researching web conferencing so that I can present a workshop to 8 or 9 parents over the Internet. I have been using iChat with great success for teaching reading in a one on one situation, but I now need to find something that allows me to interact with more than 3 participants at a time. That seems to be the limit for most small scale interfaces.
This is going to be a very cool process for me,and I am so excited about this whole thing! I will update you all from time to time on how this reading conference works out!
The basic philosophy of SelfDesign is that if we allow children to explore their own interests at their own pace, (which also means we don't impose our methods and ideas on them)they will learn everything they need in life, and will learn it better because they are intrinsically motivated. To be able to adopt this philosophy, parents (and some learning consultants, myself included) have to be prepared to adjust their perceptions of the timeline imposed from the system. We have to be able to accept and embrace that learning will happen in it's own time, and it may look very different from the school system with it's definite expectations from year to year.
I have found this very challenging as a "systematized" teacher. I have made excellent progress for the most part, but there is one area that I have stood firm on, and that is, early intervention for children who have learning disabilities.
I have had mild and not-so-mild discussions with administration and some parents over this- and I remain unapologetic- to no-one's surprise, I'm sure! The executive of SelfDesign Learning Community encourages me to adopt a "hands off" approach, believing that these kids will read when they are ready, and while I respect their combined body of knowledge and experience, I can't ignore my own. For some learners, remaining "hands off" is the worst thing you could possible do. It's akin to waiting for them to fail, before offering assistance. (check out the link on my page to Joe Torgesen's article, "Catch Them Before They Fall")The learners I will be focusing on have diagnosed learning disabilities, have had several interventions and have indicated they want help- as have the parents.
So I am very grateful that the exec team and my special ed cohort within SelfDesign is supporting me in this endeavor... I am hosting a conference, to offer practical assistance for parents who want to understand the nature of their children's struggles with reading, and to workshop techniques and strategies that teach parents how to teach their own kids. This is NOT what SelfDesign is usually about- but I believe it's a move that acknowledges that there are all types of learners, and some have brain structures that make learning to read with casual or intermittent exposure impossible.
I am now researching web conferencing so that I can present a workshop to 8 or 9 parents over the Internet. I have been using iChat with great success for teaching reading in a one on one situation, but I now need to find something that allows me to interact with more than 3 participants at a time. That seems to be the limit for most small scale interfaces.
This is going to be a very cool process for me,and I am so excited about this whole thing! I will update you all from time to time on how this reading conference works out!
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Freed kids and behavior mod
People, including B. F. Skinner, often talk about the philosophical proposition that operant principles reduce humans to animals whose behavior is determined by features of the environment, denying the be-loved construct of free will. For a variety of reasons (just one here: Read Dan Wegner’s excellent The Illusion of Conscious Will), I am pretty well [...]
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29 December 2008
Beyond access: Improving success
As the new year approaches, with the hope engendered by a change in US government, here’s a salute to organizations—Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, Justice for All, and the World Institute on Disability, among others— that advocate for individuals with disabilities. These organizations and their siblings have done a great deal to secure health care, [...]
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