Author: Jen Newton

It’s already summer school time and I have a course titled Critical Issues in Special Education.  We’re kicking off with some conversations about LRE and inclusion backed by the literature on the topic.  I’ll share the articles we read here in case you want/need to learn more or brush up on the nuance of LRE.

McGovern, 2015

Kauffman & Badar, 2017

Kirby, 2016

Carson, 2016

Kurth, Morningstar, & Kozleski, 2014

Preventing Double Segregation for Students with Disabilities

Rozalski, Stewart, & Miller, 2010

Rafferty & Griffin, 2005

Primary Pre-Service Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Inclusion Across the Training Years, 2018

Sometimes Separate Is Better, 1994

Instructing Students With High-Incidence Disabilities in the General Education Classroom

Social Acceptance and Paraprofessional Support for Students with Severe Disabilities.pdf

Inclusive education, Beyond Popular Discourse, 2018

Educating Students with Learning Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms, 2013

I posted on Instagram about the trip my daughter, Isley, and I made to Lawrence, Kansas for a play her former kindergarten teacher wrote based on an experience Isley had with bullying in 7th grade.  I want to provide more context to that experience first and then provide some facts and resources related to suicide prevention.  I’m hoping the connection between the two will make sense as we work through it.

I know it’s hard to read but it says “Zoe G is a bitch and she is ugly Doanta F said so with those ugly ass long socks.”  This was found on a bathroom wall in the middle school and Isley and Zoe knew immediately who had written it.  Zoe was hurt, of course, and the girls considered a variety of responses.  Ultimately, though, we decided to wear long socks for the remainder of the school year.

Isley and Zoe bought tall socks and we posted about it with a few hashtags.  Former students of mine shared the story with their students who then joined in the tall socks movement.  One of my former students who is now an extraordinary teacher in Brooklyn sent a box of tall socks for the girls to share with classmates who wanted to participate.

 

We started getting pics of long socks from California, Kansas, Virginia, North Carolina (one of our sock supporters was in MY prek class when she was 4!!), and more.  Zoe felt supported and seen and the message was spreading far beyond our little St. Louis suburb.  We kept the long socks going until the last day of school and eventually even the girl who wrote the message came to school in long socks.  Seriously.

It was an opportunity to create community from hurt and we took it.  However, it did not address the root causes of the hurt nor did we have any luck in motivating the school counseling staff to support the learner who wrote the message to better understand how she was feeling in the school environment.  As we often say, hurt people hurt people.  Bullying is not a natural and inherent part of educational spaces – kids need our support in navigating big and difficult emotions.  Why aren’t we actively and proactively providing those supports?

Fast forward a year and Isley’s amazing kindergarten teacher (middle school theater elective teacher also because of course she is) . . . Ms. Fewins and Isley connected when Isley was in her kindergarten class and they’ve remained close.  The best teachers are like that – teachers for life.  Ms. Fewins wrote a script loosely based on the tall socks experience and her middle schoolers edited and revised it, eventually selecting it for their spring play.  We knew we had to be there for it.

As soon as we got into town, we were greeted with LONG SOCKS!

The cast told a powerful story of the social dynamics and challenges kids are facing and their individual and collective struggles to fit in AND be true to themselves.  We know what adolescence brings.  Rather than saying “middle school is so hard,” how about we actively work on providing kids the space to work through their emotions, strategies for navigating the difficulties, and opportunities to practice mistake making and forgiveness granting?

Ms. Fewins helped us bring the experience into the light again and to reflect on what we learned from it.  Isley and I continue to feel that we didn’t do enough to help the girl who wrote the message – she has gone on to continue hurtful behavior toward Zoe.  Rather than punish “bullies” after the damage is done, we should push in as much social emotional support for kids throughout their educational experience.  We leave many many kids with very limited problem solving skills to continue doing harm to themselves and others.  In fact, in schools we often pile on to those kids who need the most support creating amplified feelings of isolation.  Restorative practices are critical for interrupting this cycle.

The mental health of our learners must be on the forefront.  Rates of suicidality, suicide attempts, and deaths by suicides are all increasing and are present in very young children.

Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among children and adolescents ages 10-24.  Nearly one of every eight children between the ages 6 and 12 has suicidal thoughts.

That’s multiple people in your class and in mine.  There are no restrictions to who is affected – across genders (girls attempt suicide more than boys but boys die by suicide more than girls), across race, across ethnicity.  We do know that LGBTQ+ kids who do not see themselves in others are at increased risk of suicidality.  Please know and be familiar with the Trevor Project resources if you teach kids!!

We have a moral and ethical obligation to take loving care of all of our kids.

We teach college students and we are so fortunate to have these conversations with students pretty regularly.  I say fortunate because we are fortunate to be a resource and to be trusted and to be able to connect our students with resources.  Unfortunately, far too many faculty are not considering the many and heavy demands on our students.  In fact, far too often, they’re piling on unnecessarily.  We know our courses are not the only or most important thing students are grappling with.  We know our deadlines are, for the most part, arbitrary.  We accept our students are humans with full lives and our responsibility is to partner with them in their learning. (More on that another day)

We will keep talking about this but I wanted to share a compilation of national resources so you have vetted places to go when you need them.

Active Minds

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention 

American Association of Suicidology

Anxiety and Depression Association of America

Jed Foundation

The Imagine Project

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 1.800.273.8255

Trevor Project

You have local resources as well.  If you have a resource you want to share, send it to us and we will add it as well as post it on our social media.  We can provide a space of hope and of care for each and every kid.

We often are asked for resources on a variety of topics so I am creating a space here to share readings, books, videos, modules, movies, that we use and love. If you have resources, send them our way!

READING

Bradshaw, W. (2013). A framework for providing culturally responsive early intervention services. Young Exceptional Children, 16(1), 3-15. Bradshaw, 2012

Inclusive Classroom Profile

Empowered Educators:  How High-Performing Systems Shape Teacher Quality Around the World, 1st ed.  Darling-Hammond, Burns, Campbell, Goodwin, Hammerness, Low, McIntyre, Sato, & Zeichner  ISBN:  978-1119369608

Troublemakers:  Lessons in Freedom From Young Children At School by Carla Shalaby

VIDEOS

Not sure I love this video but it’s assigned in my course this week so we’ll see what kind of discussions come from it.

PODCASTS

Cult of Pedagogy

INSTAGRAM

@britthawthorne_

@teachandtransform

 

This article had me thinking today about all the ways college professors have historically and may still get in the way of student learning.

So, I wrote a quick little response.  It’s just a start.

Forget your privilege.  You went to college, for many years, and many brilliant people helped you get where you are today.  You are a college professor because your doctoral advisor saw potential in you, taught you the wily ways of academia while guiding your research, your writing, and your learning.  Doctoral programs are an amazing opportunity to read, talk, learn, grow.  You had that opportunity.  You are undoubtedly changed from the experience.  Yes, it was hard.  Yes, you made sacrifices.  Yes, you had uncaring professors along the way.  But you had an opportunity that many only dream of.  Never forget that.

You have also earned your degrees.  You’ve secured that much sought-after tenure track/tenured position.  You have accomplished so much.  But can you really not remember what those undergraduate days were like?  The stress, the lack of sleep, the bad food, the no money, the roommate stuff?

Require expensive books.  Particularly when you then assign only two chapters.  Choose accessible readings.  Provide multitudinous means of accessing readings.  Assign readings intentionally and engage students in applied learning to grow their surface understanding from the reading.  You’re the expert.  Teach.

Assume.  Unless you have trust with your students, you can only assume you know nothing about their lived experiences.

Use Grades As Punishment.  Grades should reflect progress toward mastery of content.  Period.  That’s it.  That’s what grades are.  Communication about learning.  If you use grades to threaten, punish, or coerce students, you’re doing it wrong.  Docking a letter grade for a late assignment is unethical.  Maybe try asking the student why the assignment was late, or better yet, have a relationship with the student that allows her to come to you first.

Office Hours Only.  You do know your students have full lives outside of your course, right?  They have jobs, maybe kids and families, other courses, commitments, responsibilities.  If you set your office hours at the time convenient for you and you are inflexible in meeting with students outside of that time, you are communicating that your time is more valuable than your student’s.

Think Your Time Is More Valuable Than Your Students’.  It’s not.

Expect Students To Improve Without Feedback.  Feedback is teaching – it’s an iterative process and, as the teacher, your participation is required.  If you hand back papers with letters or points on the top, your students have no information about how to improve.  Assessing learning is feedback for you on your instruction, your assignment, your students’ learning.  Provide transparent feedback so your students can progress toward mastery of the content.  Yes, it takes more time – it’s also your job, do it well.

Fail To Teach.  Additionally, if students address you inappropriately in an email, provide them feedback to improve.  As a female professor, I invariably get emails addressed to Mrs. Newton.  I reply with a “Hi, Student, my name is either Dr. Newton or Jen once we’ve actually met in person.”  Guess what.  That’s all it takes.  Rather than being frustrated or writing a heated, ego-driven post on social media, provide feedback, tell students what you expect, allow them to meet your expectations.

Waste Students’ Time.  Busy work, extraneous readings, anything that does not result in extending students’ depth and breadth of knowledge, is a waste of time.  Sure, you can assign anything you want, you can give students 10 points for bringing a dog to class and they will beg, borrow, and steal to get a dog, but what are you teaching?  That teachers are manipulative and that learning is at least secondary to control.  Use their time wisely.

Shame or Condescend Students.  To colleagues, friends, on social media.  Ever.  Every time I see one of those “It’s on the syllabus” memes, I die a little inside.  You are imperfect.  You forget about the occasional faculty meeting, deadline, oil change.  Hopefully, there are people in your life who help you out.  Maybe you could be that person for a student.  Yes, they’re imperfect.  So are you.  Choose empathy.

We know students don’t really read the assigned reading, right?  There are loads of reasons for that.  Textbooks are cost prohibitive, the reading is cumbersome, too long, irrelevant from the student perspective, it’s tedious . . . just to name a few.  As instructors, we implement various strategies to encourage, incentivize, motivate/manipulate students into doing the reading.

I’ve done it.

Reading checks.  Guided notes.  Entrance tickets.  Summary notecards.  Come with three questions from the readings.

For a few semesters, I started off with reading checks that asked specific questions regarding the content from the reading.  And graded them for accuracy.  3/5.  1/5.  5/5.  Then, when my students learned that I was serious about reading checks and they came to class having read, I would give them a sheet of paper that said, “tell me your childhood pet’s name.”  (I didn’t do this specifically.  But I could have.)

Because the point is the reading, right?  Not the reading check.

But by assigning point value to the reading check, that is why I was communicating was important.  And I didn’t actually believe the reading check itself was important.  I did more reading on the evidence and rationale in the “ungrading” model and decided to move my gotcha points into partnerships.  This is where commitment logs were born.

Commitment logs are individual, self assessment accountability tools I use to engage students in their own learning.  I set learning intentions and success criteria for the class session but I ask students to set their own learning intentions and success criteria for our time together.  Sometimes students will write something like “I will stay awake for the whole class” or “I will learn three new things.”  Wherever they are, I’m good with it.

It’s not fancy.  It’s just an ongoing commitment to their learning, their own accountability.  Because some days their heads and hearts are not in my engaging, brilliant pedagogy.  And that’s okay.  They set goals for themselves.  And, more often than not, they exceed their goals.  I think there is something to the act of writing it down, of focusing on an intention, that allows them to attend to their time in class with me a little differently.  Reading checks never affected engagement.  Commitment logs do.

At the end of class, they make an exit statement.  They write about if they met their success criteria, why they did or did not, what they learned, remaining questions they have, concerns they experienced during class, anything they want.  And I respond to every single one prior to our next meeting.

I did ask a midterm and final course evaluation question about the commitment logs.  Students were overwhelmingly positive about the activity.  Since, I respond to each person each week, I am also able to keep a quick record of our relationship as it develops, the student’s self perception and assessment, and concerns or questions that appear more than once across students.  It has unexpectedly provided a relationship-building strategy as well.

I’ll post the blank document here for anyone who may want to try it.  Let me know how it goes for you!  How do you engage your students in their learning and in self assessment?

We are so fortunate in that we often have the opportunity to partner with teachers in learning, problem solving, and improving practices.  Inevitably, across various contexts and grade levels and locales, teachers report frustration with students for not having pencils.

Pencils.

We kept hearing it.  We’d ask questions like, “What frustrates you so much about the pencil issue?” and the responses were varied.  Some said it was an indicator of showing up unprepared, a lack of respect for them or their class, a lack of responsibility.  But, for us, it always felt like a resource issue.  Teachers should have all the pencils they need to engage their learners in all the ways.

Pencils.

When we are confronted with beliefs about what kids “should” do or have, we are always mindful of all the ways we – as adults and professionals – drop the ball.  We are often without a writing utensil when we need it most, yet there is always someone nearby willing to share.  We know these teachers would give us a pencil if we asked!  They would never tell us we were disrespectful for not having one or take it as a lack of our preparedness for our time together.  It happens.  People forget pencils.  And all kinds of other things!  But, for some reason, kids not having pencils was a very frustrating and pervasive problem for teachers.

Pencils.

The more we talked about it, the more it seemed like it was not really about pencils at all.  It was about resources.  Supplies, yes, but also time!  We have seen teachers tag their pencils with identifying markers and create check in/check out systems for pencils, some schools have pencil machines next to the soda machines!

So, we thought maybe this is a small way we could alleviate a huge frustration for teachers.  We could get pencils to teachers and kids.  Lots of pencils.  Loads of pencils.  Enough pencils that no one has to man a sign in/sign out for pencils or sweat a broken pencil, or worry about trying to find one on the floor to avoid being in trouble.  What if we could just get pencils to teachers?  Would that one teeny tiny thing do anything at all to take a teeny tiny load off teachers’ overwhelming list?

We crowdsourced pencils from our friends and families generosity using social media and Amazon wishlists.  We connect directly with teachers using teachingisintellectual’s Instagram and send as many pencils as we can to each teachers’ request.  We take pencils to every professional development we get to do now because it is one small thing we can do for our teacher partners.

Pencils.

We’ve distributed over 20,000 pencils now and we hope it’s just the beginning.  We advocate for fully funded public education and will continue to fight that fight.  Meanwhile, we will contribute as many pencils as we can to as many teachers who need them.

Drop some pencils off at a school near you today.  Do it again next month.  Kids need pencils and it is something you can do.  And pay off an overdrawn lunch account while you’re there too.