Ungrading: The ambitious preparation of preservice inclusive educators
Watch video: Session offered at the CEC Division of Early Childhood conference 2020 (but in 2021!)
Special needs, exceptionalities, and more: Just say no to disability euphemisms
Euphemisms, or a more palatable word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing (Kirwan Institute, 2015), are pervasive in disability discourse. Since the words we use matter, I’m going to attempt to provide a framework for being anti-ableist in our language with resources …
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Is School a National Priority?
I, along with everyone else, am navigating the twists and turns of fall planning. I have concerns, I have frustrations, I feel all the things we’re all feeling collectively. And, as restaurants, bars, gatherings open and people get out and about again, I find myself wondering, “what value do we place on school?” Now, I …
Discomfort as Pedagogy
White supremacy is baked in to the very fabric of educational spaces. I’ve been reading a lot of the literature about anti-racist teacher education and I found an article I really love/wanted to share.⠀⠀Here is the PDF so you can access it easily if you’re interested.⠀⠀The author asks two questions – (1) How might employing …
Awards, Inclusion, Trauma Informed: Can We Have It All?
Awards celebrations have long been a part of the school year and school culture. Honor Roll and Attendance Awards are so ubiquitous people have bumper stickers touting these accomplishments! In the last decade, though, as we have worked to become more inclusive and more responsive to our students’ unique needs and experiences, these routines are …
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The (broken) promises of Higher Education
Growing up, I didn’t know a lot of people who had degrees, certainly not advanced degrees. College professors were fancy, brilliant, suede-elbowed folx whose world would never intersect with mine. I’m not a first generation college student but in many ways, I felt like one. Arriving on campus at a large state institution my freshman …
Trust
In January 2016, Mira and I were fortunate to present at the Visible Learning Conference in London. It was a very different conference experience than we’d had before but that’s a whole other conversation. Today, I want to talk a little about Kristin Anderson (@kristiande), a researcher I heard while at that conference. Kristen talked …
Student Teaching Cut Short
I am guilty of the occasional jump for joy when an unexpected snow day occurs, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine the closing of schools around America for an indefinite period of time because of a global pandemic. This is a unique situation that I could not have thought up at …
Amplify the Inequities
One of the startling (she says, naively) things about this moment is just how comfortable we are with saying, “yes, not all kids are going to be able to access their learning but we have to teach the ones who can.” Kids with disabilities have largely been an afterthought in the pivot online as well. …
Humanize Pandemic Pedagogy
Week 3. We are beginning to feel the impact of both the sustained isolation and the spread of the virus. As more and more people are either becoming sick, caring for sick loved ones, or worrying about those who are sick but at a distance, how are we adjusting our pandemic pedagogy? As schools were …