As educators, our task is to push students to move past the boundaries of what they are currently able to do—to expand their abilities, stretch their knowledge, test their understandings, and apply skills in new and unfamiliar contexts. We do this in an effort to help students achieve their fullest potential—to be their best academic, social, emotional, and professional selves. For most students, taking risks in a learning environment is not an easy or comfortable process. For students who have experienced repeated failures in school, the prospect of taking risks can be paralyzing.
At the recent Games, Learning & Society (GLS) conference , Beth King, a PhD. candidate at the University of Washington at Madison, presented on the process of “creating possibility spaces” for students within the virtual world of Sims2. King described her research with adolescent boys who were disaffiliated with school and had low academic self-esteem. The boys also had a strong affiliation with video games and gaming culture. “The project goal was to encourage each participant to consider the future not in terms of current academic performance but instead based upon their unique hopes, dreams and passion using potential self (Markus & Nurius, 1986) strategies.”
King situated herself as an advocate for the boys by creating safe places for them to practice their “authentic” selves and explore “possible” selves. Within the virtual world of Sims2, she had the boys explore who they thought they could become, who they were afraid to become, and who they were likely to become. King then conducted a series of career development interventions that included a blend of self-explorations within the virtual world sandbox as well as visits to actual worksites and college campuses. After the project, the boys who participated reported an increased ability to visualize their “hoped-for” futures. They also spoke about their individual futures with language that indicated much more agency and ownership.
As educators of students with special needs, the “possibility space” opened up within the sandbox of the virtual world is something we should be fully exploring. If we can give students the opportunity to safely “try on” a number of different occupations and explore various futures and identities, they may surprise us in ways we could never imagine.
Erin Kinard joined PCI as the Vice President, Product Development/Publisher in December, 2009. Kinard oversees product development for the company. Prior to joining PCI, Kinard served as Editorial Director, Reading and ESL for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Supplemental Publishers in Austin. During her eight years at Harcourt, Kinard held a variety of positions including Editorial Director of Steck-Vaughn, and Editorial Director of Reading for Harcourt Achieve. In addition to her educational publishing experience at other companies including Brown Publishing Network and Scholastic, Inc.,
There is a world of design that exists for special needs students that is not taught in university but is rather learned by the designer in the hands-on world of special needs education and publishing. Because there are so many different kinds of students with special needs, we don’t have a “one design fits all” system. Although designing for our students requires simple and straightforward aesthetics, the thought behind the design is not simple. We tailor our design process to consider the age, grade level, and intellectual level of the student for each product, the goal being to produce on-level, clean design.
“Simple” can be hard to achieve. Designers edit themselves much in the same way an author does. We ask ourselves “At what point does the interesting/pretty/colorful graphic just get in the way? Is it necessary? Does it provide clarification for the student? Does it support the copy/worksheet or does it compete with it? Especially when designing for students with intellectual disabilities, “Simple” cannot be abstract – the graphics must be recognizable, the copy must be legible.
It is important to see the product through the eyes of the student and we learn to design for this special population from our teachers and from the students themselves. Generally, for design purposes, we break our audience into two groups—those students who have learning disabilities, (i.e., the student who may be in 7th grade but who is reading on a 3rd grade level) and those students with varying degrees of Intellectual disabilities. Because disabilities span all ages, our products have to address the disability as well as the age of the target population.
Three of my favorite sayings follow:
A picture is worth a thousand words • Visual support for the copy/text helps the reader to identify a word or provides a clue as to the meaning of that word or paragraph.
• The imagery needs to be recognizable—not too abstract or stylized.
• Color-coding can play a large role when trying to clarify a pattern or concept.
What you don’t say can be as important as what you do say The use of negative space is one of our most valuable tools. It provides a “breather” for the student, makes the page less intimidating, and asks the student to focus on the important elements of a page.
Some of the ways we accomplish this are:
• Wider side margins (shorter column widths)
• An uncluttered page—no unnecessary objects on the page.
• Every element should have a purpose.
Bigger is Better (sometimes) Fonts
• Because fonts vary in legibility, we have no hard and fast rules dictating a certain font or size, except that they be, without doubt, legible.
• We stay away from display fonts for body copy and are carefully selective in our use of them for titles and headlines.
• Age appropriate —typically larger font sizes are used more for Elementary products than for Secondary and Adult products.
• Math products and many worksheets can vary widely in font size.
Leading
• Generally we allow more leading, but not so much that the lines of type become disjointed causing the student to lose his or her train of thought.
• Leading should be comfortable, flowing.
We try to use all of these techniques in a subtle way so as to not emphasize the differences of our special needs students from the general ed population. We hope that our designs will be clean, interesting, fresh, appropriate, and above all, help the student in his learning process.
Several months ago, I introduced you to a magical place here in San Antonio called Morgan’s Wonderland —the world’s first ultra accessible family fun park designed specifically for children and adults with special needs. Having taken an afternoon to tour the facility with one of the park directors, I can honestly say that if you have not had an opportunity to visit their website or follow their Facebook page, you are missing out on some serious warm-fuzzies. If you live near San Antonio, I encourage you to go and see the place for yourself. Please remember to make reservations first. The park directors closely manage the number of people admitted daily in order to avoid overcrowding. This is just one example of the park’s sensitivity to the needs of the audience it serves.
As part of the community dedicated to serving individuals with special needs, pretty much everyone at PCI saw a partnership with Morgan’s Wonderland as a natural extension of what we do, much like our involvement with Special Olympics and The Achievers Center. After our initial visit in February, we brainstormed ways to get involved. Now we are excited to get EVERYONE involved! Here’s how:
PCI Education, WeAreTeachers.com and Morgan’s Wonderland are teaming up to send students and their families to Morgan’s Wonderland in San Antonio, Texas. Starting this fall, we are going to sponsor a contest on the WeAreTeachers website that will invite teachers to nominate a student with special needs and his or her family to visit Morgan’s Wonderland. The winning student, three family members, and the student’s teacher will receive a trip to San Antonio where they will spend two nights and two days at the park—including airfare, hotel accommodations, and park admission free of charge. In addition, the winning teacher will receive a suite of PCI reading and math products for his or her school or classroom.
Here is the part where we need your help! We are looking for corporate sponsors to partner with us on this project. The benefit for all involved will be tremendous—not just for the students and families who will get the opportunity to visit this amazing place, but you will get the warm-fuzzies just by being involved!
Heads up – Congress is discussing moving “idle” ARRA funds from Title 1 and IDEA to the general Stabilization Fund by the end of July. The definition of “idle” is unclear – although it would appear to be any funds that are not obligated regardless of whether they have been distributed to districts.
An article in Politico last week revealed that the House is maneuvering to find more funds for teacher pay – but is running into resistance. A more detailed follow up piece in Ed Money Watch reviewed how this might actually work.
“As of May 28, 2010, all IDEA funds had been obligated to states. The remaining unobligated ARRA funds include $1.4 billion for Title I, about $1.4 billion for Pell Grants, $250 million in Statewide Data Systems Funds, about $150 million in Teacher Incentive Grant Funds, and $38 million for Vocational and Rehabilitative Services. This total amount of unobligated funds, around $3.2 billion, doesn’t come close to the $23 billion requested for these purposes in previous version of House and Senate legislation.
To make up the rest of the difference, any legislation would have to redirect already obligated (but not outlaid) ARRA funds into a fund specifically meant for teacher salaries and benefits. Not including SFSF, about $21.9 billion in ARRA education funding has yet to be outlaid, including roughly $8 billion in both IDEA and Title I. This amount is much closer to the $23 billion that was requested for the Education Jobs Fund by the House and Senate.”
Essentially they may rewrite the rules more than halfway through the program.
The goals are laudable – making sure that we retain as many teachers as possible in very tough times. The original proposal called for $23 billion in additional funding specifically to help states and districts pay teachers in the coming year. This appears to have been scaled back to $10 billion – but even that is problematic given the climate in Congress.
Unfortunately this not only affects the students with the greatest needs it also penalizes schools and districts who have been using the full amount of time allotted in ARRA to plan carefully before acting.
There are no easy answers here – the budget crises at the state level are staggering. Kids are going to show to school in September ready to learn whether the economy is doing well or not.
Please encourage your congressional delegations to support the full second round of stimulus funding for education. Let them know that rewriting the rules halfway through isn’t acceptable and that both teachers and students with special needs need our support.
For more than four decades, the AEP Awards have honored outstanding resources for teaching and learning. One of the largest and longest-running awards programs for educational products, the AEP Awards aim to:
identify products that exemplify the highest standards of professional, quality educational content,
give credit and recognition to the organizations who are leading the way in this field, and
set benchmarks to which the rest of the industry can aspire.
Leslie Buteyn is tasked with developing products from the idea phase to the marketplace and is responsible for managing the development of many of PCI Education’s bestselling products. She has developed products for students from preschool age to adult in all subject areas.
Prior to her career at PCI, Buteyn was a middle school language arts and reading teacher in San Antonio. She holds a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Teaching. Both degrees were earned at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Academic Curriculum Framework in CEC’s blog for new teachers, Reality 101.
Thursday morning I got up early and hustled and bustled with all of the other attendees, making my way to my first session. It was a presentation about an academic framework for students with cognitive disabilities recently developed by PCI Education. Let me tell you, I went a little nuts over this development. They aligned general content and skill-level standards by grade/age levels (K-2, 3-6, middle school, and high school) and using a developmental acquisition framework within each grade/age level group.
This concept is not revolutionary—many counties and individual teachers of students with low-incidence disabilities use this to structure their teaching. It is, however, the most organized, research-based, and comprehensive framework I have ever seen. It was a huge “YES!!!” for me. “YES!!” the developers at PCI wrote it down in an incredibly user-friendly format that includes assessment and data collection tools.
Yes! Ellen gets it! This is exactly what we intended to do when we developed Academic Curriculum Framework. Thank you for spreading the word, Ellen!
Leslie Buteyn is tasked with developing products from the idea phase to the marketplace and is responsible for managing the development of many of PCI Education’s bestselling products. She has developed products for students from preschool age to adult in all subject areas.
Prior to her career at PCI, Buteyn was a middle school language arts and reading teacher in San Antonio. She holds a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Teaching. Both degrees were earned at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
UPDATED 5/20/2010 (by Denise) Katie Haney and her class won the contest!!!! The entire class from Wilderness Oak Elementary will be going to Universal Orlando on June 18th!!! SO EXCITED FOR THEM!!! See more info here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/37252826#37252826
It is always a joy to showcase kids doing extraordinary things. Over at NBC’s The Today Show, there is a contest going on to name the Most Extraordinary Class as part of the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Four finalists have been chosen, and videos of each class are featured at:
Check out the videos and submit your vote. All of the classes are amazing. I am the proud mom of one of the first graders featured in the first video. My daughter and her class have now raised nearly $10,000 to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Their video and each of the other three remind us of the power of teamwork and the strength of vision that a group of any age can achieve.
Jill’s responsibilities include managing the development of proprietary reading curriculums, training customers on PCI’s reading curriculums and other proprietary products, conceptualizing new products, writing sales and marketing literature related to the reading curriculums, staying current on reading and other educational research, overseeing the research conducted on PCI’s products, and staying current on federal and state legislation related to education.
Prior to her career with PCI Education, she was a national reading consultant and a seventh grade reading teacher. In 1999, she was named Teacher of the Year for San Antonio ISD and won the Trinity Prize for Teaching. Haney earned a BA with honors and a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Trinity University in San Antonio. She has additional graduate reading hours from University of Texas San Antonio.
As an author of reading and language arts programs for students with special needs, I make a point to read the research about best practices for teaching students with intellectual disabilities. As the mom of a 4-year-old child with autism, I am constantly learning how to take advantage of teachable moments for both of us.
Two weeks ago, my daughter had her 7-year-old birthday party at a local bowling alley. My son, Alex, has always enjoyed watching bowling (whether live or on TV when we are using the Wii), but this was the first time my husband and I offered the bowling ball to him. And it was an amazing experience.
Frame One: Observer
I often find in teaching our son new skills that my husband is much more proficient than me in guiding our son to be independent. Bowling was a good example of that. On Alex’s first turn, I held the ball and guided him up to the line and then used hand over hand to get him to push the ball so it would roll down the lane. Alex clearly enjoyed it, but he was more of an observer than a participant.
Frame Two: Active Participant
The next time Alex was up to bowl, my husband guided him to the ball return, pointed to the ball, and let Alex pick the ball up and carry it himself. Then he guided Alex up to the line and gestured to Alex to push the ball down the lane. He helped a bit, but this time Alex was clearly the participant, not merely an observer.
From then on, Alex became more and more independent taking his turn to bowl. Yes, there was the time when we turned our backs for a second to cheer on our daughter and found Alex wandering down someone else’s lane. And, yes, we still had to indicate to Alex when it was his turn, but the joy and pride I saw as he became a bowler in his own right was tremendous.
Classroom Implications
This past week, I had the privilege to observe a number of elementary and middle school classrooms for students with intellectual disabilities. The classrooms that struck me as highly successful promoted the same kind of independence my husband encouraged at the bowling party. The teacher and paraprofessionals were there to model and facilitate, but the students knew the classroom routine, what was expected, and had multiple opportunities to perform independently. And they did perform independently with obvious engagement and pride.
I will remember many things from my daughter’s birthday party: her joy at having classmates and friends bowl side by side, the lovely presents, and the fun we all had. But the most important lesson I will take away is the reminder that my son, like all children, can fully participate in activities and learn to complete an activity independently. As we create curriculum for students with intellectual disabilities, building in the routines and interactive activities that allow them to develop independence and confidence is the key to successful and long-term learning.
Jill’s responsibilities include managing the development of proprietary reading curriculums, training customers on PCI’s reading curriculums and other proprietary products, conceptualizing new products, writing sales and marketing literature related to the reading curriculums, staying current on reading and other educational research, overseeing the research conducted on PCI’s products, and staying current on federal and state legislation related to education.
Prior to her career with PCI Education, she was a national reading consultant and a seventh grade reading teacher. In 1999, she was named Teacher of the Year for San Antonio ISD and won the Trinity Prize for Teaching. Haney earned a BA with honors and a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Trinity University in San Antonio. She has additional graduate reading hours from University of Texas San Antonio.
Teachers know they have to engage their students in order to make learning meaningful, but finding ways to do this can be a challenge. Is using everyday technology, like the iPod Touch, to deliver content a simple solution to that problem?
At TCEA in February 2010, a group of teachers from Mansfield ISD presented on the iPod Touch Initiative in their school district and their experiences with incorporating hundreds of iPod Touches into the classroom. They explained that the iPod Touch offered active, individualized, and customized learning using both games and content delivered via the iPod Touch.
Do you have experience using the iPod Touch in your classroom? How does it work for you? Do you use it to deliver content? Do students play educational games? What are your must-have apps?
Leslie Buteyn is tasked with developing products from the idea phase to the marketplace and is responsible for managing the development of many of PCI Education’s bestselling products. She has developed products for students from preschool age to adult in all subject areas.
Prior to her career at PCI, Buteyn was a middle school language arts and reading teacher in San Antonio. She holds a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Teaching. Both degrees were earned at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
The biggest message was his presence. It left no doubt about how seriously Obama and he feel about improving the lives of students with disabilities. This was welcome because much of the work they have done in this area so far has not been particularly visible.
He laid out a vision for the Administration’s education legislative priorities and the central role that serving people with disabilities will play in ESEA (aka NCLB). The linkages between ESEA and IDEA that were created during the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) will also be strengthened and improved.
What follows is a recap of the talk and some thoughts on what this means for the SPED community.
Special Education Is The Civil Rights Issue of Our Generation
He opened by observing that Obama and he believe every child deserves a world-class education. While almost everyone says this, a gap still exists between our aspirations and reality. Subtle prejudices and roadblocks still get in the way of people with special needs.
Most of the talk teed up the idea that we have a historic opportunity to full this promise for all students with the upcoming ESEA and IDEA reauthorizations.
The argument was initially framed around global competitiveness. America simply does not have expendable students if we are going to prosper in an increasingly globalized world.
But he closed this part of the speech by saying that serving students isn’t just about economics. It is a moral issue. In fact he called it “the civil rights issue of our generation.”
He hammered this point home by talking about how the civil rights battles of the 60’s for racial equality paved the way for IDEA in the mid-seventies for people with disabilities. He made a strong statement about how he and Obama are committed to making this promise a reality.
Personally I really appreciated his stand on the role of education in helping people live more fulfilling lives – regardless of the economics. I’m weary of every education policy discussion devolving into how schools are job readiness factories. Of course they are – but they are so much more than that.
Progress Not Perfection
Next he focused on what is working. We have made great strides in the 35 years since IDEA was enacted in making sure a disability shouldn’t stop any child from attending school and pursuing a career.
Students with special needs are no longer turned away at the door, housed in broom closets, or bused to a distant site. Today the 6 million students served by IDEA spend 80% of their time in inclusion classrooms and 95% are in a neighborhood schools.
He told a couple of heartwarming stories of students with special needs learning alongside their peers, eating lunch with them, making friends with them, and demonstrating real leadership in their schools. That society is willing to make this investment sends the message that disabilities alone do not define our work or our worth as human beings. Disabilities are not destiny.
He labeled all these successes are civil rights victories.
First Stop – Enforcement
Duncan at this point pointed out that will all the progress we still have not fulfilled the full promise of IDEA. The data shows us we are getting better – but we must get better faster.
By just about every measure students with disabilities are better educated than just a generation ago. The graduation rate, post secondary enrollment rate, and employment opportunities are increasing but they are all still too low. Students are leaving schools without the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.
The Obama Administration intends to work with schools, districts, and states to enforce existing laws. While this was a relatively passing remark it does mark a change in emphasis from prior administrations. Generally speaking enforcement of existing statutes has gotten short shrift over the past couple of decades (the IRS audit budget was cut dramatically while the economy grew).
For publishers who help districts meet their obligations under IDEA and ADA a renewed emphasis on enforcement means your customers will be open to solutions that help them meet both the spirit and the letter of the law.
ESEA Reauthorization Linked To IDEA
Making ESEA a building block for the subsequent IDEA reauthorization isn’t a new concept. Better integration began with NCLB. But it appears that Obama intends to create a much tighter link between the two, in fact Duncan specifically called it “one seamless approach.”
The administration also isn’t going to scrap NCLB. They want to build on what worked, but fix the things that didn’t. Much of this has been reported elsewhere.
What hasn’t gotten much press is that Special Education will be included in ALL aspects of ESEA. This is great news for the community of educators, professionals, parents, and publishers who serve this population. I believe part of why Duncan was willing to make the time to be in Nashville was simply to drive this point home.
There were three areas that he specifically called out with regard to Special Education – accountability, assessment, and teacher quality.
Accountability
SPED will fully participate in ESEA’s accountability systems. NCLB did this right by requiring the participation of all students. This highlighted achievement gaps and forced districts to address populations that were underserved.
But NCLB’s assessment regime had a central flaw – it failed to measure and reward growth. From Duncan’s perspective we shouldn’t label solid progress towards goals as failure. “It is wrong, inaccurate, and demoralizing.” A school that progresses from 2 grade levels behind to 1 level behind has NOT failed – but under NCLB it has been labeled as such. He quipped that “NCLB has 50 ways to fail, very few to succeed.”
The new accountability system will be based mostly on student growth and will recognize schools that show meaningful gains. The law will continue to require teaching students with disabilities and schools will also have to improve the performance of the highest achieving students. The focus on subpopulations isn’t going away.
The vast majority of schools will also have more flexibility to implement locally designed ideas to reach the benchmarks. He believes the best ideas come from the local level.
This does not mean that schools with chronic gaps and poor performance get a pass. The school closure in Central Falls RI in February makes clear that Obama backs strong measures where needed.
In an interesting twist this accountability will also escalate to the district level. District level gaps in progress may not be apparent at the school level.
Assessment Grant Competition
In order for this to happen Duncan recognizes that states will have to significantly improve existing assessments – we must move beyond filling the bubble tests.
In the ESEA blueprint and Race to the Top (RTTT) they are putting investments in building the next generation of assessments. He specifically cited including technology to measure a range of skills that have been difficult to measure.
I think more importantly there will be an emphasis on formative assessments which provide real time feedback to improve teaching and learning.
Assessment reform is especially important for special education. The majority of SPED students take the regular state tests and a few can take alternate assessments. Building assessments that are both accessible and deliver meaningful information requires specialized expertise. The DOE will run a competition to improve special education testing tools.
Students with low incidence disabilities require the same quality of assessments but the development of those tools doesn’t make commercial sense given the size of the sub-groups. It makes enormous educational and civil rights sense – so we were pleased to see the government step in to make this possible. We were also excited to see that it will be run as a competition – allowing multiple approaches which will dramatically increase our odds of finding what works.
Teacher Quality
The last area he talked about is recognizing “the uniquely transformative power of good teachers.” The Obama Administration is investing $4 billion in recruiting, training, and retaining teachers. They are going to have a specific focus on high needs areas – which includes SPED.
This is great news because the turnover in Special Ed is so high. The maturity and classroom judgment that come from experience are at a real premium. Recruiting and rewarding teachers who choose this path is something everyone in the special needs community should celebrate.
Saving Education Jobs – Foundation for Reform
A final point. Secretary Duncan echoed his remarks to Congress last week about the pending catastrophe in teacher employment due to plunging state budgets. He made the point that education reform and saving education jobs go hand in hand. At this time we cannot afford to take a step backwards.
I commented on this last week and strongly encourage publishers to get involved in supporting this effort with whatever influence you have or can create in Washington.
Conclusion
It was really nice to see the Administration make a concerted effort to reach out to the professionals who serve students with special needs. It sent a strong message that the progress we have made in recently will not be lost, and in fact should be accelerated as education policy evolves in the next several years.
For most students, taking risks in a learning environment is not an easy or comfortable process. For students who have experienced repeated failures in school, the prospect of taking risks can be paralyzing.
Erin Kinard
