Special Education and Learning Differences

Lately, I find myself realizing at all sorts of odd times just how having a son with special needs has affected our whole family. Tucking my 8-year-old daughter into bed last night, she asked how her 6-year-old brother was and I said, “Awesome. He’s still in his pajamas and settling down.” My daughter responded, “Yay! No stripping tonight,” as if it was the most normal thing in the world to say.

Last week, a kind grocery store cashier asked me how things were going with the baby. I did a double take, but then found myself just smiling and saying “Fine” when she held up the Gerber rice cereal box. I’m long past the point of trying to explain that I still serve baby cereal to my son for breakfast because it is one of the few foods he will eat.

Some time after the diagnosis, you begin to realize that things in your family will forever be different from “normal.” I’m not convinced there is a normal anymore, but I guarantee we aren’t it. And yet, every time my son gives me a kiss and flashes that winning smile, I know how deeply blessed we are to have him in our lives.

As an educator and a writer, being a parent of a student with special needs has changed my perspective on many things. Most importantly, I’ve realized how much I appreciate the educators who accept the oddities of our family without judgment and who go out of their way to make life and communication a little easier. Most parents can ask their children how school went that day or who they are having trouble with at school. When your child is nonverbal, that question goes unanswered unless your child is fluent in another form of communication.

When creating curriculum for students who are nonverbal, thinking about how we can better help teachers communicate with parents is essential. That’s why I was so passionate about making sure we included the School-Home Connections Book in Environmental Print Series. This reproducible book with take-home activities provides a short summary of every one of the 160 lessons in the curriculum, allowing parents to get a sense of what their children are learning. It also includes short reinforcement activities parents can do at home to help generalize the learning.

Lately, we’ve heard from our customers that, to facilitate parent communication even more, they need the School-Home Connections and parent letters in Spanish. And thanks to one of our wonderful editors who is bilingual, we are making that happen. Downloadable PDFs of the parent letters for PCI Reading Program and Environmental Print Series, along with the School-Home Connections Book from Environmental Print Series, are available now on our website.

From this parent to all of you working with students with special needs, many, many thanks for your expertise, caring, and understanding.

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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.

by Janie Haugen-McLane, Co-Founder PCI Education

I arrived in Special Education through a side door. When my accounting job in Houston, Texas ended in 1987, (because the company closed unexpectedly) the want-ads became my new friend. A small ad caught my eye: Need teacher with degree to work with adults with special needs in classroom setting.

Janie Haugen-McLane (Back in The Day)

Having volunteered at Special Olympics before and loving it, I hurried over to a large residential campus in the River Oaks section of Houston. The administrator took me on a tour to visit the classroom where 30 adult students (ranging in ages from 18 to 70) and two teachers occupied an extremely large room. After introducing me to the students, these dedicated educators explained why they loved working there. Within minutes the students were gathered around me, all talking at the same time and begging me to be their new teacher. I was the one excited; no one had ever pleaded for me to work for them anywhere before. I was hooked and started my journey into Special Education.

There were ten students in the morning class and ten different students in the afternoon. My new job was to teach life skills… how to survive in the real world. I wanted to give to these students an exciting, fun and creative environment; I wanted them to have the best that life has to offer.

Wanting to beat the sludge of early-morning Houston traffic, I would arrive at the school more than an hour before the 8 a.m. class time. Since it was a residential facility, little by little, my students began knocking on the locked classroom door, pleading to come to class early. Together, we would work on getting the classroom ready for the day. We talked, we laughed, they learned, I learned…  and as the days unfolded we learned about each other, about who and what we were.

In the first few days of teaching, one student was making the two “e’s” in his name backwards. Sitting down at the table by him, I showed him an easier way to make an “e.” Then he proceeded to write his name again with the backwards letters. Just as I began to say something else, he tugged on my sleeve, “Miss Janie, did they not tell you that there is something wrong with my brain?”

Stopping in my tracks, I excused myself to the other teacher and stepped outside the classroom. Tears welled up in my eyes. What had I been thinking? This was an adult man who had been trying to write his name correctly for over thirty years. In the whole, big scheme of things, what did it really matter? Upon returning to the classroom, I made a check-mark by his name signaling a job well done and assigned him another task. That day was the turning point in my life; I became the student… the student became my teacher.

Quietly and with little warning these students captured my imagination and heart. Special Education was the place where I belonged. Finally, I had discovered my life’s purpose. Life would never be the same.

Question of the Day: What drew you to a career in Education? PCI wants to hear and learn about your experience. Come on board with PCI and blog your story to the world.

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Janie McLane Co-Founder PCI Education

Janie Haugen-McLane, creator of PCI’s flagship product, the best-selling Life Skills Programs, Series I and II, draws on her years of teaching to develop real-world, innovative educational products. She has conceived of and developed more than 95% of PCI’s proprietary products and has attracted a number of nationally recognized authors to PCI. 

by Leslie Buteyn

Ellen, a special educator from Fairfax County, VA recently sang the praises of our

Academic Curriculum Framework

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!

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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.