Friday photos: A couple of psychologists
Am I lucky or what?
Having lunch with folks is such a civilized activity. I’ve been fortunate enough to have civilized lunches with some grand special educators during my career (more on that later) and I had the opportunity to do so again recently.
I got to go to lunch with Ludy Benjamin (he goes by “Ben”) and Dan Willingham. These people are a couple of eminent psychologists, so it’s really flattering that one of we little educators gets to hang out with them.
Here is a photo from outside of the restaurant after our lunch.
Loyal readers of Special Education Today will likely remember earlier photos about Ben (examples: 9 November 2024; 6 December 2024) and Dan (15 July 2025; 11 August 2023). These photos illustrate the substantial opportunities that I have to learn from marvelous contributors to our knowledge base. For a glimpse of what they have done for our general understanding of learning, check out the Wikipedia pages about Dan and Ben. These are a couple of people whom we should venerate.
For me, it’s been both an opportunity to get to sit at the Big Kids’ Table and to learn stuff about foundational concepts affecting special education. I’m happy have the opportunities to hang with these guys.
Love these kinds of opportunities - I don't get to do it much anymore. But I do recall way back when I was in my last year of my undergrad program, Rick took me to a dinner get-together in Salt Lake City with grad students and professors. There was a professor who included me in the conversation and let me get a taste of the Big Kids' Table. That was you! I never forgot that experience - that was some CEC conference. I had a lot of new experiences there - my first big conference!