Special Education Today newsletter 4(17)
The week’s news and info for 21 October 2024
Hello again, all you dear subscribers to Special Education Today. Welcome to this 17th issue of volume 4. It’s 2024 and this is the SET newsletter! We’re about one third of the way through the volume year, and realizing that fact is a tad surprising to me…it’s the 10th third of a year for the newsletter. We’ve been doing this for a while now, and I hope it’s proving valuable to readers.
I’m glad y’all are here taking this ride with me. Together, I’m hoping that we can make a dent in delivering high quality special education to students and their families around Earth.
Photo
Now this section may not be precisely aligned with making that dent, but I hope it helps with humanizing the endeavor…maybe I should say “ghoulizing” the endeavor?
I toured my neighborhood in search of Halloween decorations. As I mentioned last week, ‘tis the season for me to show you how some of the houses here in Beautyville look in late October.
This house is located about a mile north of us in a downtown neighborhood. Fittingly, just across the street from it (to my back in this photo) is one of C’ville’s public cemeteries. These folks annually do it up!1 Check out the tentacles emerging from the yard, the green spider with bugged-out eyes; the fierce jack-o-lantern, the frightening (frightened?) skeleton with the wild hairdo…. Wow! The gray structure in the back is a path through which one must walk to get to the front door. I wonder how this display looks when it is all lit on the evening when neighborhood kids arrive to trick-or-treat.
Flashes of the electrons
I really appreciate that there were comments over the past week. Thank you to Dan H. (my long-time colleague, friend, and fellow birder), Bryan W. (another long-time pal), DC (whom I’ve known since we were both in elementary school!).
Thanks, too, to readers and followers who restacked content. Sandra D. is clearly out at the front of the pack with at least a half dozen restacks. Thanks, too, to Siwan and Corey P. for echoing posts this past week.
Welcome to some of the new subscribers. “Hiya, Annabel M., Judi H., Nicolle K., DC, Angelo M., Eden, T., and Simon R.” If any of y’all get lost or feel like something’s missing, please write to me.
As far as “likes” go, the electrons have to flash so frequently that they might reach critical flicker fusion and induce seizures. These readers dropped likes on posts: TheBestWritten, Luann D., Sandra D. (way many times!), Clay K., Katie D., DC, Corey P., Joyce P., Jannem, Jane B., Tom Z., Jess C., Adelaide D., Paul C., Mary-Anne L., Larry M., Tina C., Cheryl Z., and anyone whom I missed.
To the extent that interactions with the content on SET provide a valuable metric of influence for the community, the data about comments, restacks, new subscriptions, and likes all seem to be moving in a positive direction. Our gang of advocates may not take over the Earth, but at least the ScoreKeepingGodesses of the Intertubes will have to begin to reckon with us.
Oh! And another way to advance the effort is to share SET.
The posts from last week
Over the last week, I published nine posts on SET. All but one of them (“Learner disabling…”) were available to the entire subscriber list.
Special Education Today newsletter 4(16): The week’s news and info for 14 October 2024
Applications of positive behavior supports in family and home contexts: What are some recent advances in research about and practice of implementing PBS at home?
Learner disabling: Teaching examples: How might the choice of examples used in lessons lead students to misunderstand basic concepts?
Kudos for folks who helped settle Flint's problems with lead in its water: What's the problem with lead in water?
Birding while disabled: What events are on tap for Birdability Week 2024?
Accent the positive: Lovitt's Lines: What was Professor Lovitt's strengths-based view from SET, 1985?
Local Birdability field trip: What did we see and hear on our birding walk 19 October 2024
Arts by and for people with disabilities, too!: What are some of the 40-11 reasons to promote inclusive arts education?
Remember, please, that if you wonder whether you’ve missed any e-mail notifications or you have discarded one and they find you want to reread the entry, you can go the main URL (the “home page”) for Special Education Today and find a listing of everything published on SET. And, also note that that link is a good one to share if you’re reluctant to click on the “share button.”
Forthcoming
I’ve got so many posts under development that it seems irresponsible of me to name them here. I might get to those that I name…but maybe I won’t. Then I’m making false promises or providing false advertising (such as it is). I’m hoping to get a post done about too-rarely discussed topic of effective writing instruction…maybe?
I am pretty damn sure that readers will get to see another post in the series of “Lovitt’s Lines.” Tom wrote about people’s observation that education should be run like a business. Look for it this coming Thursday.2
Even though it’s not exactly a forthcoming post for SET, I want to remind readers that I’ll be making an in-real-life appearance along with my much-admired colleague and pal (and long-time reader of SET), C. Michael Nelson, at the annual conference called “Teacher Educators for Children with Behavior Disorders” in Tempe, AZ, 21-23 November 2024. In addition to hosting a group of presentations, we shall celebrate contributions to the EBD world by the late Jim Kauffman—some of us may cry. I hope that some SET readers will attend and will introduce yourselves to me.
Commentary
I fear too many of my editorial comments are leaking into regular posts on SET. I get a bit excited about some of the topics, and move away from straight reporting and closer to opinion writing, I fear. (Take, for example, the recent post, Arts by and for people with disabilities, too!)
I’m not about to remedy this shortcoming in SET by, say, endorsing political candidates. That may be appropriate for some publications at this time of the year in places where elections are being held soon. Sure, I have opinions, but few of them are tied to special education and disabilities. Also, discerning readers probably got the drift when I summarized (a) recommendations from Project 2025 in “Special Education Today newsletter 4(2)” published in early July 2024 and (b) an analysis published by Hechinger Report in “Another view on Project 2025” (23 July 2024).
I hope, however, that readers are thinking about issues related to disability and special education when they reach voting decisions in their country’s or locality’s elections. We really need to ask questions about what candidates plan to do regarding support for caregivers (both family members and teachers), effective practices in provision of educational services, and similar concerns.
Over on Medical Motherhood, Shasta Kearns Moore raised questions about these and other matters in a post entitled “What do the presidential candidates say about disability issues? Not much.…” Good for her. I encourage you to read her ideas and check them against your own. Your views may or may not align with hers, but it’s worth reflecting on the correspondence between views at least as a way of clarifying one’s own.
There is one serious recommendation I want to make in this discussion. I strongly encourage those of us who can vote in our own local and national elections to do so. Whether you align with my, Ms. Moore’s, or any other’s views about matters regarding special education and disabilities—whether you're “fer us or ag’in us,” please vote.
Oh, and my encouragement to vote isn’t my only recommendation. I’ve got these familiar ones: (a) Wear your seatbelts, (b) take care of your (and your friends’ and relations’) health, and (c) teach your children well.
JohnL
SET Editor guy
Once-upon-a-time teacher and researcher
Charlottesville
SET should not be confused with a product with the same name that is published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades (see “Lovitt’s Lines” for examples from those days). Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization. I’m not selling anything here other than what you read in the posts.
Footnotes
Readers who were around in October 2023 may recall that the same house was featured at the bottom left of a 4-part two photo displays, one entitled “Halloween ‘23 #3: Ghostly entrances” and “Halloween '23 #1: So it begins.”
I’ve also been simmering a post or two about Tom Lovitt. The guy was a gem of a human being, to say nothing about how far ahead of his time he was. I’ve begun making notes for a brief portrait recognizing his contributions. I’m aiming to publish it on his birthday, but that’s not until next September.