Special Education Today newsletter 4(25)
What happened with SET during the week of 9 December 2024?
Hello and welcome to this issue of the newsletter for Special Education Today, which covers 9-15 December 2024 and is the almost-half-way marker for the volume. We are closing in on winter here in the mid-Atlantic region. I saw a few snowflakes Sunday the 15th. Those readers in the Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other parts of the southern hemisphere are hitting the high temperature times of summer, right?
Wherever you are in the 40-some countries on Earth with subscribers to SET and whatever your weather, dear readers, thanks for taking the time to read SET. If I was some religious leader, I’d ceremoniously shake a smoldering rag or wave some sort of wand over you all and bless you for subscribing!
I hope you find this issue of the newsletter—it’s the usual smash-up of photos, status notes, a listing of posts from the previous few days, and (if I can write it) an editorial observation or two.1 On with the show!
Fotografia
Something’s happened to the trail behind our house. Suburbia is moving in on us. The following photos show change. The first photo, provides an idea of what the area back there used to look like, though it is from a different location and looking the opposite direction than the subsequent three images. All are along the Rivanna Trail2 that I sometimes use for exercise.3
The second-fourth photos show the new look. I don’t have any really fitting “before” photos because I never took any from the particular spots of these newer three. I took these newer photos in early December at a spot about .3 or .4 miles from our back yard. The first is from Jordon Park and shows a new paved (!) section of the trail leading to a new bridge over Pollack’s Branch. The second shows the view from the bridge looking farther west. The third shows more of the newly graveled path farther west, still.
The house in the first photo also appears in the fourth one; those are houses of our neighbors, which are a coupla-few blocks away by the streets, but just a couple of 100 meters away by the trail. One can’t see our house in any of these shots.
I might lament the development-improvement of the trail—”Not in my backyard!”—but I won’t. Yes, it’s going to bring more people past our back porch and it might create a path for ne’er- and rarely-do-wells to flee the scene and the gendarmes after…well, doing something not nice. But, according to plans by the city, county, and organizations promoting the development, it will create more opportunities for people, including families with children in strollers and people who use wheelchairs, to have access to the natural world in my hyper local section of our town. And those folks will get to see some of the lovely flora and fauna that we enjoy, which is kinda cool, in my view.
Relatório de situação
In the Department of Thanks, I want to start this week with a shout out to readers Sandra D., Paul, and Ryan C. They used the restack option on posts this week. For readers who are unfamiliar with restacking, when a reader restacks a post, she causes it to appear in her own list of Substack notes. Someone who restacks a note has the option of adding his own comments on the original post or just passing it along with no salt or pepper. I appreciate any restacks, because they expand the circulation of the SET posts. Sandra’s been what one might call a “Regular Restacker”…something like nine times over the past seven days she restacked posts and she’s been doing so for weeks!
Welcomes: Maria L., Hannah C., Susan N., Eleanor W., Kathryn S., Paul, Chloe D., and Simple T. In addition, here’s an extra-special thanks to Mary Pat R. who joined the community with a paid subscription. Woohoo!
Comments: Thanks to Kathy M. (twice), , Cheryl Z. (twice) Tom Z., and MK, all of whom contributed comments on posts during the week. When readers start commenting on each others’ comments, that will be a wonderful indicator of community growth.
Likes: Appreciation to readers Tom Z., Jen W., Pei Jung H., Corey Jo, Kristin S., Dan H., Auraist, Clayton K., Mack B., Angelique W., Laura D., Larry M., Peggy K.-S., Cheryl Z., Joel M., Ryan W., Jeannie KT, Allison L., Laura McK., Tina, Ryan W., Jane B., Kathryn S., and MK, some of whom dropped multiple likes this past week.
There were between 4500 and 5000 reads of posts on SET Web site last week. I don’t know how many visitors made those reads. Some folks surely read more than one post during the week. I kinda doubt that it was the same 500 subscribers showing up 9 times each…anyway, thanks for reading.
Oh, yes! And thanks for sharing. Jan H. is still way out there in the lead among sharers (440 shares!), but lots of thanks to Cheryl Z., Betsy T., Bryan W., and Mike N. for being among the top five sharers who may be able to catch a glimpse of Jan as a distant figure out there when there’s a long straight-away.
And, speaking of Jan H.—Keep a proverbial eye peeled for a post featuring her interview regarding reading fluency and DI.
Índice
Okay, it’s now time for something a little more substantive. The previous week these posts appeared on SET:
Special Education Today Newsletter 4(24): What was happening the week of 4 December 2024?
K. Madigan explained how to improve teacher education on Zach Groshell's podcast: What would teacher ed look like if it proceeded according to DI?
Students with disabilities denied service by US restaurant: What are news sources reporting?
Dear school leader, thank you: May your actions supporting kids with disabilities and their educators bring you accolades
Coverage of Cracker Barrel story is growing: What are major news media sources saying about denying service to kids with disabilities and their teachers?
Guidance about teaching appropriate behavior: What recommendations can one extract from research about effective ways to promote students' learning of good behavior?
Goyen Foundation sources: They do what?
Hoppy birdthay to Bill T.!: What would you find if you looked up "good colleague" in an encyclopedia?
I hope subscribers got to read these as they appeared. However, if you ever think you might have missed a post, you can always simply go to the Web site at https://www.SpecialEducationToday.com/ and see a catalog of all the posts covering practices, policies, problems, places, and people connected to special education and disabilities—and, if you’re paid subscriber, you can read the entire archive, each and every one of 1147 (and counting) of them.
Notas e comentários
Okay, my friends, you’ve already spent 7-8 min on this newsletter, so you’re probably needing to finish it soon. I’ll be brief with the commentary this week.
The events surrounding the incident at a franchise of a restaurant chain in the US state of Maryland in which students with disabilities and their special educators received less than welcoming service that you read about here on SET and likely elsewhere as well are, in my view, pretty important. Let’s just start with the fact that the senior administrator of the local education agency pretty much immediately stood up as an advocate for the students, their families, and educators in her schools. Let’s add to that that parents and allies “took to the streets” outside the restaurant and carried signs about equal rights and inclusion. According to Greta Cross and Cybele Mayes-Osterman, reporters for USA Today, on Sunday 15 December 2024 protesters at a rally shouted “Treat us equally” and “Can we eat now?”
I am encouraged that the wider public is getting an education from these events about difficulties encountered by people with disabilities. To be sure, there are issues that people may raise about what actually transpired. We understand that management at the site of the incident had been advised about the group’s plans. We have heard reports of actions that have been called “rude treatment.” But, I don’t have objective evidence about what actually happened. So, I want to be cautious about condemning the restaurant chain, the franchise and its staff, and others involved as, for example, “ableist.”
If those of us want to “make hay” of this incident, I think we need to get the facts. We may, for example, learn that a student misbehaved in some minor ways when the group entered the establishment. Maybe someone said, “Hungry” a little too loudly while rocking back and forth while waiting just inside the vestibule; someone might have stared too long at or gotten too close to the food on a table of some seated customers as the group walked by the other customers’ booth; perhaps someone scratched an itchy body part and then smelled her or his fingers; we know what our kids can do. Though they should point at the need for additional and effective teaching, those sorts of misbehavior should not disqualify our kids from being able to dine in at a restaurant.
I think that the superintendent of the local schools, Maria Navarro, wrote an admirably restrained letter about the incident. Her defense of her people was not one in which she was “out for blood.” She offered to meet with the restaurant’s people. She offered to help. Her letter was one of offering to advance the public’s understanding of and ability to interact with our kids and their teachers. She took the high road, and I hope we will, too. And in that spirit, I also hope that we don’t let go of the opportunity to communicate with the public that our kids do belong, our kids and their teachers deserve respect.
Along with remembering that we are all in this together, that our kids deserve to have the same opportunities that any other humans have, I hope we also ensure that we are taking care or ourselves (after all, the Cracker Barrel incident is about the teachers and assistants, too), and that we ensure that we are teaching our kids (and the public) well.
JohnL
John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.
UVA Professor Emeritus
Founder & Editor, Special Education Today
SET should not be confused with a product that uses the same name and is published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades. Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization nor should the views expressed here be considered to represent the views or policies of that organization.
Footnote
Oh, yes. And, for your information, the headings this week are in Portuguese. I am open to correction by native speakers if I got the labels wrong. Why in Portuguese? Well, I have personal reasons (some of my pals, for example Ana Paula Martins and Anabela Cruz-Santos, are from Portugal), but there’s also this: Portuguese is spoken in at least 10 countries (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and more). There are children with disabilities (and their families) in those geopolitical areas, and they deserve effective special education just as much as any other kids in any places where other languages are spoken.
The Rivanna Trail encircles the central urban part of Charlottesville. The segment that goes behind our house is referred to as the “5th Street Ext. to Jordan Park” section on the guide to the trail.
I stay off the trails during the spring, summer, and early fall. I avoid them because the probability of wearing ticks (not tics; I’m referring to the arachnids that suck blood and, too often, transmit diseases) after wading through grasses and brushing against bushes. The local ticks are less active after the first serious freeze in the fall, so the onset of seriously cold weather is the signal that I can go back to using the trails. There’ve been many cases of alpha-gal allergy in my neck of the woods. Indeed, a local UVA immunologist, Thomas Plattes-Mills, was among the first MDs to establish a link between between alpha-gal allergy and ticks (it’s the Lone Star tick in the US; in Australia, the vector is the Ixodes Holocyclus tick). There’s very informative podcast episode on This Podcast Will Kill You about alpha-gal syndrome (episode 157 or season 7; 1 October 2024).