Special Education Today Newsletter 3(23)

What’s been in the news for 4 December 2023?

Editor’s note: I omitted “23rd” in the first sentence of the email version of this newsletter, making the content nonsensical. I obviously should not have described this as the only issue of the year! Sorry. Corrected. —JohnL

Welcome to the one and only 23rd issue for the third year of Special Education Today. This issue comes to you, dear readers, from Chincoteague, VA, US. Chincoteague, for those who do not know, is a town pretty far north on the Atlantic side of Virginia’s eastern shore, a part of what’s colloquially known as “the DelMarVa peninsula.” Just to the east of Chincoteague is Assateaque Island, which is part of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

In addition to Assateague (and partially because of it), Chincoteague is known for its seafood (especially oysters) and for the well-know penning of the ponies. Local oysters are briny, especially compared to those from the Chesapeake Bay. When I was a kid, I understood that there were two kinds of oysters: Chincoteague and not-Chincoteague. Now it seems that oysters from other areas, usually with place names (see here for more) are quite common.

The penning of the ponies is a mid-summer ritual in which wild ponies from Assateague are herded across the shallows onto Chincoteague, paraded (more like “run,” apparently) along Main Street, and gathered in pens near the town center. Tbe ponies were made famous in the children’s book, Misty of Chincoteague.

Pat and I have visited here at least five times. I was remembering our first visit when we joined Jim Kauffman and his family for a brief visit in what was probably the 1980s (Jim, please correct or refine the date). Jim and I, as I recall, went for a run along the Assateague beach and made the mistake of heading south with the wind on our first leg; when we turned around and, already laboring in the sand, realized we were heading into a stiff wind…sigh…I was soon whipped and I reduced Jim (a much better runner than I was) to having to walk with me back to our car.

In another earlier visit, we ate a holiday meal at Bill’s Prime restaurant on Main Street in the town of Chincoteague. We returned to Bill’s for dinner on this trip, taking our traveling companions (and neighbors, Dave and Bette). I had a dozen oysters as an appetizer. Bill’s is shown in full holiday regalia in the accompanying photo from that 2013 visit (sorry for the poor focus).

But, enough about gadding about for the weekend. I devote the remainder of this newsletter to familiar content. After I list the posts from the previous week, I’ll provide a few notes, and I’ll follow those notes with some comments.

Stay tuned to the Website, though, for one answer to the question about measuring fractions of a foot.

Table of contents

Here are the links for the posts from the past week.

• Special Education Today Newsletter 3(22)—The week’s contents for 20 November 2023 (and maybe a little opinion)

• High-intensity training for weight loss—Does HIT help heavy and obese kids?

• HB, P. L. 94-142! Wasn't that a great IDEA?

• ASAT Newsletter December 2023—May I recommend the excellent publication from the Association for Science in Autism Treatment ?

I guess it was a somewhat weak week? Only four posts…sigh.

Status

A lot of people seem to show up unexpectedly at the Website. Although hundreds of Ye Loyal Subscribers visit each time I post an email message, there are dozens of other visitors, too, and I am interpreting the overage as reflection of non-subscribers visiting. Also, the records about sharing of posts indicates y’all are passing along info about SET to others. Thank you!

Commentary

One of the other cool things about visiting Chincoteague is that there are lots (and I do mean lots) of birds here. As we’ve watched off the balcony of the place where we are staying, we’ve seen Great Blue Heron; Snow & Geese Canada Geese (probably with some Brant Geese mixed in to the scores that have flown by); gulls of many species; ducks of at least a couple of species; Common Loon; Rock Pigeons; Starlings; Chickadee; and lots of little birds I didn’t identify.

Over on Assateague, we saw many other species. They included Swans of a couple of sorts (they are tough to distinguish); more geese; different ducks (I’m not good with ducks, but this list includes Northern Shoveler); Ibis; Common Loon; Bald Eagle; Black Vulture; Carolina Wren; Great Cormorant; Northern Harrier; and lots more. I did not go along the beach, so I missed lots of birds that one usually sees there (sundry sandpipers, peeps, and such). Identifying bird species in challenging.

At the same time that I’ve enjoyed seeing birds, I’ve been thinking a good bit about identifying students with disabilities. It’s a topic fraught with challenges. Some people fret about whether educators do a bad job of it. Some people consider it a mistaken enterprise altogether. Others mix educational identification with medical nosology. Me? I’m mostly interested in insuring that students with educationally relevant disabilities who need special education so that those disabilities will not interfere with nor entirely interrupt their academic and social development get access to relevant special education services.

In recent correspondence with some colleagues, I remembered my opportunity to meet Shirley Hufstedler, the first US Secretary of Education. Not too long after she took the post, she visited UVA. I attended a public event  held in an auditorium in a school of education building. I think Jimmy the K and I sat together in one of the first couple of rows of a room designed to hold 60, but that was probably (and sadly) not even half full. She made a few opening remarks and then took questions.

I was impressed with Sec. Hufstedler’s calm and considerate manner. I was even more impressed with her command of current content and issues in education. As I recall, someone asked her how she would respond to people who argued that the federal government had no business in or authority to regulate education, a matter that in the US was constitutionally reserved to the states.

Sec. Hufstedler provided an ordered, rational answer. I won’t do it justice in my weak retelling, but she essentially acknowledged that education was rightly influenced by states but that states were implementing policies and practices that varied greatly. She expressed special concern about the effects of that variability for minorities, including those from minority ethnic groups or non-dominant religions or who had disabilities. She said the federal government had a constitutional responsibility to protect the interests (i.e, the civil rights) of those children, ensuring that they got equitable access to education.

She spoke a bit longer about the importance of equity and the importance of education in providing access to the opportunities America offered. They were, I’m sure, good words, but I don’t remember much more. I was just happy to be sitting not more than a few meters from a cabinet secretary who had just dropped disabilities into her answer to a question.  She didn’t need to say much more. She had me by the heart when she included kids with disabilities.

And that’s another illustration of why I think it’s important for educators and parents to pursue identification of children who need special education. When people with the authority of a cabinet member understand that it’s important to protect our kids, I think we should damn well do the job, including identifying those who need special education.

So, I guess this is just another way of saying that, in addition to taking care of each other (wearing masks and seatbelts, grabbing the arm of others when they are about to step into the path of a vehicle;, etc.), we should teach our children well.

JohnL, Charlottesville

Your SET editor, writer, mailman, and…whatever

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.