Special Education Today Newsletter 2(42)

The SET news and info for 27 March 2023

Mar 27, 2023

Dear colleagues and friends (and those of you who don’t number yourselves in either of those categories),

This week’s newsletter for Special Education Today follows the usual structure: (a) a status report about the site, (b) a table of contents for the past week, and (c) some commentary at the end. I presume that most readers will recognize the organization.

Status update

SET lost one subscriber and picked up seven (all free; none paying) over the past week. Welcome to the new folks. Stick around, ‘cause the party is just getting started.

Flashes of the electrons

In this section I recount some of the interactions with the site and posts over the third full week of March 2023 (or so):

Thanks to Nancy C-W who shared a post. Yay!
Thanks to Tina C., Jane B., Kimy L., Mike G., Angelique W., and Dan H., all of whom dropped comments on posts. Scroll past the seeming end of the main post to see what others are saying about it. When readers start commenting on each other’s comments, that’ll indicate to me that we are developing a community.
Thanks to Tina C. (who said she was playing “catch up”), Cereal P., Joel B. (one of the first paying subscribers), Pam S., Jane, B., Angelique W., Dan H., Clay K., Michael G., Patti P., and Ed M. (whom readers should know is one of the architects of the US special education laws) all viewed multiple posts this past week.
Thanks to Twitter users @VOMGlobal, @MelanieMHenry, @Betsytalbott1, @CraigNewmark, as well as anyone else who linked to @SpecialEdToday.
Thanks to the international subscribers. You all know who (and where) you are. Outside the US there are subscribers from Canada, Portugal, Great Britain, Taiwan, France, Turkey, Pakistan, Chile, India, Ghana, Sweden, Qatar, Philipines, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Bahrain. Having folks from those many places reading SET gives me hope that the efforts are worthwhile (and more on this later).

Thank you to everyone who contributed!

This week’s ToC

Here’re the links to recent posts:

The previous newsletter.
World Down Syndrome Day 2023—What's this?
An Outline for Teaching Early Decoding Effectively: Part 1—Overview: Is there something worthwhile in this old document?
US autism spectrum disorder prevalence now estimated to be 1 in 36 eight-year olds—New data from ADDM at CDC
An Outline for Teaching Early Decoding Effectively: Part 2: Segmenting—Are there instructional practices that promote children's competence with segmenting?

Please remember that you can find the latest SET posts by going to the main page at https://www.specialeducationtoday.com.

Commentary

As people who know me pretty well understand, I don’t spend a lot of time celebrating my own accomplishments. In my view, it’s more important to celebrate, say, special educators accomplishments.

But I’m a bit of a record-keeper (AKA “horder”), so I have kept a sloppy stash of my publications. Here’s a photo of a space in my home office that shows that holding. Most of the objects, save the ones near the bottom, are publications to which I contributed. Some readers will recognize some of them.

Photo of the JWL sloppy library. Upper 3/4ths includes JWL pubs. Bottom part has some other saved publications and, in black at the bottom right, the typewriter that my father used when he was a student at UVA in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Photo by John Wills Lloyd

I did a good bit of celebrating in the earlier section headed by “flashes of the electrons” where I acknowledged readers’ interactions with SET posts. I don’t mean the preceding photo boast of my contributions. But, here, I want to continue the celebration just a little more.

Although I don’t have the URLs, regular readers will remember that previously I’ve explained some of the purposes of my creating SET. I have multiple reasons for starting and continuing this product...and getting rich ain’t one of them. To be sure, I hope readers will become paid subscribers, but my hope for having paying subscribers is that the funds will allow SET to get to people who can’t afford to pay for scientifically credible and trustworthy information about kids with disabilities (and their families)—especially in many parts of Earth where poverty is overwhelming but children with disabilities common. So, I’m hoping that those of us who have privileges will contribute to the effort to share with other teachers and parents around the world.

And, it was a (heart-felt) source of happiness to report that SET has subscribers from something like 16 countries other than the US. I’m going to interpret that data point as indicating that SET is accomplishing one of its goals, that goal being to provide service to the parets and teachers around the world who are concerned about kids with disabilities.

Another single data point that I’m going to interpret similarly is the emergence of another Substack focused on disabilities and instruction. I was way pleased to see that my colleague (across universities), Corey Peltier, began publishing an eponymous blog https://coreypeltier.substack.com/ that covers content closely related to SET’s content. Here’s his “about” statement (as of this date):

Howdy! My name is Corey Peltier. I previously taught fifth-grade in Maryland and served as a trainer and math coach for middle school math teachers in Louisiana as part of a grant. Currently, I participate on research projects to explore the various aspects that affect the math outcomes and experiences students receive. In addition, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses focused on intervention and assessment. I also love all things related to time-series graphs and single-case research design methodology (📉)!

This pretty statement seems wonderful to me. But readers should note that Corey is being quite modest here. As his CV (AKA “curriculum vita”) shows, Corey is a for-real professor who’s done lots of good work. As a young guy with a future, he’s a professor at the US University of Oklahoma, he’s worked with lots of top scholars, and he’s focusing his Substack on topics related to effective practices. I encourage readers to go to his Substack and drink from his cup!

It’s great to have a sibling in this space! If you know of other similar efforts, please let me know.

Special Education Today with John Wills Lloyd

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