Special Education Today Newsletter 3(21)
Special Education Today Newsletter 3(21)
Did you miss anything last week on SET?
Here you have the 21st issue for the third volume of Special Education Today. It has the usual contents. Yep. Table of contents. Notes. Comments.
First, though, here is a photo from the trail along which I walk sometimes. Now that we’ve had a couple of frosts and the ticks are not frequenting the plants along the path, I’ll be using the trail more frequently.
The yellow green orbs in the photo are not discarded tennis balls. They are the seed fruits of a macular pomifera (“Osage Orange”) tree that grows by the trail. There used to be at least three of the trees along the path, but I think this is only one left; they were pretty much aligned along a long row and set back from the creek a few meters, perhaps because they had been used as living fence posts, which was apparently a use in times past. The fruits are a bit bigger than an American baseball and the surface is rough. Fascinating. Just don’t mistakenly step on a fruit, ‘cause you’d likely roll your ankle.
I don’t know how much longer these fruits will be falling along the trail, though. The tree is probably quite old and, as I understand, these trees come in female and male forms; it might take more than one of them to produce fertile fruit. Could be sad to see them die out in the neighborhood. I’ll have to research propagating them.
Table of contents
There were posts about voting recently here on SET the previous week, but that’s not been a focus more recently. The more recent posts are more of a potpourri, though there are two obituaries. Anyway, here are all the pickings for the past seven days.
Special Education Today Newsletter 3(20)—What was the content covered last week in SET?
William E. Pelham, Jr.—1948-2023—Remembering a scholar who altered the course of ADHD treatment
Dyslexia in the Hechinger Report & Scientific American—What should one make of the popular press article?
Please draw a line—Uhm...what's so hard about that?
Keeping up with perspectives on special education—Should you read Medical Motherhood?
Status notes
Thanks to those of you who are referring friends, students, and colleagues to Special Education Today! Please keep doing so, as every now and again those referrals turn into new subscribers. The leading sharers have been Jan H., Bryan W., Bets T., Carol W., Mike N., Tina, C., Anita A., Lysandra C., Angelique T., Kathleen L., Clay K. and Mike G. Over 1000 referrals among them. Nice!
And here’s a “howdy” to Eleanor W., Tom Z., Joe F., C. C., and G. R. (having to guess about the names of some of these). These folks somehow seemed to have lost their way and stumbled into our little jungle. I hope they enjoy the trip!
Commentary
The need for qualified special education teachers is substantial. That point has even penetrated under rocks into the terrain that some folks call “home.” The news on the internet for the past week included multiple stories about this matter:
Emily Harris for Axios: “What Portland’s striking special ed teachers want”;1
Julia Silverman for The Oregonian: “Portland teacher strike: Deprived of routine, special education families say their children are struggling”;2
Matt Gunn for KTVO: “Program aims to help with the teacher shortage in special education”;
Beth Hawkins for The 74: “Desperate to hire special ed teachers? Try looking in regular ed classrooms”;
Isabel Lohman for the Michigan Bridge: Finding a fix for Michigan’s special education teacher shortage”; and
Aanika Parikh for the Badger Herald: “New School of Education partnership may resolve teacher shortages for Milwaukee Public Schools.”
I have to bet that there are lots of similar stories in the popular press elsewhere in the US, and in international locations, too. I’m heartened that there is public discussion of the shortage of teachers in special education. I’ve commented on this need previously (for examples see here and here), and one of the recurrent themes in discussions about the matter is that teachers are underpaid. Doubling the salaries of teachers would probably not solve the shortage, but doing so probably would help a lot. As Rebecca Birch noted in “On the rewards of being a teacher,” some efforts to promote teaching seem to miss the mark. We can do better. I hope we can have a serious conversation about increasing teachers’ pay.
In the mean time, please continue to take care of yourselves and those with whom you are close, promote environmental responsibility, and teach your children well.
JohnL
John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.
UVA Professor Emeritus
Founder & Editor, https://www.SpecialEducationToday.com/
Also see the note about the same Portland topic in “Keeping up with perspectives on special education.”
Ibid or something like that…anyway see the previous footnote