Okay, y'all, this a quick one! I didn’t have long to prepare it, because I've been busy. "What?" you may say. Aren't you retired? Well, read on through to the commentary. Meanwhile, recognize the usual structure, but the abbreviated content!

Status Update

SET did not grow in the number of free subscribers. Please continue to spread the word, though. Forward. Tweet. Share. Tell friends at lunch (which, apparently, some of us are having live and in-person with others these days!)

Flashes of the Electrons

This week's incomplete list of SET pals who interacted with the magazine (most of them multiple times, like up to 8?) between 21 February and today (28 Feb):

• Peggy K-S.,

• Michael K.,

• Clay K.,

• Debbie G.,

• Lysandra C.,

• Edwin M.,

• Jane C.

And all those whom I missed. Many readers, including the ones whom I missed, ROCK! Thank you!

I haven't had a chance to review Twitter for "mentions" of SET. If you did mention it, please accept my thanks!

I want to express my appreciation to Tina C., Clay K., Michael K. and Joel M., among others, who have written to me directly, engaging in conversation. They've provided not just good guidance about SET, but also suggestions that have turned into posts.

This Week’s ToC

Well, I posted a few notes on SET since the last newsletter. I hope that readers found them not just entertaining, but also helpful. That previous newsletter, faithful readers may recall, had content from the PCRC conference in San Diego earlier in the month of February 2022, and I slapped up a lot of photos. This week, there are fewer photos, but some very good [stuff].

• Cost-benefit analyses--Where can you learn more about these methods?

• Friday photos—17—Who doesn't know Dan and Paige?

• Evaluating Curricula—# 8—What does the team report to the committee about progress in finding research on reading curricula?

• Evaluating Curricula—# 9—What happens when Alberto, Anna, and Jamie debrief?

You can read any one or more of these by simply going to SET’s home page. Scroll around! Seach! Get distracted and have fun!

Commentary

So, I'm still hoping that SET leads to me making available to readers accessible news, information, commentary, and guidance. I want to deliver readily digestible—but trustworthy—content to people concerned about special education. The idea is not to provide traditional academic content. I have ample evidence that I can do the research thing. Instead, I want to communicate to intelligent consumers who are concerned about special education.

I hope other readers will let me know how it’s going. Send me a DM via Twitter @JohnWillsLloyd or write to me directly (my name and e-mail addresses are plastered on many walls of the Internet).

And, I want to let you know why I'm failing to produce a more meaty, beaty, bouncing newsletter:

First, I took a couple of hours today to help move a cabinet from our house to our daughter’s house. The cabinet is a long-time family piece. It’s made of old, brittle, pine, not some wonderful wood. At the least, it most originally came from my great-great grandfather, Dr. Albert Gallatin Wills. He was a country doctor in rural Virginia in the 1840s-50s-60s who died in 1870. I have been the keeper of the “Dr. Wills cabinet” since the mid 1990s. I am not sure of the provenance of the piece; A. G. Wills may have had it made, but it may have come to him from his father (Dr. John Marshall Wills) or his grandfather (Dr. John Wills). Sadly, all of them “owned people.” Indeed, local historians speculate that one of the enslaved people—a man I heard referred to as “Uncle Burton Payne”—learned the medicine of the early 1800s from his enslavers and may have practiced himself before and after emancipation.

Today we moved most of the cabinet to our daughter’s house. Here’s a photo of it in it’s new place, just after we carried it and before the drawers were inserted and before its new holder waxed it. I’m happy to know that it is going to the next generation. I got a bit hot around the eyes thinking about this. Honoring ancestors is pretty important to me.

• I've been busy with preparing for the next issue of Exceptional Children; as most of you probably know, I am the co-editor of EC, along with my esteemed and wonderfully competent colleague (and pal), Bill Therrien. That next issue should be published in this coming month, March 2022. Yay! And it has five marvelous papers in it. (They are still, as of 27 Feb 2022, available for free using Sage’s “onlinefirst” resource, but please subscribe.)

• Second, and with a good bit of fright, I have been preparing a talk for the Illinois Council for Exceptional Children. The past few months, I-CEC has been hosting a series of talks in celebration of the centenary of CEC. I’m slated to give one of those talks 10 March 2022…scary!

It was about 100 years ago that Elizabeth Farrell, a New York teacher, helped to found what has become the Council for Exceptional Children. These talks celebrate her work and the work since then in providing support, protection, and assistance to individuals with disabilities and their families.

Now, if you look at the title of my pending talk, "Seventy-three Requirements for Succeeding in Graduate School," you may wonder what a talk with that title will have to do with this remembrance of historic efforts. I promise you that, even if my talk is not something that will be noted in history, it will be about instruction and it will be rooted in history. Maybe you'll want to tune in and listen to me embarrass myself: 73 Requirements for Succeeding in Graduate School. And I better get back to work on it!

So, then, here're the usual admonitions. I hope that you read and engage in them...I don't want them to become so common that you ignore them:

• Wear your seatbelts: Remember to affix them when you get into your car!

• COVID: Get vaccinated, keep safe social distance, wash your hands, and use masks.

• Watch out for and take care of each other

• And, please teach your children well.

—JohnL

SET Editor

Charlottesville

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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. Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization, though CEC is worth promoting.