Dear Colleagues,

Here I provide the 9th issue of the first year of the newsletter for Special Education Today. As usual, this issue of the newsletter has a mixture of contents. There's a brief report about the status of the newsletter and site. Also, there's a little retrospective table of contents that shows the posts for the previous week. And, I shall add a little commentary at the end.

I hope you find the content of the newsletter and the Web site itself readable, relevant, and sharable. Please pass it along to colleagues, teacher-education students, parents, administrators, and others who might find the contents helpful.

Status

There is only negative growth to report on the front of free-email registrants for the list. We lost one this past week!

The good news, as I understand it, is that every week about half of the people who have registered their email for free receipt of this newsletter open the newsletters. From what I’ve learned, open-rates of about 30-35% are pretty good, so the ~47% of y'all who open these messages on average are pretty engaged with the e-mail messages. I am happy to have you “on board.”

Another metric that I've mentioned in the past is the interactions both on the site and over other social media. Several folks interacted with the magazine recently. Flash of the electrons to some usual suspects: Tina C., Clay K., and Michael K. No one (except I, though my records could be in error) commented on a post this week.

I'm considering using a feature of SubStack that allows me to post an open thread for discussion. Given how few folks engage in discussion, doing so may be a bust. If you have thoughts about this idea, please send them to me.

So, do you think I should write more posts? Send email notices more frequently. Pose as a writer who posts, say, more controversial stuff?

The posts from this past week

As last week, I dropped three new posts on the Website this week. I hope readers have found them useful...at least mildly interesting? Here they are, from oldest to newest. You can read them by following this link or the individual links for each one.

• News: American Masters profiled Kitty O'Neil—Did you know that the fastest woman on earth was deaf?

• News: The touchy terms related to Autism—Yikes! Is it OK or a mistake to say...?

• News: CODA opens in wide release—What's the story about a singer raised in a deaf family?

Commentary

• I hope no one thinks that I overdid it on the coverage of Deaf stories this week. It may be that I have a soft spot about deafness, given that a former neighbor was the deaf child of hearing adults. As a young boy, he was just a tad older than our daughter, and they played together. I learned a lot from his parents. Of course, I think kids with disabilities (and their families) deserve our support. As much as I see myself as an advocate for children with learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral problems, intellectual disabilities, ADHD, and etc., I still do not want educators to disregard the special education needs of individuals with sensory disabilities. These needs are substantial and educators must strive to meet them.

• I am hoping to learn what the US "stimulus" programs will actually mean for students with disabilities, their families, and the educators who work with them. Spending of stimulus funds could be a momentous set of decisions. Just one concern that comes to mind immediately: Can spending be conditioned on employing practices that have evidence of effectiveness? Some readers who know more about this topic can educate me!

• My exercise routine improved this past week. Yay! The mild discomfort in my left hip has lessened, perhaps because I have been taking every other day off. And, as mentioned last week, I'm going for briefer walks at a reduced pace.

• The SARS-Cov-2-19 situation doesn't seem to be getting better locally, and its seems to be getting way worse globally. Ugh. A few of my colleagues and I discuss the news and research frequently. But, Pat and I will travel this week to Colorado for a family visit. We are planning very carefully!

JohnL
SET Creator guy
Charlottesville

SET should not be confused with a product with a similar name that is published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades.