Special Education Today Newsletter 2(43)

The SET news and info for 3 April 2023

Dear Readers,

Here we are at the 43th edition of the 2th volume of Special Education Today. Welcome!

This issue features some notes about (a) subscribers and their interactions with the site, (b) the recent contents, and (c) some drivel from me.

Buckle up!

Status

Last week I reported, “SET lost one subscriber and picked up seven (all free; none paying) over the past week.” This week, we lost one and picked up a dozen.

I routinely ask new subscribers about their connection to special education. This past week Joshua K. told me that he had been a special education teacher and was now a behavior analyst for a local education agency in California. Nice! Another was (though I’m guessing), I’m pretty sure, a member of a team of an advocacy group for effective reading instruction.

I want to extend special thanks to long-time pals, Clay K., Joel M., Dan H. (and Pat) for their back-channel correspondence about things that matter to SET. They not only feed me good leads to content, but also provide valuable suggestions about this site.

Yay for all y’all who have registered recently. Tell you Ma, tell your Pa, tell all your friends.

Flashes

Here’s a flash of the electrons for Clay, K., Jane B., Dan H., and Joel M. for dropping comments this past week. Interactions of this sort are what I hope will propel SET to become a community of people who care enough and feel comfortable with expressing their own opinions about issues in special education. Thank you!

Thanks, too, to Vickie W. and Mike N. for sharing posts last week. That’s the stuff that helps SET grow. (And a shout out to Betsy T. and Tina C. for passing along Tweets to their Twitter followers.)

Here’re waves to SET subscribers who interact with the site frequently. I appreciate Dan H., Stacy T., Angelique W., Aletta S., Lisa S., Mike G., Ed K., and a couple of score more readers who regularly visit the site. Y’all are doing this quiet work that’s known as “traffic”; high traffic drives up the rank of SET. Yay. Keep on coming back.

All y’all, keep on keeping on...and other subscribers or readers, please join these folks in distributing or contributing to SET.

Table of contents

If you’re a subscriber, you got five of these in your e-mail. If you’re a regular reader who visits the site frequently (as are those I mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier), you may have already seen all of them. If you need a refresher, though, here’s a list of the posts from the last week.

• Special Education Today Newsletter 2(38)—The SET news and info for 27 March 2023

• US Secretary of Education urged ending corporal punishment—Shouldn't we support this effort?

• An Outline for Teaching Early Decoding Effectively: Part 3: Blending—What are some instructional practices that promote children's competence with blending sounds into words?

• Noted epidemiologist questions active shooter drills in schools—What's Katelyn Jetelina's thinking on this matter?

• More on recreational mobility—Wouldn't it be great for all-terrain wheelchairs to be readily accessible?

• The Reading League has been providing excellent guidance for years—Why wouldn't everyone interested in literacy be talking about this group?

• No fooling: April is US national poetry month—What about poems and people with disabilities?

So, since last week, subscribers and regular visitors have had access to as many as a seven posts about special education these days. I hope they have found them intriguing, enlightening, and valuable.

Commentary

On a recent exercise walk, I spotted this slinky that had lost its child. Although I routinely resist attributing emotions to people and (especially) things, I allowed myself to imagine that it was forlorn when I passed it on my way north, about .3 miles into the walk. I picked it up on my return going south.

A child’s toy along the side of the road. It’s lost and sad. Photo by John Wills Lloyd.

Seeing it prompted me to remember two (at least) things: (1) my mother had told me a story about, as a child, losing a parasol on the road near Monticello (T. Jefferson’s home) and (2) me having found a bracelet in a similar spot on an earlier walk.

Here’s a part of my earlier observations about the bracelet (which will lead readers to the notes about my mother, as a child in the late 1920s or early 1930, losing a toy out the window of a car):

Kids lose stuff. I lost things. Did you? I've seen other examples and, in fact, I have the images of other lost objects that I could share, if readers would like to see them (let me know!).

But all of this reminds me of a story my mother told me. It was a cautionary tale. It stuck with me.

She said that when she was a little girl (probably in the late 1920s or early 1930s) she had a decorative paper umbrella that she had gotten as a gift. She and her family were driving from their home in Palmyra, VA, to Charlottesville. The road they took goes by Monticello, and she explained that she was playing with the umbrella in the wind generated by the car's movement.

Her mother cautioned her about losing the umbrella, and she did lose it out the window, sure enough. As a 30 or 40-year-old (when I was young), she told the story; as a 60- or 70-year old woman, when I was an adult and when we drove through that area, she would remember that she had lost "that lovely parasol" about there.

I don’t know what happened to that bracelet that I featured in the earlier post. In the case of the slinky shown here, I brought it home. Pat will put it on a big rock at the top of our driveway. It will join the members of a cache of whimsical objects she keeps there. When no one is looking, perhaps they can have a dance party.

Maybe someday a family will drive by and a child, looking out her window will say, “Stop, Gramma. There’s my slinky!”

At the least, the slinky, the bracelet, and the parasol can hang around together in the ether, remembering their children.

Okay, let’s get serious here. We have responsibilities. We need to take care of each other and, especially, our kids. Safety seats (and seatbelts). Inoculations and other preventive measures. And effective teaching.

Peace & love,

JohnL

John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.

UVA Professor Emeritus

Founder & Editor, https://www.SpecialEducationToday.com/

Co-editor, Exceptional Children