Special Education Today Newsletter 4(28)
What was happening the week beginning 30 December 2024?
Hello, dear readers, 🎶 wherever you are. I hope that year’s going fine🎵. Thanks for subscribing to Special Education Today. As with so many previous newsletters, this one has familiar sections. There’s a photo, some notes about the community’s status and activity, a listing of posts, and some notes. On with the show!
Photo
I had a dermatological procedure last week. One of the myriad spots on my scalp went rogue: squamous cell carcinoma. An MD who specializes in skin surgery put a hole in my head to remove it.
Don’t look if you find the sight of raw flesh unpleasant or if you’re generally feeling squeamish. But, here is a photo of my head with that extra hole.
I’m glad to report that this is my first encounter with cancer, that the dermatologist said they got it all, and that the procedure really didn’t hurt a lot. Sympathy for all you readers who have had more frequent or more serious cancer stories.
The bad part of my experience, in my view, is that I’m now in a 40-some day wound-care protocol. Even though I’m old, 40-50 days sounds like a long time! With thanks to Pat, I hope to execute the procedure with fidelity and success, though.
No need for sympathy cards and such. I have learned that lots of people (including many younger than I am) have had such surgeries and that many of those have been on parts of their skins that require much more serious cutting and post-surgical care.
Status
SET subscriptions are holding steady in the higher 700s overall with another nearly 200 following the SET site via Substack Notes. Thanks to all of you.
Welcome to new subscribers and followers. Thanks to everyone who dropped comments, likes, and clicked through on links on posts, too. Woohoo!
Although hundreds of loyal subscribers—free and paid—visit each time I post an email message, there are dozens of other visitors each day. I am interpreting the overage as reflection of non-subscribers visiting. Also, the records about sharing of posts indicates y’all are passing along info about SET to others. Thank you!
Anyway, please continue to tell your friends and others about SET. Help build the community. Thanks.
Table of contents
Here are links for the posts from the past week. The first one is, as usual, a reference to last week’s newsletter
Special Education Today newsletter 4(27): What happened with SET during the week ending 29 December 2024?
Yappy Hew Near: Anyone else hoping that this next one will be a wonderful year?
Maybe preventing special education?: What's to be done about neural tube defects?
More ABA Medicaid fraud: What happened in Minnesota?
ASAT newsletter January 2024: Why should you want to read this valuable resource?
So, that was the week’s posts for the previous seven days. If you missed any of these, you can follow the links. Of course, one can always go to the home page to see these and earlier posts (some of which require a paid subscription).
Commentary
The posts for the past week included one about Margaret Carroll’s passing. That post provides me an opportunity to note the importance of the broad and diverse membership in the special education community. There are lots of us and it takes pretty much every one of us to make this endeavor—the provision of special education, not just SET—progress.
Professor Carroll, whom I may or may not have met 40-some years ago, was not one of the high-flying folks whom one might expect to read about in publications about special education. By many accounts I read in preparing the remembrance of her, however, she was a dedicated member of the special education community and she inspired many other educators to provide helpful services to students with disabilities. She was like many of us, someone who did the work without fanfare and fireworks, and I see her as someone to emulate,
The posts of SET are full of news, events, and remembrances of people whose work we read about in books and journals, grant projects from which we learn, activities we follow. But the folks featured in such stories only represent a small percentage of the people who are special educators. For each famous special education figure, there are 1000s or 10s of 1000s of special educators who work day in and day out to improve the lot of our kids. These special educators are the power and strength of special education.
One of my goals for SET is to humanize “the biz.” Instead of using professional “head shots,” I want to feature images of people in more natural situations. I want those famous figures to be recognized for their human sides, not just their academic accomplishments. And, in the same vein, I want all of us to know about some of the people who are full-on special educators doing the work that is necessary for our kids to get an education.
Sure, in a way, this is a thank-a-teacher message. But I hope that it is more than that. I hope it is reminder that we are each part of a large community with shared interests. We are, as I wrote previously, “in this together.” We ought to respect and acknowledge each other’s efforts.
Okay…so I’m finished preaching for this note. Well, not quite. I need to post my usual exhortations: Take care of each other, make sure everyone gets high-fives, help each other to stay out of the path of on-rushing vehicles and adoption of bogus teaching methods, eat healthily (but have a treat now and again), stick to your exercise routines…and, of course, teach your children well.
JohnL,
John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.
Charlottesville
Your SET guy
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 (see “Lovitt’s Lines” for examples from those days). Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization. I’m not selling anything here other than what you read in the posts.
John, take care and best wishes for a speedy recovery! My dad recently had a light stroke and fell; his fall caused or aggravated (we're not sure which) compression fractures in two of his cervical vertebrae. He's been in rehab for 2.5 weeks and is headed home today. Last week, it finally processed that he has to wear the cervical collar for 8 weeks. He was thinking two weeks and when I said, no, you have it for 8 weeks, he was less than pleased about that length of time.
Glad you are on the mend and they got it all. Thank you for your service to our special education community.