Special Education Today newsletter 5(4)

Anyone ready for a look at the previous week's SET?

Hello and welcome to the issue of Special Education Today’s newsletter for 28 July 2025! It marks this issue marks the fourth one in the fifth year, from which I’ll infer that we’re already four issues into this fifth year of the life of SET. Stunning!

So, Dear (and gentle) Readers, just a take moment as see if you can predict the remainder of this introductory paragraph. (I’ll pause and wait right here while you make your predictions….OK, here’s the rest of the paragraph.) This week you’ll find a photo, some notes about what’s been happening in the SET community, a list of last week’s posts (that’s not a table of contents). and some editorializing.

Photo

As regular readers know, is spend time looking for, listening to, and reading about birds. I have taken at least two classes about birding and devoted hours-long drives to go places just so I can traipse through woods and meadows and see some birds I’ve never seen before.¹ Yes, I have binoculars and at least one goofy hat.

Sunday morning, Pat told me that she’d twice heard a Yellow-billed Cuckoo and that Merlin Bird ID, the free app for smart phones, had verified her “‘sighting.” So, I took a mug of coffee onto a porch and listened for it. Sure enough, I heard one even before I sat down.

I don’t remember hearing a Yellow-billed Cuckoo for a long time, probably since we moved into the city, leaving our country home in the woods on the side of a little mountain in 2008. Later in the day, as I sat at SET Central, I thought I saw a Cuckoo just outside my window in a Buckeye tree and took a couple of photos out the window through the screen. They are sort of secretive birds that blend into their surroundings quite well. I opened the photo and enlarged it, but I didn’t find the bird in it. But just second later I saw activity in the tree again and, using my binoculars, I spotted one no more than 15 m from my chair. As I swapped my SET Central Binoculars™ for my smart phone to take a photo, though, it flew toward the garage. Dang it.

Here, however, is a photo of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo that I took when we lived on Tom Mountain. The photo is dated 2005. The yellow bill and light-colored chest are pretty obvious, but this photo doesn’t show the give-away white markings on the underside of the tail. Learn more about this bird from the All About Birds site.

That’s one handsome bird! Yellow-billed Cuckoo in North Garden VA October 2005. Photo © 2025 by John Wills Lloyd, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

For those who’ve been on the SET ride for a coupla-few years, you may recognize this photo interlude as a forewarning that September will bring the annual migration of hawks through the general neighborhood. Maybe we should hold an SET Hawk-gawking meeting this fall!

Update on SET

If you were a subscriber to SET at the very beginning, you would have received 1363 messages before you received this one. I’d guess we could call you “dedicated,” “very patient,” or “long suffering!”

It is a good time to mention colleagues who support SET with their paid subscriptions. Here is a sincere note 🎶 of appreciation to those members for their long-standing support. Some of them include Brenda L., Bryan W., Candace S., Carol W., , Cindi S., Clay K., Debbie R., Dimitris A., Ed P., Jane H., Joel M., John U., June R., Kata S., Keith L., Kimberly B., Kristen A., Kristin S., Linda L., Marilyn F., Mary R., Meg D., Nancy S., Pam S., Pam S. (too!), Rebecca B., Rebecca S., Riley M., Sally B., and Tom Z. And then there are the patrons of SET; Mike G., Kathy M., and Li-Yu H. Thank you, one and all.

In the bigger perspective, Substack shows 1271 people linked to SET, 973 of whom are subscribers. Welcome to new subscribers, including especially Shaeda P., Jose A, David D., and Diana.

Thank you, too, those whom commented on posts this past week…oh wait. No one did.² Sigh.

The not-ToC: last week’s posts

Here are links to the posts published there week beginning 22 July 2025. Did you notice that one of them was by SET’s latest contributor, Li-Yu Hung (and, in hopes of honoring the way some readers of SET communicate, it features Chinese characters).³

1. Special Education Today newsletter 5(3): What happened during previous week of SET? (JWL)

2. P. Kirschner's stacking up good observations: Why would one want to read what some grumpy old psychologist writes? (JWL)

3. Brain day!: What in the world is World Brain Day? (JWL)

4. Deaf men muted by US immigration police: How do you sign or write when your hands are cuffed behind you? (JWL)

5. Tom Bennett discussing classroom management: Will the UK 'Behaviour Tzar' make points that are relevant for kids with disabilities and their teachers? (JWL)

6. Applications for EBD awards open: Who might receive an award for travel to a conference on EBD? (JWL)

7. My mugs shots: 2: What's the message on the cup from which I'm drinking today? (JWL)

8. Asian Federation on Intellectual Disabilities conference 2025: What is the AFID doing this year? (JWL & L-YH)

9. Medicaid cuts and our kids: What's being said about changes in US spending cuts?

So, yes, Dear Readers, that is 9 posts which is greater than your recommended 5-7. Sorry. But thanks for reading!

Comments

In May I wrote about some of the Substack sources written by (and for) parents of students with disabilities. I wanted to acknowledge them because I consider them worthy sources for all of we folks concerned about special education. Here’s a paragraph cataloging them:

… I am glad that we have parents who read SET, including Laura McKenna (The Great Leap, and others), Kate Swenson (Finding Cooper’s Voice), Shasta Kearns Moore (Medical Motherhood), and Melanie Webster (Life with Mars)—among others; please add in the comments! In addition, it’s wonderful to have advocates (whichever way they lean) such as Paul Coyne (Paul’s Substack of Useful Information), Ashley Nyce (Simplifying Special Ed Law), Charlene (“Leena”) Harris (FAPE4U), and others.

I learn a lot by reading the posts in these sources. They are not, however, the only sources out on the Intertubes that I read. I’m going to catalog just a few of them here so that readers can know so of the content that I consume as background for SET and sometimes as explicit sources for posts.

• A good example is Holly Korbey, who is a journalist covering education. In her ‘stack, cleverly entitled “The Bell Ringer with Holly Korbey,” she has repeatedly dropped informative and clear posts. What’s really good is that she gets that there’s evidence about educational matters and she employs it in her posts.

• Another good example is Paul Kirschner, to whom I referred this past week (P. Kirschner's stacking up good observations). Professor Kirschner has been working in the world of instructional design for decades and he has learned some good poop in that time. He explains it well.

• Also catch the Science of Reading Classroom, which often features posts by Goyen Literacy Fellows (see SET’s article about them—some readers might want to apply!). Kata Solow, who’s been seen around these parts, leads the efforts for SRC.

• Over on Traditional Math, Barry Garelick post good content about (don’t be surprised) math instruction. Mr. Garelick adds an appropriate dose of irreverence to his posts about employing sensibly guided teaching.

• I’m a regular on ‘Fred’s” The Fixed Interval. If you follow me, you’ll recognize that I routinely like to “ABA this week” (see the post for 2 July 2025, for example), which is a great way to keep current with recent publications in the behavior analysis sphere. But, there’s lots more there, so explore!

I read lots of other content (e.g,, Greg Ashman’s Filling the Pail; Rebecca Birch’s On Education; Selectionist; Natalie Wexler’s Minding the Gap; David Didau’s The Learning Spy; Corey Peltier, which has been kinda quiet this year; and too many more), Few of these are directly relevant to special education and disabilities, but they are—I think—valuable. There are, of course, lots of other sources “out there.” Some of them are good. Some are not.

Anyway, next time you are tempted to wonder what an old, retired guy does with his time, review this section of this post. Or, review it any time. And, whatever you wonder about, all you readers can help ensure that together we are considerate of others, take care of ourselves and our colleagues and neighbors (seatbelts!), and for sure teach our students well.

Hugs & love,

JohnL
John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.
Founder & Editor, https://www.SpecialEducationToday.com/

SET should not be confused with a product that uses the same name and 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 nor should the views expressed here be considered to represent the views or policies of that organization.

Footnotes

1. In my bird watching adventures, I’ve often been in the company of the my colleague, sometimes co-author, and long-time pal, Dan H. Some time when he’s not looking, I might break out a few photos of him in his birding gear.

2. Well, a couple of folks commented on my comments on others’ post elsewhere on Substack. Thanks to those folks, for sure.

3. I can only read very few characters, but one of them, comes in handy in this situation: 謝謝. The characters are pronounced “xiè xiè” which might sound more like “she-she” or “shi-shi” to westerners. 謝謝 means “thank you.” I understand that this is the rather informal way to say “thank you,” perhaps more like “thanks.” Maybe 多謝 is a slightly more formal way to say “thank you.”