Blogging Elluminate: Aligning Standards for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities February 25, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Curriculum, Ed Policy Discussion, Special Education, Uncategorized.comments closed
I just finished an Elluminate session put on by our state DOE featuring Dr. Shawnee Wakeman from UNC Charlotte. You can see a copy of that session here. I was good and quiet…for at least the first half of it!
I’ve watched a few Elluminate recordings but this was my first live one. Well, my second if you count the one from yesterday which I showed up late to. It is definitely a cool medium but it also takes time to warm up to it. It also takes more concentration than just listening to a podcast or watching a video because ideally you’re supposed to react and participate. So there are some definite chat aspects to it. Sort of like Yahoo Chat with a Whiteboard and a lot less spam.
One complaint I have with Elluminate or at least the rendition of it that I experienced is that I would’ve liked to have seen profiles of other participants for reasons that I’ll get into in a moment. I did see and input my own profile into (including the URL to this blog). But I don’t think anyone else saw it.
Dr. Wakeman was the primary presenter and if you log in to get the Elluminate archived session, you will probably also get a copy of the power point. Today was day 2 of a 2 part presentation and if I would have been able to make more of that one I might have had less to say in the first one! I did manage to listen to a lot of it from the archive during my planning time (such that it is) and got up to speed. I also poked around her site to look at some of the other work her and her colleagues are doing. And I can’t find the link to it, but some of the work regarding different levels of intentional communication sort of resonated with me. A huge part of what we do with our students is trying to raise and harness the level and sophistication of that intentionality.
I won’t get into the entire presentation as there was a sizable portion at the beginning that went over and through me. I still had a room full of kids as we had buses that were running late. My paras are really good, but that late in the day everyone is just letting off steam. And sometimes the kids can get loud and restless, too! It was just difficult following along right then, which goes back to what I said about Elluminate requiring more sustained attention than I initially expected. With the recorded version, you can always pause it and come back. When it is “live,” if you snooze, you lose!
Once the students and paras were all gone and after the cleaning lady had buffed my floor with her diesel-powered buffer (LOUD), I was able to tune in. But I have to admit to taking more time to get turned on. This is where having profiles would have helped fill in a few blanks, such as the grade and instructional level that people taught. A lot of the material seemed to be pretty far above where my students live, and if it weren’t for me deciding early on that I wanted to try to blog, I might have left early. But I’m glad I stuck around. I thought Dr. Wakefield did a good job of hitting on some ideas for increasing the depth and breadth of knowledge during our instruction. And she did actually get to me on a couple of points (although I didn’t let her know it at the time) as far as continuing to do the same things over and over and over and over and over again.
Yeah, guilty. That’s me. I do have a kid who has been trying to identify his name from an array of 3 for 5 years. And still he can’t do it independently more than 30 percent of the time. HOWEVER, we did (FINALLY) get him to identify the penny, nickel, quarter and dime. After 5 years. And he’s counting to 5 after learning the numbers 1-5. So here’s the tough part; knowing when to quit. It took him 5 years (at least) to master those few skills. We’re extending to numbers 6-10 and deepening to counting other things but I could have just as easily given up 2 years ago once he finished his GAA. But I’m stubborn like that.
Is being stubborn an asset or a liability in this business? It probably depends on the quality of judgement. I’m still working on that part of it.
But as a high school teacher trying to do this with students who have severe and profound (mostly profound) cognitive disabilities there was still some distance between the expectation and what I see myself being able to do with a room full of students. Dr. Wakeman did sort of address that, which is about where I piped in because it was the first I was able to really get turned on to her material. I think if, as educators, we can succeed in jumping the enormous gap between a high school profound student and their grade level standard, doing it for the rest of the student population would be absolute gravy. Once we landed people on the moon, flying to Califronia or even China didn’t seem so difficult. Same thing, here. So my recommendation for future training would be to zero in on conquering that challenge: the distance between the most profound student and the highest grade-level standard. So much of the conversation on aligning standards seems to be akin to getting to California from Georgia when my kids are trying to get to there from the moon! Can they do it? Yeah, maybe with the same amount of time, intensity and resources as an Apollo moon mission. But no one is offering NASA-sized resources to my class at the moment. Perhaps I’m still thinking too small. I’m willing to try and think bigger and jump higher.
Anyway, it was a worthwhile presentation that was done well. I did come away with some new insight and not all of it was guilt! Perhaps doing more with less would improve future presentations, but only if there are other loudmouths like me in the room. It’s the participatory potential of Elluminate that can make the house rock. So thank you Dr. Wakeman, for virtually visiting us in Georgia!
By the way, I had no idea what a Dip Dog was either. So here you go!
Of course, I already had a lot of background in this material, thanks in large part to Dr. Toni Waylor-Bowen (she needs her own webpage) and her partner in crime at the time, Jessie Moreau. Dr. Bowen was the moderator of this session and everyone needs to give her kudos for being such a good (and patient) sport to some of my snarkiness. Regular readers know my feelings toward the GAA and she did a swell job of fielding my comments and questions. I might invite her to do a podcast or some sort of interview type of thing in the future to address some of those issues. As it was, we did sort of get into it toward the end of the Elluminate session which may or may not have made it more interesting. I think we could have gone on for some additional time, but at 5:00 most of us were ready to go home. Or use the bath. TMI but at least more truthful for me!
I think I might blog Dr. Bowen sometime separately later on, because she does have a good story, lots of experience and is totally willing to help and share.
So any and all, feel free to have at me in the comments!
PLN for SID/PID Teachers? February 22, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Blogging, Blogroll, Educational Technology, Teachers, assistive Technology, networking, teachertube.comments closed
PLN = Personal Learning Network and it is the latest buzz word buzzing around. Or at least it’s the latest thing I’m running into when reading about teachers who are into technology and all the latest, greatest stuff.
I’m still trying to figure out what it is, exactly. It’s not exactly cut and dried. Funnily enough, the concept is older than most of the technology that is spawning a lot of the conversation. But there is some good sites helping to guide teachers on how to make one. And David Warlick seems to have the authoritative site on the subject.
So do you have one? Do you need one? Patrick Woessner does a good job of describing the current state of affairs in education. Few people know what it is, let alone have one. In a way, I do have one in the form of the folks in my blogroll and RSS feed. But I feel like it’s not very tightly knit. I’m beginning to see where Twitter might be helpful. But again, there’s that info overload, because of my various interests.
I joined the Classroom 2.0 and there’s some promise there. I invite you all to look around and let me know what you think.
What really got me thinking about this was a recent wave of comments from colleagues who have referenced the isolation involved in teaching students with severe disabilities. Like our students, we are often in need of the greatest support but are segregated off from the greater teacher community. We can join in extra curricular concerns (if we have time) but we rarely get to connect with others who also do what we do. It’s rare that there is more than one SID/PID teacher in the building and some districts may only have 3 in the whole system! So providing support and ways to get support becomes a real challenge but the technology is there if we want to use it.
Oh well, back to work on finishing up the GAA!
HB 215 – Restoring Some Sanity February 22, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Curriculum, Ed Policy Discussion, NCLB, Regular Ed, Special Education, political activism.comments closed
I do make a lot of noise about those monkeys in Washington, and their simian counterparts in Atlanta. Over the past few years, they have managed to screw up education in such a way that it will take decades to recover. But change is on the way. Hopefully.
Ironically, the troop of baboons under our gold dome actually might get something right. There are 3 separate bills working their way through the Georgia legislature that are designed to help lower the drop-out rate while helping students succeed. Some promising developments, and some not so much.
HB 149 is basically a form of dual enrollment that allows juniors and seniors to work their way through college while finishing up the last two years of high school. I do like this idea, as it will allow those students who are ready to move ahead to do so. High school can be fun for a lot of students but a drag to others. Getting out early plus getting college courses for free could be a big incentive for certain students.
HB 400 involves having a grant program that would enable high schools to set up magnet or theme schools around high-demand vocational careers such as healthcare, agribusiness or science. I have not seen a lot of specifics of this bill, and so while it looks nice it seems pretty vague. Schools would have to opt in and apply for the grants and then establish the infrastructure to help train students in a vocational career. Technical schools and colleges would also partner in this proposal, so it has some aspects of dual enrollment built in. But both HB 149 and HB 400 will still be hamstrung by the requirements of the curriculum standards set by the GA DOE. HB 215 would help correct this.
HB 215 is the bill with the most promise and yet will face the stiffest opposition. It represents a battle between the DOE and the legislature over what a H.S. diploma in Georgia will represent.
My DOE readers, feel free to weigh in.
Basically, Georgia used to have a multi-tiered diploma system. There was a basic, general diploma, there was a vocational diploma and then there was a college prep diploma. As one moved higher in the track, the requirements became more rigorous. If one got a general diploma, it didn’t automatically bar them from higher education but probably meant a two-year college before moving higher. The general and vocational diplomas had fewer requirements so that more vocational electives could be taken. However, the DOE recently abolished this system in favor of one diploma for every student– the college prep diploma. The idea was that every student who graduates will be able to go to college. The DOE has stated they don’t want lesser diploma levels for anyone, but equally rigorous standards for all. They also don’t want all the work they invested into the new “One diploma for all” approach to be undone.
As I see it, the DOE was all wet when they came up with “one size fits all.” It was a serious mistake and the legislature is right for trying to fix it. The DOE could reverse themselves and fix it today, but they won’t do it. Therefore, we need to pass legislation in order to compel some common sense into the process. Students with special needs automatically become the brown biscuits in the punch bowl, once again. Because they are either locked out by the requirements, or drop out or simply are failed and left behind. And the students that I teach are a particular case in point. According to the newest DOE standards, a student with an IQ of less than 25 will get a college prep diploma (based on passing the GAA). A student with a 75 IQ who can’t pass the graduation test will get nothing. The gifted student with a 140 IQ will get a college prep diploma which is the exact same diploma as my student with profound intellectual disabilities. Am I the only one who sees the problem here? How does this do anything but cheapen a college prep diploma? Insisting everyone pass the same standard necessarily lowers the standards for the higher achievers and raises it out of reach for the lower achievers.
My students participate in something known as Special Olympics. The rules are modified as is the playing conditions and equipment so that my students can participate. If they had to use the same equipment and rules as the regular Olympic athletes, just what chance would they have of succeeding? Would they have a chance of even meeting a basic qualification of being in the Olympics? No. But if the DOE were running the sporting universe, every child would have to have an Olympic qualifying time or forget about sports altogether. Which is what too many Georgia students do. They know they aren’t going to survive Algebra 2 and have no use for it, so they drop out. It’s the only way they can keep from losing. The DOE counters this by saying that they can not support any legislation that waters down the curriculum. But given the provision being made for students with severe disabilities, that is exactly what it amounts to. The college prep diploma is totally watered down is now meaningless. Which means a Georgia diploma is meaningless.
HB 215 is a bill that corrects the serious error that the GA DOE made when they abandoned students with disabilities and those with non-college career goals and aspirations. Not everyone wants to go to a university. We still need firefighters, police officers, paramedics, soldiers, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, daycare providers and truck drivers. The DOE seems to be blinded to the fact that the employable skills of a Georgia HS graduate and the skills of a HS dropout are almost exactly the same! The college prep curriculum leaves precious little room for taking any vocational courses because there are so many core requirements. Even for students with severe disabilities, the community-based program has all but been totally decimated by the emphasis on the core curriculum requirements. Much of this was pushed downwards from the feds with NCLB, but much of it is aggravated by our own state policies. I notice this bill also re-implements the special education diploma track which at least makes the regular diploma look less ridiculous and makes it slightly more meaningful to those who earn one.
So thanks to our legislature for bringing a bit of sanity back into educational policy. Sometimes Georgia politics seem as straight as a dog’s hind leg, but this is one educational bill that actually deserves some support. I hope that it can be passed and is able to comply with the onerous NCLB requirements.
The Video Project February 11, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Blogging, Educational Technology, Parent Support, Parents and parenting, Special Education, teachertube.comments closed
The idea was, and still is, to develop a knowledge base for other SID/PID teachers to draw from and (hopefully) contribute to. I’m extending the level of collaboration beyond the district mainly because there are so few of us who do what it is I do. And among those who are SID/PID teachers, there are not many with a lot of technical knowledge to produce the content and post it in a place where others can benefit from it.
However, the open nature of the project has caused some concern for people on many levels, or at least so I’ve been told. So I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome my new readers and clarify a few things in a way that will hopefully lower the anxiety level of everyone.
Here is a copy of the permission slip that I used in order to give parents an opportunity to participate in this project. From my standpoint, the parents of my students were partners in the project as far as I was concerned. They were free to opt in and out at will. However, I didn’t seek necessary approval from those in higher authority. I can sympathize and understand where there might be some concern from a liability standpoint. It’s the job of those people in the higher pay grades to worry about such things and I do appreciate the concerns that have worked their way through the system to my level. From where I sit, it looked pretty straight forward: there was some teaching that needed to be done and I was in a position to do it. So I did. I never made what I was doing a secret. In fact, I actively promoted my blog and my video channels in order to get the word out that this resource was available. I invited input and feedback. That’s what this whole web 2.0 medium is all about. It’s about sharing knowledge and then improving on the knowledge that is shared. The accountability of the system is built into the feedback.
Unfortunately, those who are not natives to the new media have some issues with the lack of control over the flow of information. There is a lot of fear concerning the unknown. I can sympathize with that, but I’m also concerned that there are so many educators that hide behind the curtain of ignorance in the name of such fear. Healthy concern is prudent and it does help mitigate recklessness and poor judgment. However we are engaging in a massive act of educational malpractice if we fail to become educated in the new learning mediums afforded to us through technology. We need to know these tools and leverage them in order to better educate others.
I have a blog. I have a Youtube channel. I have a Teachertube channel. I also have a podcasting channel. I have the power to broadcast my views and to editorialize as I please to pretty much anyone in the world. And I do that quite a lot more than many people would like. However, I also have the tools to extend my voice, my views and my knowledge beyond the walls of my classroom. I can teach beyond the boundaries of the school district’s control and supervision. And that could be a very scary thing to someone who is fixed on trying to manage the outflow of information.
This brings up a lot of important issues that have never come up before. How much of what I say is protected speech under the 1st amendment of our constitution? How much of it is protected under civil rights legislation? After all, much of what I’m trying to do falls under the category of advocating for students with disabilities and those who care for them. How much political speech am I allowed?
How should a school district respond to someone who is an employee and also a parent who is acting in both roles as well as a role of a non-sanctioned reporter of sorts? This is a really sticky situation because every teacher (and student!) has the opportunity and technological ability to become his or her own media outlet.
I could do what a lot of other teachers do (and what I started out doing) which is blog anonymously. Of course the risk is then that they would be found out. My choice now is to be as open and transparent as possible in order avoid the risk of being accused of blindsiding my administration within the district. My blog address has been part of my email signature file (and has probably been mostly ignored up until this point) since the beginning of school. I have been very open about it without being obnoxiously promotional.
My thought is that the school district has more control over me, as an employee, than they would have over me as simply an educated parent. With things being out in the open, I have a vested interest in not rocking the boat too much. I’ve always known that administrators could be reading me and just assumed that they probably were. In my profile, I clearly say that my views do not represent those of my employer and probably need to display that more prominently.
I also knew that there were people within the GA DOE who were following my blog. When I began there were very few special education blogs, and not a lot of educational blogs originating from Georgia. It really got obvious when I saw training materials that used pseudonyms that had been lifted directly from some of the ones I used here during my anonymous blogging days. Hey, I’m glad I was inspiring someone there!
I was also being read by people in the U.S. Senate. Yep. I even had a staffer from one VERY prominent U.S. Senator (who is not from Georgia) email me asking for some input on some pending special education/disability legislation. I begged off (politely) because I wanted to stay anonymous. It was that email (and a few others) that made me eventually decide to stop being anonymous because while it afforded me a lot of freedom and safety it also limited me as far as being effective in truly helping others and making a difference. I had to come out and be me instead of a pretend and imaginary person. And I had to risk facing the music within my own community and school. I had to step up and take responsibility for what I was writing and producing.
Plus I wanted to produce more content that would make a bigger impact. Which brings back to the video project. That project had truly given me a new lease on my teaching life. I was really approaching a state of burn out as a SID/PID teacher. That project gave me new purpose and new meaning. It was a marriage of my teaching background and expertise along with my technological knowledge along with my desire to get involved with the new media. I got excited. One of the first things I did was I wrote to the creators of Teachertube and asked them to establish a separate channel for special education. And that is exactly what they did. Since the day it started, I have been in the top 5 contributors of that channel.
I saw adding content that showed actual students as a logical step in the progression of informing and educating outside of my classroom. I even gave my evaluator copies of videos that I had shot in the closing days of the year so she could see me actually teach academic content instead of just watching me work with kids eating at lunch. I shared what I was doing with my special ed director and with some of the folks in the technology department. It is that enthusiasm that has carried me through a lot of the various issues of this year. I was seeing something good happen.
I’ve been too busy to post or shoot much video but I always intended on getting back to it once I got the time. However, I did not get permission from the parents for this year so I hadn’t planned on shooting any new video with students. Now the school district is in the midst of wrestling with what to do about blogs and videos. I removed the videos that contained any student images in the interest of not increasing the level of anxiety any more than already exists. It was tough dropping out of that top 5 spot on Teachertube.
I do intend on producing more content and posting it there eventually but it will be of a much safer nature. If other people want to get on board, they are more than welcome! I’m trying to participate in a larger community of learning, and I’m not particularly interested in getting into some sort of political turf war. Neither am I interested in the paranoid superstitions of people who don’t understand 21st century learning. I’m just a guy who likes to teach using the tools of technology.
Get to Know Your Director of Special Education February 4, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Backstory, Blogging, Parent Support, Special Ed., Special Education.comments closed
In my recent Christmas video, I sort of had a bit of fun at my director of special education’s expense. Hopefully, she still has her sense of humor. Or perhaps the joke will be on ME! Hahahahaha!
That video itself was probably one of the best, most polished ones I’ve ever made in the technical sense. But the sarcasm in it might have been a bit much, so let’s see if I can fix any mis perceptions that might exist plus shed some light on what little I know about the job of special education director and the person our county has doing it.
In a small rural county, the director of special education is a lot more visible and knows the parents, teachers and students better than in a larger district. Our district has been transitioning from small to large over the past 15 years or so. So while she knows all of the teachers, she is not nearly as familiar with all of the students or their parents as she might have been starting out. Also, the administrative overhead grows as the district grows. While she has some assistance from other staff, there are still many things that only she can do and authorize and can not be delegated. Mainly, she answers to the state DOE as well as to the county superintendent. Anything that is required by the state, it is her job to make sure the entire county is in compliance. And this is not a small job, nor is it fun. At least I don’t think it is fun!
Consider that the U.S. Congress has teams of lawyers and staffers working to draft and reauthorize the IDEA. Then, this gets passed down to the state, where the DOE adds more layers to the regulations. By the time it gets to the county level, the requirements of the law have increased substantially. And then the special education director has to figure out how she is going to get all of the various disciplines within special education to comply. Most of the time, this translates into finding some way of getting teachers and education providers to comply and report. That means more paperwork. Our special ed director is and always has been very much pro-data which has added to the workload at times. But if I think about it, most decisions should be data driven. The problem is that there are hundreds of teachers in our county and not all of them are able or willing to comply with all the details the process requires. The newest teachers have yet to learn all the finer points, and veteran teachers can be a bit rebellious sometimes or merely forgetful. In any case, getting all of these educators to comply with the myriad of regulations required by the government can be like herding cats. Which means more effort has be expended on accountability and thus more compliance-driven paperwork.
Which leads to the next layer of responsibility which is managing all those teachers. By and large, the building administrators can do a lot of it, but if there is some sort of problem (like a rogue blogger) she is expected to be on the front line. She also helps support all of the teachers that need extra training. And every year, when things change, EVERY teacher needs to be trained. Even those of us who are already trained need to sometimes be trained again.
One of the main sources of work for me is the level of collaboration necessary in order to serve my classroom of students with disabilities. PT, OT, speech, VI, HI, APE, transportation, the school nurse and the cafeteria all represent people that I have to interact with on a regular basis in order to do my job. Now multiply that by a factor of about 100, and you might have some idea of what a special education director might have to typically deal with. Except while my involvement is primarily at my own level, hers runs all the way up to the state department and all the way down to the lowest classification of employee. Her involvement runs throughout the board office among all the areas of curriculum and administration.
In a perfect world, the special ed director could busy herself planning, training, keeping up with all of the latest regulations and requirements and budgeting. There is plenty enough there to keep a body busy all the time with just administering the extensive program that is special education. However, it is not a perfect world. We do have students that we have to deal with and each of those students have at least one parent. The level of satisfaction of these parents is by-and-large pretty good in our county. But it is not perfect. There is just no pleasing some people no matter what you do. And teachers do make mistakes. Some more than others. And who does an angry parent talk to if they have a serious complaint that they want action on? It’s usually the board office, and if the student has an IEP the point of contact is the special education director. While she can successfully delegate some of the smaller fires to other people she still has to follow-up to make sure it is dealt with. And then she takes the big fires that always take much longer than anyone ever plans. Sometimes this involves having to testify in court, which involves a lot of time taken away from all the other things she needs to attend to.
What this translates into is a constant stream of demands upon the time of this one single person, and I have only skimmed the surface of all the duties and obligations. It is a huge, gigantic job that is mostly pretty thankless. The special ed director is rarely thanked by parents, as she is no longer in the classroom. While so much of her job revolves around helping students with special needs her involvement is indirect and behind the scenes. Whenever the public is looking for people to give credit for in their child’s education, it mostly goes to the teacher. Administrators rarely get it, and those who sit in the central office rarely are recognized at all. What’s more, in the current times of budget constraints, the job is made all the more difficult as people are forever pointing fingers at trying to reduce administrative overhead. Since no one sees what administrators do, it is easy to say that what they do is unimportant or less important.
As teachers, it really does not fully sink in as what administrators really and truly do unless we expend some serious time and thought. Often, they can diffuse a situation before it gets out of hand with a parent or the public. They take care of the toughest of the discipline issues and some of the toughest decisions that have to be made. Often, all we see is all of the paperwork that this person seems to be making us fill out and thus all of our own time that is being taken. If I am having trouble getting something done within the district or even on a building level, many times the special ed director is the one that can get things done and moving along.
Now I’m going to get a bit specific here, and risk even more exposure to repercussions. But this is part of my new resolution to be more positive. I’m not going to mention her by name but everyone who is local here will know exactly who I am thinking of in this post. In my video, I was being vague on purpose because I wasn’t intending to go after anyone in particular although I can see how it could be taken that way. But now I’m going to be much more specific just to make sure there’s no confusion and everyone knows where I stand.
I’ve had dealings with our special education director with me as a teacher and then as a parent. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen anyone who works harder, with more dedication and under more stressful conditions than this woman. I was acquainted with her when I was a para and she was an EBD teacher and she was hard enough working and talented back then doing one of the hardest teaching jobs that exists in special education. Over the years, as parent and teacher I can say that I have not always agreed with everything she’s done but I always felt I got a fair hearing. As much as she already has going on, she always takes the time needed in order to listen to what people are saying. Always. She was perfectly willing to address and present to the local autism support group which can often be akin to walking into a den of momma bears. She has totally supported local parent advocacy groups and their activities and events. Her level of dedication and effort to special education is unmatched by anyone I’ve ever met. And I’ve been around some hard working people!
So while my video had a rather snarky tone to it, it was not meant to paint my own special ed director in a bad light. It was more along the lines of “Welcome to Life as a Special Education Teacher!” In this business, a sense of humor is pretty crucial to maintaining some semblance of sanity.
On that note, y’all can quite bugging her about the teacher who is blogging and making videos. I did let her know about them fairly early on in the process and have not tried to hide any of these activities from her or anyone else. However I’m going to address the specifics of the video project in another post.
Good luck to everyone else who is wrapping up GAA’s – only about a month to go!
