All Children Need "Special Education"

The ideas behind UDL are, in some ways, pretty radical. As teachers, we “plan from the margins.” That is, we think about some of our most disadvantaged students as we contemplate our instruction.

I think we always have a student in mind when we plan our lessons. Perhaps this student is ourselves? While this is not a bad place to start—indeed, can we ever start from anywhere else but our own experiences?—I would argue that it is not enough.

For our own experiences as a learner only take on their full shape and meaning as we put them into dialogue with other experiences. In this way, I would argue for a type of “radical alterity” to be put at the heart of our planning.

That is, we should think about the children who might be most different from us in order to spot both commonalities and differences. To see what in our experiences is helpful for our teaching practice and to see where our own experiences might not actually be all that helpful as a guide to the learning needs for some of our students.

If we are always thinking about the “average” student, we risk treating all of our students as average—as typical, as not unique, as not a gift to the world.

But of course all children are gifts and carry with them gifts that the world is in desperate need of. When we plan from the perspective of those in most need of our assistance, hope and support, then we perhaps plan in ways that work harder to uncover those gifts.

That is going to be hard. But I think we have seen outstanding special education teachers over the past few weeks, ones who show us ways of teaching that we can adapt to make our classrooms more welcoming and more engaging for all students.

In this way, “special education” might become an education that recognizes what is special about all children.

Assessment: It's Simply a Way to Get to Know Your Students--And for Them to Get to Know Themselves!

Assessment is one of the trickier areas for us as new teachers to approach. For so long, assessment was done roughly the same way. On the high school level, at least, it was about grades, report cards, taking tests, and fitting oneself into a rank order.

Things have changed drastically over the past fifteen years, so it’s important to realize that our own experiences in this area may not be completely reliable guides for our professional actions in the future.

Take the issue of grades. We spent a bit of time in class trying to disentangle issues of grading from issues of assessment. While the two are no doubt linked, it is important that we do not let the current grading system totally determine our assessment practices.

At the end of the day, we will likely be required to give a student a single grade of either A, B, C, D or F. But that should not prevent us from providing that student and his or her family helpful and targeted information that will lead to a better appreciation for what needs to happen in the future.

It should not prevent us from communicating strengths and areas of needed growth, in the domains of knowledge, skills, interests, disposition, character, and leadership. It should not stop us from telling students whether or not they have met specific state-mandated standards.

Ben is an awesome example of a teacher who is continually refining and examining his assessment practices. He is currently playing around with a version of the “minimum fifty” policy—and he gives students a ton of choices and opportunities to play to their strengths and show what they know.

On the other hand, as we discussed in class, lots of choices comes with a downside: it means we can’t support students as much and that students are not, perhaps, gently nudged outside of their comfort zones.

Assessment can be one of the more inspiring areas for us as educators. It’s where we get to search out the hidden talents and gifts that each human being possesses. It’s where we help children connect what they can do—or what they are interested in doing—to the needs of the world. It’s where we help children discover their passions and help them reach out for them.

But it’s important that we don’t tell easy truths in this search for inspiration. We need to trust that kids can handle the truth. But to get to the truth, we need to be smart. We need to realize that no one instrument can tell us everything we need to know as teachers—even the best written test can’t do that.

So we need multiple forms of assessments, with multiple instruments: some project-based and some objective. With this rounded picture of summative assessment tools (and with the help of a ready stock of formative assessment strategies—something we will continue to talk about throughout the year), we, as teachers, can help take us out of the past of education and into its future.

The Many Paths of Curriculum

Broadly speaking, traditional methods courses like TE 407 and TE 408 are divided into three broad areas: curriculum (the what of teaching), instruction (the how of teaching), and assessment (how we know they learned what we taught).

Throughout the year, we will consider each of these three areas in some depth. But as you no doubt noticed, as we have started the year, we have given our greatest attention to curriculum.

Defining curriculum as “the what of teaching” works for everyday purposes. But it is also helpful to step back and think about curriculum in its broader meaning. The origins of the word come from the Latin, currere, which means “to run.” Its meaning was eventually extended to the track or course on which one runs. Curriculum can therefore be thought of as a journey—as the journey one takes throughout life. 

In the state of Michigan, as in the rest of the world, there is content that is assigned to each year of the schooling experience. For the past twenty-five years or so, this content has been organized into learning standards. Michigan’s newly proposed standards for k-12 social studies can be found here.

When teachers plan their instruction, they begin by consulting the relevant curriculum documents. These include standards documents and the local textbook that is assigned to your course.

What we have been practicing is the art of gathering multiple types of resources (written, visual, online, etc.) that can be used to teach the required content in a way that is both engaging and inclusive of multiple perspectives. But gathering is only the first step!

For it is how we ask questions that “pull out” all that a resource offers that is the true art of teaching. Indeed, one of the most important resources for your students is you! Think about how you can maximize the unique talents you bring to the classroom.

It is a question of how we can open up a space in which thinking and feeling and caring can happen.

Ultimately, as we leave this first unit of TE 407, we want you to understand that all of life has the potential to become curriculum. Indeed, as we prepare to assist Ben and the other teachers from Haslett Middle School on their field trip tomorrow, it is a great time to remind ourselves that true learning happens when the learner is able to organize their life experiences so as to go on growing in the future.

Our job as teachers is to learn how to take advantage of whatever the school day brings—a textbook reading, a guest talk from Mike Lupica, a lockdown drill, a school dance, or a field trip.

Great job through our first unit of the year! Andrew and I look forward to reading your curriculum resource assignments, which are due up on your website by Wednesday, October 5.

TE 407 Course Resources: September

Here are links to the course syllabus, the curriculum resource assignment, and the Michigan Social Studies standards.

TE 407 Syllabus

Curriculum Resource Assignment

Michigan Social Studies Standards

Google Earth Tours Presentation Schedule

Teaching in Ben's Class Schedule 

Teaching With Economic Data

Get into microteaching groups. Each group will receive one graphic. Your job is to be ready to jigsaw into teaching groups on Wednesday. You will use both discussion and direct instruction to teach your graphic. Each group will have up to fifteen minutes to teach their graphic and the issues related to it.

2015 Federal Budget

Federal Deficits over Time

Tax Rates on Highest and Lowest Income Earners over Time

Income Inequality

Geographical Inquiry

Today, we thought about maps as texts that organize information spatially from a particular vantage point. Each part of this definition seemed important as we worked through what it is we might do with the maps we share with students: focus on the data and information that is presented, look at it in its spatial distribution, and think about the vantage point of the map projection.

In NatGeo Mapmaker, we got to play around with the spatial distribution of different variables. Of particular interest is when we could create a map that yielded information on the spatial relationships between two or more variables. This allows us to raise questions about geographic determinism (see this article by Jared Diamond). What does it mean if social violence or poverty is especially concentrated in the tropical areas of the world? Are there any geographic features that explain this? How do geographic features such as climate and landforms influence societies? How important are such geographic factors as we try to make things of why things are where and why they are?

In Worldmapper, we looked at cartograms as tools that allow us to look at the distribution and location of different variables as they interact with territorial size. This was an excellent tool for teaching kids to generate hypotheses, bring to bear background knowledge that would inform the hypotheses, confirm or disconfirm our hypotheses through the cartogram, and then to ask what other information would be necessary to further understand what it is we are seeing.

In Google Earth, we saw how we can create spatial tours that integrate picture, text, and satellite imagery. As a spatial alternative to PowerPoint, such tours allow us to share and present information through spatial frameworks. (Here is a cheat sheet for some of the things we did in class today.)

Simulation Review

In your assigned groups, look at your assigned simulation-type activity. Start to read, evaluation and discuss the materials. Then consider:

·      What would you need to do in order to help students learn from this activity?

·      What you would do to set up this activity and how you could extend it once it was over?

·      In class on Wednesday, you will have be asked to engage the class in 10 minutes of the simulation.

Ancient Incan City

French Revolution Play

Bodysculpting the Holocaust

Silk Road Simulation

World History Lecture Notes

World History Standards for Grade 7
1) Disciplinary Skills and Processes
2) Study of Specific Eras

o WHG Era 1 – The Beginnings of Human Society
o WHG Era 2 – Early Civilizations and Cultures and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples
o WHG Era 3 – Classical Traditions, World Religions, and Major Empires
o WHG Era 4 – Expanding and Intensified Hemispheric Interactions
3) Final Project
4) Integration of Other Disciplines 

High School World History Standards 
 
1) Study of Specific Eras x Lens/Frames

o WHG Era 5 – The Emergence of the First Global Age, 15th to 18th Centuries
o WHG Era 6 – An Age of Global Revolutions, 18th Century-1914
o WHG Era 7 – Global Crisis and Achievement, 1900-1945
o WHG Era 8 – The Cold War and Its Aftermath: The 20th Century Since 1945

2) Final Project on Contemporary Issues
3) Social Studies Processes and Skills

In order to think about our units and lessons, we therefore have to have a process for drawing upon diverse standards across multiple areas of the document. In general, we want to integrate:
a) Global patterns, inter-regional interactions, and regional case examples
b) Essential research and literacy skills in the discipline
c) Concepts and connections from other social studies disciplines
What are ways that we can do this?
 
1) Plan units that are focused on an era, but that that have an essential question that links to another discipline.

o Examples: 
§ Did the agricultural revolution solve or invent food scarcity? (history integrated with economics)
§ Did the agricultural revolution promote equality or inequality? (history integrated with government)
 
2) Make sure to integrate projects and activities into every unit that emphasize aspects of the inquiry arc (where students examine primary and secondary sources, make claims, and write narratives that evaluate agency, motive, and cause/effect).
3) Use regional case examples to illustrate global trends.
4) Look for moments of inter-regional “historical convergence”: trade, migration, war, empire, and cultural and technological diffusion.

TE 408 Course Documents

Here are links to course documents you will need this semester:

TE 408 Course Syllabus

Formal Lesson Plan Assignment

Objective Test Assignment

Formative Assessment Assignment