Week in Review - December 18 2020

Continuing_Ed


NASET

WEEK IN REVIEW

National Association of Special Education Teachers

December 18 2020                 Vol 16 Issue #51



Dear NASET Members and Guests,

Welcome to NASET's WEEK in REVIEW.  Here, we provide you with the latest publications fromNASET to read and or download, as well as some of the most interesting articles that have happened this week in the field of special education. We hope you enjoy this publication.  Feel free to send us articles for this publication or let us know your thoughts about the WEEK in REVIEW at news@naset.org. Have a great weekend.

Sincerely,


WHATS NEW AT NASET

NASET’s ADHD Series

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and its Implications for Family Life


This issue of NASET’s ADHD series was written by Monika Lopez. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a mental health disorder that has affected children, adolescents, and adults worldwide. Characterized by behavioral and social-emotional impediments and impairments, ADHD presents challenges for both the diagnosed individual and family members living alongside them. Family life becomes negatively impacted when children or adolescents are diagnosed with ADHD. Significant measures of impulsivity cause behavioral outbursts (tantrums) for children and adolescents with ADHD. As a result, there is a significant impact on the social-emotional wellbeing of the diagnosed individual, parents/caregivers, siblings, and other family members who live in the same home or spend a considerable amount of time participant of the behavioral management of these ADHD-typical responses. Additional implications like parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, family social life, and marital life are negatively impacted. Families must take special consideration into the parenting styles and communicative approaches to which they are handling the behavioral management of their children or adolescents. Above all, family resilience is a critical component of effective behavioral management and is impactful towards positive family life. 

Read More

 

 

Children with Autism Show Significant IQ Increases Between the Ages of 12 to 23 years

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face a lifelong challenge characterized by qualitative impairments in both communication and social interaction. However a new study appearing in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports that in a cohort of 126 individuals with ASD, IQ increased on average 7.48 points from ages 12 to 23 years old. The study showed that IQ increases were greatest among those participants who had experienced early regression in language skills and had greater communication problems at age 12. Individuals with ASD with a history of regression had an IQ increase of 15.4 points compared to 6.6 points in those not reporting early regression. In contrast to the IQ improvement, parent-reported overall trajectories of autistic traits, while variable, did not change over the same time period on average. confounders. Read More

 

Baskets Help Students with Special Needs Cope with COVID-19 Pandemic

Coping with COVID-19 isn’t easy for any of us, and it can be particularly difficult for young people with intellectual and developmental difficulties. That’s why a young Jacksonville woman came up with an idea to help, and on Thursday, we caught her “project” in action at the North Florida School of Special Education. There were big smiles and squeals of delight as basket after basket of COVID relief were delivered to elementary students at the school in Arlington. “It makes me feel so glad that they were so happy to enjoy it and learn more about COVID and kinda how to cope more with COVID,” said Tori Vossman, who created the baskets. Vossman, a Missouri State University student from Jacksonville, is in a Masters program to become a child life specialist. When the pandemic hit, she knew she had to do something. Read More

 

This Shop Aims to Spark Change for People with Disabilities, and Strike Up a Conversation for Businesses Everywhere

Every now and again, you hear about a company or a shop that transcends the business itself. It has a higher purpose, and aims to make meaningful change: In the industry, the local community or even the world. Anastasia and Katie’s Coffee Shop and Café, in Livonia, Michigan, is one of those businesses. Named after two 14-year-old girls with Down syndrome, Anastasia and Katie’s opened in December 2019. The coffee shop, which serves coffee, tea, breakfast, lunch and snacks, aims to employ people living with disabilities, and provide the appropriate training -- along with on-site support and a paycheck -- in a welcoming, community-based business. A mission lingers in the air at Anastasia and Katie’s, and it all boils down to opportunity and inclusion for all. Read More

 

Lawmakers to Reform Interactions Between Police and People with Disabilities

As calls for policy change and prevention of police violence echo across the U.S., Senator Bob Casey is launching a new initiative to help bring about racial justice and address the high incidence rate of police violence involving people with disabilities. The Law Enforcement Education and Accountability for People with Disabilities (LEAD) Initiative would reduce calls to 9-1-1 call systems regarding non-criminal emergencies and provide robust training to law enforcement on interacting with people with disabilities, including those experiencing a mental health crisis. “We must take action to ensure that someone’s ethnicity or mental ability does not preclude them from receiving protection and fair treatment,” said Senator Casey. “My LEAD initiative aims to protect the promise of liberty and justice for all by reforming our emergency systems so that people and police are connected with the resources they need.” Read More

 

Senator Tom Harkin on the Future of Disability Inclusion

It’s time to end the mass exclusion of 15% of the global population with a disability. This mass exclusion cannot be left to Governments and charities alone, it needs the most powerful force on the planet, business leadership. CEOs make choices and choices create cultures. Former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin is only too familiar with this, having been instrumental in the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which celebrated its 30th birthday earlier this year. Most recently he worked with President elect Joe Biden to help draft the incoming administrations disability policy statement. Additionally, in pursuit of the policy issues which he has dedicated his career to, including those relating to disability inclusion, Senator Harkin established the Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement, a non-partisan institute. Read More

 

Why Holiday Movies Should Be Inclusive of People with Disabilities

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to alter people’s holiday celebrations, many people are finding that watching holiday films is one tradition that can continue. While there has been no meaningful change in the percentage of speaking characters with disabilities in these top-grossing films in the past five years with just 2.3 percent of the 4,451 characters analyzed in the 100 top-grossing films of 2019 by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism having a disability, several holiday films are bucking this trend. And for the one-in-four people in the U.S. who have a disability, that means there are more opportunities to see ourselves reflected on screen. Read More

 

 

NASET ADVOCACY - Board Certification for Advocacy in Special Education (BCASE)

Students with Special Needs Could “Fall Hardest” with Remote Learning

The state legislature has invested millions in new spending school districts to be used for special needs education, and now some education experts say many of those students are being underserved by districts that continue to use remote learning. While the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) has issued special education guidance for use during the pandemic, state law school districts have the legal authority to reopen schools for in-person learning. The Arc of Washington, a group formed in 1935, advocates for children with developmental disabilities. Executive Director Stacy Dym told Lens: “I do feel they could be doing a better job. The interaction that they’re (special needs students) provided with other children is particularly important. It is not easy to generate that outside of a school setting.” Read More

 

Youth Depression Tied to Higher Risk of 66 Diseases and Premature Death

Depressed children and teenagers have an increased risk of suffering from premature death and a wide range of illnesses later in life. That is according to a large observational study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings highlight the need to look for other potential diseases following childhood or adolescent depression. Other psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety and substance misuse, can explain part of the association. The study is published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. "Our study shows that children and teenagers diagnosed with depression have a significantly higher risk of premature death, self-harm, and suffering from other diseases later in life" says Sarah E. Bergen, senior researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, and corresponding author of the study. "It underscores how important it is that these children and teenagers receive the help they need and that medical personnel monitor for subsequent psychiatric and somatic diseases." Read More

 

Significant Increase in Depression Seen Among Children During First UK Lockdown

The first lockdown led to a significant increase in symptoms of depression among children, highlighting the unintended consequences of school closures, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK Government implemented a national "lockdown" involving school closures and social distancing. There has been widespread concern that these measures would negatively impact child and adolescent mental health. To date, however, there is relatively little direct evidence of this. The most direct way of measuring the association between the onset of lockdown and children's mental health is to follow the same individuals over a length of time and look for changes -- so-called 'longitudinal' changes. Read More

 

Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders Explain Elevated Suicide Risk in Autism Spectrum Disorders

A population-based study revealed reasons behind elevated suicide risk, attempted suicides, and other self-harm, which require special health care, among a and young adults with autism spectrum disorders. Comorbid disorders, especially non-affective psychoses and the affective and anxiety disorders, explained the risk. The new study conducted at the University of Turku showed that the autistic children and youth did not have an elevated risk for accidental death. The higher risk for the premature mortality was associated with natural causes. In those cases, the risk was relatively highest among females and among subjects with intellectual disability. Read More

 

Smart Technology Offers a New and Fun Approach to Language Learning

As we look ahead to the future of K–12 education, there’s no doubt that technology will continue to play a vital role in the way students learn. Smart technology in particular has become increasingly popular, inspiring educators to upgrade their classrooms with innovative hardware and immersive lesson plans. Roberta Freitas, an educational technology coordinator at Instituto Brasil Estados Unidos in Brazil, has found that tech tools like augmented reality and virtual assistants could yield significant benefits for student learning — especially for students learning English as a second language. “These tools make content and language more meaningful, more tangible and more fun for students,” Freitas explained Friday during ISTE20 Live, this year’s virtual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education. Read More

 

 

  

 

TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK

This Week's Trivia Question: 

Under the federal law, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, an initial evaluation to determine whether a child is a child with a disability (an initial evaluation) must be made within how many days of receiving parental consent for the evaluation (20 USC 1414(a)(1)(C)(i)(I))?

If you know the answer to this week's trivia questions, email it to us at contactus@naset.org by December 21, 2020. If you are correct, you will be acknowledged in next week's NASET's Week in Review


Special Education: 45 Years Later

It can be easy to take for granted the institutions that function in the background of our everyday lives. Like many others who work in the field of special education, I take pause this month to reflect on the 45th Anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975. IDEA was a landmark civil rights measure designed to create equitable access to the education for children with special needs. Before IDEA, students with physical and mental disabilities were regularly excluded from public schools. In 1970, only one in five children with disabilities had access to a quality education. As a nation, we have come a long way. While most people may not be familiar with the pillars of IDEA, the concept is one we should all celebrate. It was a promise to children, families, school districts, and states that would provide a brighter future for children with disabilities. But it is a promise that has not reached its full potential. At the time the statute was enacted, Congress promised to pay 40 percent of the National Average per Pupil Expenditure. Today, this figure sits at about 13 percent. In fact, funding for IDEA has never surpassed 20 percent. Read More

 

COVID Poses New Challenges for Students with Special Needs

When COVID-19 forced schools throughout Connecticut to shut down abruptly in March, educators scrambled to figure out the best way to ensure students still received a proper education while at home. But for Treca Williams, keeping her children engaged has been left to her alone, especially when it comes to her 8-year-old daughter, Jaylene, who is a special education student in Bridgeport. With little to no help coming from her child’s school at the time, Williams had to get creative. “I had to come up with a lot of different ideas and brainstorm on ways to help limit her frustration and her anxiety and how she was always overwhelmed, and keeping her focused,” Williams said about Jaylene, who has ADHD and emotional disturbance challenges. Read More

 

Some Families Hope Pandemic Can Spur Change in Special Education

Single mom Nicole Vaughn has spent the better part of her adult life advocating for her five adopted children with disabilities. But when schools shuttered for the coronavirus last spring, Vaughn gained a slew of new responsibilities, like helping her kids access virtual classrooms and coordinating the special education services they receive. “I had to send emails to the speech and language provider saying, ‘Hey, they haven’t seen you, I haven’t seen you. What’s going on?’ ” said Vaughn, who lives in the Detroit metropolitan area. Once those services resumed, Vaughn said sessions were shorter than the time mandated by her children’s individualized education programs. Known as IEPs, these plans are meant to ensure that students with disabilities receive specialized instruction and services tailored to their needs. Vaughn decided to let it go. Read More

 

Infant Health Inequality Has Increased Since 2010, Study Finds

After several decades of improvement, inequality in infant health is once again on the rise in the United States, a pair of Brown University researchers has found. Between 1989 and 2010, the health gap between infants born to the most socially advantaged mothers -- those who are married, highly educated and white -- and infants born to the least socially advantaged mothers -- those who are unmarried, without a high school diploma and Black -- steadily decreased. But according to a new study, that trend began to reverse in 2010, creating an ever-widening gulf that could last for generations. "Lots of Americans view the U.S. as a land of equal opportunity where hard work pays off," Emily Rauscher, an associate professor of sociology at Brown. "But equality of opportunity is fundamentally impossible to achieve as long as there is inequality in infant health. When babies are born in under-resourced communities, they are more likely to be born underweight or malnourished. They're already at a disadvantage before they've even had an opportunity to do anything in the world." Read More

 

Predicting Epilepsy From Neural Network Models

Within the staggeringly complex networks of neurons which make up our brains, electric currents display intricate dynamics in the electric currents they convey. To better understand how these networks behave, researchers in the past have developed models which aim to mimic their dynamics. In some rare circumstances, their results have indicated that 'tipping points' can occur, where the systems abruptly transition from one state to another: events now commonly thought to be associated with episodes of epilepsy. In a new study published in EPJ B, researchers led by Fahimeh Nazarimehr at the University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, show how these dangerous events can be better predicted by accounting for branches in networks of neurons. Read More

 

Teen Dislike of Physical Appearance Strong Predictor of Depression in Early Adulthood

Teens who are unhappy with their physical appearance are at significantly heightened risk of depression by the time they reach early adulthood, reveals the first UK study of its kind, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. The size of the increased risk ranges from 50% to 285%, the findings show, with boys more likely to experience severe depression than girls. Dislike of one's physical appearance, formally known as body dissatisfaction, affects up to 61% of teens worldwide. It has been identified as a risk factor for eating disorders, unhealthy behaviors, and poor mental health. Most published research on body dissatisfaction and depression has been carried out in the US, and few studies have explored the issue among young men and Millennials -- those born between 1981 and 1997 -- to factor in the influence of the internet, technology, and social media. Read More

 

 

 

JOB POSTINGS


* Teacher - JHU is looking for an energetic, flexible, and motivated teacher needed to work full-time with a young adult with autism. Teachers work on a multi-disciplinary team with specialists in autism, special education, speech-language pathology, fitness, art, and behavior analysis to address communication, academic, daily living, vocational, and leisure skills in home, educational, and community settings in and around New York City, Connecticut, and via Zoom. To learn more - Click here

* Assistant Professor; Collaborative Special Ed - The University of North Alabama invites applications for the position of tenure-track, Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, & Leadership. Qualifications include: an earned doctorate in special education; a minimum of three years of successful public school experience with students who have either mild, moderate, or severe disabilities in grades K-6, 6-12, or K-12; demonstrated university teaching experience to teach undergraduate courses required for a dual K-6 certification in elementary and special education, along with online graduate courses; excellent verbal and writing skills; the ability to advise teacher education candidates; and the ability to work with P-12 students as well as P-12 schools and administrators. To learn more - Click here

* Educational Instructional Support Specialists - The Collaborative for Educational Services (CES) is seeking Educational Instructional Support Specialists to assist with onsite coordination of hybrid and/or remote teaching and learning. The Specialist will provide structure, onsite support and the connection to teachers as needed. The Specialist's purpose is to make sure that students have what they need in order to actively, and successfully engage with their learning when done via remote instruction, or through a combination of in person and on-line (hybrid) programming. To learn more- Click here

* FT Special Education Teachers, (K-4, 5-8, 9-12) - PA Virtual has openings for Full Time Special Education Teachers at the Elementary, Middle and High School Levels. All teaching positions are remote and we require candidates to have a current, valid certification to teach in the state of Pennsylvania. The Teacher position is responsible for the planning, organization and implementation of an appropriate instructional program, in an elementary or secondary virtual learning environment. To learn more - Click here

* Special Education Teacher - A local school district in Charleston, SC has partnered with an industry leading healthcare job placement agency, to fill several vacant Special Education Teacher positions in Charleston, SC for the entire 2020-21 School Year. The Special Education Teacher is responsible for planning, coordinating and the provision of special education services to eligible students. This position assures adherence to timelines and federal and state requirements for special education services and the responsibility for monitoring compliance with Individualized Services Plans (ISP) and/or Individualized Education Plan (IEP). To learn more - Click here

* Special Education Teacher - Merakey is seeking a Special Education Teacher to join our Education Services within our Children's and Family division in our school in Chambersburg PA for the 2020-2021 school year. The Merakey Children's and Family Division focuses on a continuum of care throughout the lifespan. The core, fundamental principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) are incorporated into a specialized approach across all service offerings. To learn more - Click here

* Special Education (Autism) PreK-4  - General responsibilities indlude aiding each student consistent with his or her abilities and educational needs. Develop competence in the basic learning skills, progress on the basis of achievement, and to qualify for further education and/or employment. To learn more - Click here

* Virtual Special Education Teacher Positions - K12 believes in education for everyone. We provide families an online option for a high-quality, personalized education experience. Students can thrive, find their passion, and learn in an environment that encourages discovery at their own pace. In support of this, we are committed to creating and maintaining a culture of inclusion and diversity. To learn more - Click here

* Special Education Teacher - $60,000/school year (185 days), summers off with year-round pay and year round appreciation. Special Education Teachers needed in Arizona (Phoenix and surrounding cities). Needs are in the self-contained and resource settings serving students with emotional disabilities (ED), Autism (A), Severe/Profound (S/P), and Intellectual Disabilities (ID). STARS is the largest school contract agency in AZ. STARS is owned and operated by Occupational Therapists. You will be an employee and receive full benefits - To learn more - Click here

If you are an Employer looking for excellent special education staff - Click here for more information


FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

John Wooden

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