Week in Review - June 10, 2022

 


 

NASET

WEEK IN REVIEW

National Association of Special Education Teachers

June 10, 2022                 Vol 18 Issue #23


Continuing_Ed


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 Q & A Corner

Questions Often Asked by Parents about Special Education Services

Parents often have many question about special education services. More often than not, the initial questions are very similar for parents when they are learning about special education and trying to navigate the information being presented to them. This issue of NASET’s Q & A Corner will address questions often asked by parents about special education services. It will address: How to have a child evaluated (at no cost to you) to see why he or she is having difficulty in school; What the evaluation process involves; How special education can support a child’s learning, if he or she is found eligible for services; How a child’s eligibility is determined and the right to participate in making that decision; and What happens next, if a child is found eligible.

Read More


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


Scientists Uncover Key Factor in Human Brain Development

Scientists have made a breakthrough discovery about the development of the brain. This new information contributes to our understanding of how the part of the brain that makes humans more intelligent than other mammals develops, and offers insights into what causes intellectual disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders. Read More

 

In Colorado, Charter Schools are Poised to Close their Special-Education Gap

Charter schools may feel like a relatively recent phenomenon, but next year, Colorado will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first charter school in our state. When it authorized charter schools in 1993, the Colorado General Assembly allowed parents, teachers and community members “to take responsible risks and create new, innovative, more flexible ways of educating all children within the public school system.” That flexibility was intended to allow charter schools to serve as laboratories of teaching innovation that would help students increase their achievement level. Read More

 

Spectrum of Variants Contribute Differently to Autism Traits

Two new studies untangle how various classes of genetic variants underpin the vast differences in traits seen among people diagnosed with autism. The studies were published yesterday in Nature Genetics. “The fundamental question behind this is heterogeneity in autism,” says Varun Warrier, a postdoctoral researcher in Simon Baron-Cohen’s lab at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and an investigator on one of the studies. The presence and intensity of core autism traits and co-occurring conditions vary widely among autistic people. The new studies, from largely independent teams, sought to unravel how different categories of genetic variants — rare, common, inherited and spontaneous — contribute to this heterogeneity. Read More

Project SEARCH: Young Adults with Disabilities Graduating into Work

On Friday, five young adults with disabilities will graduate from Superior's Project SEARCH program. The one-year program helps the student interns transition into work. "We have high school students who are 18 and up, but then we also have adults from the community who may have been a few years out from high school but never really got that good transition into the work world," Instructor Emily Winker said. The students spend some time in the morning in class, then they break to work internships. At the end of the day, they come back together to talk through how things went. "Now we want to work on your speed," Winker told student CJ Wicklund after a day of work, "because if you can get faster and you're accurate, you're golden." Read More


 


Changing the Language to Build a Culture to Support Transformational Leadership

As defined in Simply Psychology, “Transformational leadership inspires positive changes in those led and invests in the success of every member involved in the process.” Nowhere is this more critical than in the post-pandemic educational environment. With a focus on student-centered learning and personalized professional growth, educational leaders must reevaluate their leadership systems to inspire, support, and collaborate to transform learning and innovation. Quintin Shepherd, Superintendent at Victoria ISD in Texas, and Sarah Williamson’s recently released book recognizes the ‘lone wolf’ leader as a thing of the past. Instead, leadership is an influence relationship between leaders and followers who intend fundamental changes that reflect their mutual purpose. Therefore, educational leaders need to have a growth mindset and follow another path of leadership skills that results in high achievement and academic success in schools.  Read More

 

How Many Teachers Want to Quit? Depends What State They’re In

A large majority of teachers in one Western state say they would quit if they could. But elsewhere, a much smaller percentage of educators are thinking about leaving the profession. It’s evidence that though there are widespread concerns about the teacher shortages administrators face, the labor pressures are not hitting districts or schools evenly, says Jessica Swanson, a senior fellow at the Edunomics Lab, a Georgetown University-based research center focused on K-12 finances. Here’s a look at some of the numbers. In Wyoming, only about 12% of teachers say they plan to quit at the end of this school year, but a startling 65% of the teachers said that they would quit if their finances or other conditions allowed, according to a survey of about 700 educators by the University of Wyoming College of Education and the Wyoming Education Association. Read More

 

Reviving Collaboration in Classrooms

The idea of preparing students for the "real world" feels much like aiming at a moving target. Over the last few years, the workplace, like school itself, has experienced change in unanticipated and disruptive ways. Many trends, such as a growth in the leisure and hospitality industry, came to a screeching halt while others, such as the demand for remote work, gained momentum (OECD, 2021). One thing that has remained consistent is this: the world of work demands its employees possess increasing degrees of savvy in working collaboratively. Read More

 

Why ADHD Misdiagnoses Can Be Common

Awareness of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has grown over the past decade. Yet fully understanding the condition and getting a correct diagnosis can be complicated. Misdiagnosis can occur because symptoms of ADHD can mimic other conditions. Also, ADHD is multifaceted, and symptoms often present differently from person to person. ADHD diagnoses in children increased by 42% between 2003 and 2011. Is the jump due to the healthcare community learning more about the condition, or is it overdiagnosed? The latest research and the top potential causes of misdiagnosis offer some clues. Read More

 



TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK

This Week's Trivia Question: There may be another way of treating a child’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms than using just medication — and that’s by giving them a more nutritious diet. Researchers from The Ohio State University say children with ADHD who consume more of these types of foods see a significant drop in their levels of inattention. In a study of 134 kids displaying ADHD symptoms, those eating these types of foods were three times more likely to see an improvement in their ability to pay attention and regulate their emotions — compared to children taking a placebo. What are the foods?

If you know the answer to this week's trivia questions, email it to us at contactus@naset.org by June 14, 2022. If you are correct, you will be acknowledged in next week's NASET's Week in Review


Oklahoma Bets on School Counseling Corps to Address ‘Mental Health Deserts’

Nehemiah Woods hasn’t seen his dad in almost five years. They only talk once a month when the boy, now 11, phones his father, who is in prison. But those calls take a toll. Afterwards, the fifth-grader frequently turns defiant and impulsive. He hurls insults at classmates attending his school near Oklahoma City. That began to change last fall, when the Mustang Public Schools hired Maggie Maples, a recreational therapist who uses games and art to help children with emotional problems. Maples had Nehemiah draw a picture of an iceberg to help him visualize the deep feelings beneath his outward behavior. They’ve worked on puzzles to improve concentration and made slime to practice following directions. Read More

 

Reading Conferences, Listening, and Identity

“I’m just thinking about if I was there right now,” says fourth-grader Zaima, her eyes sparkling as she indicates the paperback on her desk, Aisha Saeed’s Amal Unbound. “It’s about this girl called Amal. She’s actually from Pakistan like me, which is why I picked up this book. Because of the story of that kind of girl.” Her teacher at the Hong Kong Peak School, Sarah Cheng, nods and asks Zaima to say more. “Well, she lives somewhere in a part of Pakistan, which I do, too. She doesn’t live in Islamabad, but she lives in Punjab, which is another province next to Islamabad. She’s not exactly like me, her village is really very small, but it’s near Islamabad”—she motions excitedly with her hands to show the distance—“and they both have the same sort of markets, like with small stalls.” Read More

 

'We are Being Ignored': Pandemic Takes Disproportionate Toll on People with Disabilities

Legally blind and alone, Katrina Byrd of Jackson, Mississippi, was reeling from her partner’s death from ALS when the pandemic sent her into isolation, cutting her off from the services and help she needed. Zephyr Ostrowski of Milford, Indiana, who is autistic and a year into the long-term effects of having COVID, fears she’ll never regain what health she had before the pandemic. Zahara Khan, an MIT graduate in Pasadena, California, with multiple health issues, is distressed about the lifting of pandemic restrictions that make her even more high risk for infection. Read More

 

PROOF POINTS: How Do You Find a Gifted Child?

At one elementary school in rural Appalachia, most of the children are white and poor; 90 percent qualify for free or reduced priced lunch. Guess how many of the 800 students are gifted? The answer: three. At least, that’s the determination of a widely-used national intelligence test, on which few students living in poverty score highly. School administrators wanted to boost the number of gifted students and invited a team of researchers to come up with another way to find them. The researchers asked 16 teachers to rate their students to indicate which ones were far above average in their classrooms, if not the nation, and could benefit from advanced instruction. Read More

 

 



Lehigh University Special Education Law Symposium

Lehigh University’s virtual Special Education Law Symposium returns from June 19-24. Sessions recorded for later viewing. Twenty-eight experienced special education attorneys from across the country will present eight new “hot topics” from the very latest case law: dyslexia legal update, stay put permutations, liability for abuse of students with disabilities, navigating compensatory services and compensatory education, settlement strategies, and more with a focus upon COVID-19 implications. Legally Basic and Legally Experienced tracks. The Section 504 Coordinators Institute is an overlapping, but separable two-day (June 23-24) component intended for school district Section 504 coordinators and others interested in this increasingly important anti-discrimination statute. Dr. Perry Zirkel (PA) and Jose Martin (TX) will respectively offer (a) an in-depth comparison of Section 504 and the IDEA and (b) legal nuances for IDEA-eligible students who also present unique Section 504 factors. Kathleen Sullivan (CO) and Judith Nedell (CT) offer a full day of practical solutions to basic and thorny 504 challenges. Week-long and per day symposium options available. Balance of school and parent viewpoints. For more information, see go.lehigh.edu/spedlaw, or call (610) 758-5557. Read More


In Oregon, Parents of Children with Severe Disabilities Press Legislature for Change in Caregiving System

A group of parents with children with severe disabilities wants the state to continue to pay them as caregivers when the federal public health emergency ends. The emergency was declared at the beginning of the pandemic, allowing federal health rules to be relaxed. One such rule was a prohibition on paying parents to care for children with severe disabilities. Normally, tax dollars are used to pay professional caregivers, and when the public health emergency ends, Oregon will have to revert back to that system unless the rules are changed. The public health emergency is due to end July 15, but federal authorities said they would give states 60-days notice before ending it. That means it will be extended beyond July, though no one knows for how long. Read More

 

Understanding Fear in the Disability Community

One of the least understood aspects of life with disabilities and the texture of the disability community is fear. Non-disabled people, who lack direct experience of life with disabilities, often assume that people with disabilities are, and should be, fearful — in the sense of being timid, risk averse, or weak — as a natural consequence of their disabilities. But when actually express fears tied to ableism, abusive practices, or bad public policies, they are often dismissed as over-anxious, irrational, or even delusional. It’s one of the most common contradictions of being disabled. One day you are assumed to be fearful — the next, your actual fears are dismissed. Read More

 

Vermont is Changing How it Funds Special Education. Some School Districts Say it’s not Being Done Fairly

At the Champlain Islands School District’s next regular school board meeting in June, board members will be grappling with a thorny question: how to fill a roughly $280,000 budget hole.  That sum is approximately equivalent to three jobs. Now, the school board must decide which positions to leave vacant: Should the board decline to fill a counseling role? A music teacher? A French teacher? A maintenance supervisor? “It's the optional things that always suffer,” said Michael Inners, chair of the Champlain Islands School Board. “It's the language programs; it's art, music, student support, athletics.” Read More

 



JOB POSTINGS

* Chief of Adult Services, Aspire Living & Learning - Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief of Adult Services will serve on the eight-person Executive team that provides leadership across the entire organization. In this capacity, the CAS will play an integral role in informing, creating, and executing the strategic direction of Aspire. The CAS will directly manage five staff members, four of whom oversee program operations in an Aspire state (CT, MA, MD, NH) and one of whom oversees facilities. To learn more- Click here

* Special Education Teacher (Sign on Bonus) - The Special Education Teacher works closely with all members of the dedicated, inter-disciplinary therapeutic team supporting the students and classroom. Teachers also collaborate with parents and guardians to ensure the greatest wrap around services, school -to-home communications, and understanding of the student. Collaboration with our partnering school districts is also essential. To learn more- Click here

* Physical Education Teacher (Sign on Bonus) - The Physical Education Teacher works closely with all members of the dedicated, inter-disciplinary therapeutic team supporting the students and classroom. This teacher also collaborates with parents and guardians to ensure the greatest wrap around services, school -to-home communications, and understanding of the student. Collaboration with our partnering school districts is also essential. To learn more- Click here

* Teacher's Aide I (Sign on Bonus) - The purpose of this position is to provide support and performs duties as assigned under the direct supervision of the classroom teacher(s) and by the general direction of the Principal or Assistant Principal. To learn more- Click here

*Special Education Teacher - The Special Education Teacher will teach at one of our Network campuses. The Special Education Teacher will be responsible for planning lessons and curricula, administering assessments, collecting and analyzing data, and relentlessly supporting students to achieve academic excellence. To learn more- Click here

* Special Education Teacher - Guides the learning process toward the achievement of IEP goals, establishes clear objectives for all lessons, units, and projects, and is able to communicate effectively with students, staff, and parents as supervised by the building principal. To learn more- Click here

* [2022-2023] High School Learning Specialist - Reporting to the Academic Dean, the High School Learning Specialist will be responsible for building meaningful relationships with students, implementing a Common Core-aligned curriculum, and working with their grade team to analyze data to drive instruction. This is an exciting opportunity for an educator who is passionate about improving student outcomes by leading excellent instruction and building a positive school culture. To learn more- Click here

* Special Ed Intellectual Disabilities Teacher, ES, MS, HS - Provides and is accountable for the planning, assessment, instruction, communication, human relations, safety, and management of a classroom or assigned instructional setting. Supports FCPS mission to "inspire, enable, and empower students to meet high academic standards, lead ethical lives, and demonstrate responsible citizenship." To learn more- Click here

* Special Ed Learning Disabilities Teacher, ES, MS, HS - Provides and is accountable for the planning, assessment, instruction, communication, human relations, safety, and management of a classroom or assigned instructional setting. Supports FCPS mission to "inspire, enable, and empower students to meet high academic standards, lead ethical lives, and demonstrate responsible citizenship." To learn more- Click here

* Special Ed Multiple Disabilities Teacher, ES, MS, HS - Provides and is accountable for the planning, assessment, instruction, communication, human relations, safety, and management of a classroom or assigned instructional setting. Supports FCPS mission to "inspire, enable, and empower students to meet high academic standards, lead ethical lives, and demonstrate responsible citizenship." To learn more- Click here

* Special Education Teacher - Autism - Responsible for planning, implementing, and evaluating instructional activities for special education students. Create a flexible class environment favorable to learning and personal growth; establish effective rapport with students; motivate students to develop skills, attitudes, and knowledge in accordance with each student’s ability; and establish good relationships with parents and other staff members. To learn more- Click here

* Middle School Special Education (Directed Studies) Language Arts Teacher - The Upper School Special Education (Directed Studies) Language Arts Teacher is given the duty of instructing students on such a level as to allow them to obtain proficiency in their subject levels at a grade-appropriate level. To learn more- Click here

* Rockstar Elementary Trained Special Education Teacher - Our school works as a team. If you are looking for a job where you can fulfill your passion for working with students with learning differences, we would like to hear from you. As one of the few schools in Oregon devoted to students with learning differences and the only one focused exclusively on middle school, Bridges offers its 5th through 8th grade students small class sizes, differentiated instruction, and a safe place to learn and grow. To learn more- Click here

* Educational Specialist - Environmental Charter Schools is seeking a talented and dynamic Educational Specialist with a Moderate/Severe credential who is passionate about ensuring educational equity for students with exceptionalities. This position provides the opportunity to partner with special education and general education teachers across three campuses in order to prepare low-income students of color with exceptionalities for college success. To learn more- Click here

* Special Education Teacher - We are recruiting for three Special Education Teachers to serve Quest Academy Day Treatment Center in Longview, WA for the 2022-2023 school year. These positions are full time, 192 day contracts. To learn more- Click here

* The SEED Public Charter School of Washington DC: Multiple Positions - SEED DC is looking for its new cohort of intentional, proactive, and enthusiastic teachers in Washington, D.C. As a SEED DC teacher, you’ll teach SEED DC’s curriculum in dynamic, participation-oriented classes and cultivate a learning environment that supports and encourages students to develop and realize their academic potential. You’ll also collaborate with other instructional staff, school personnel, and SEED DC’s senior leadership team to help advance SEED’s mission of supporting scholars to and through college completion. To learn more- Click here

* Coordinator, Life and Career Studies - Residential Program for Students with Intellectual Disabilities - Lakeland University seeks a mission-oriented individual passionate about creating a more inclusive world to develop and coordinate an innovative program for students with intellectual disability slated to open on its Sheboygan campus in Fall 2023. This four-year residential program is designed to prepare students for meaningful employment, as well as independent and community living. The coordinator will play an important leadership role in designing the program as well as overseeing its implementation. To learn more- Click here

* Strategist II: ID Teacher - Join Ames Community School District, where your journey matters! ACSD promotes an educational environment that is racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse to broaden students' academic experience and to enrich our District. We are focused on creating and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organizational culture and in our community. To learn more- Click here

* Integrated Services Teacher - Join Ames Community School District, where your journey matters! ACSD promotes an educational environment that is racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse to broaden students' academic experience and to enrich our District. We are focused on creating and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organizational culture and in our community. To learn more- Click here

* Strategist I Teacher - Join Ames Community School District, where your journey matters! ACSD promotes an educational environment that is racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse to broaden students' academic experience and to enrich our District. We are focused on creating and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organizational culture and in our community. To learn more- Click here

* Behavior Interventionist - Join Ames Community School District, where your journey matters! ACSD promotes an educational environment that is racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse to broaden students' academic experience and to enrich our District. We are focused on creating and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organizational culture and in our community. To learn more- Click here

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


FOOD FOR THOUGHT

It's never too late to be what you might've been. George Eliot.

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