Week in Review - May 7, 2021

 


NASET

WEEK IN REVIEW

National Association of Special Education Teachers

May 7, 2021                 Vol 17 Issue #18


 


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

IEP Components Series

Transition Planning: Education/Training Connections

As part of a student’s transition planning for life after high school, the student and the other members of his or her IEP team will probably consider the possibility of more education or training. In keeping with the options specifically mentioned in IDEA, the discussion of education/training after high school may focus on: (1) postsecondary education at a college, university, or community college; (2 ) vocational education to learn a trade or specific job skill; or (3) continuing and adult education. This edition of NASET’s IEP Component series comes from the Center for Parent Information and Resources and will connect you with organizations and articles that can help tackle the education/training question during transition planning.

 Read More


 

 

Poor Iodine Levels in Women Pose Risks to Fetal Intellectual Development in Pregnancy

An increasing number of young women are at increased risk of having children born with impaired neurological conditions, due to poor iodine intake. Dietary changes, including a growing trend towards the avoidance of bread and iodized salt, as well as a reduced intake of animal products containing iodine can contribute to low iodine levels. A small pilot study undertaken by the University of South Australia (UniSA) comparing iodine levels between 31 vegan/plant-based participants and 26 omnivores has flagged the potential health risk. Urine samples showed iodine readings of 44 ug/L in the plant-based group, compared to the meat eaters' 64 ug/L level. Neither group came close to the World Health Organization's recommended 100 grams per liter. Read More

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210422093858.htm

‘Critical Shortage' of Special Education Teachers as Kids Head Back to School

Washington, D.C.-area public schools are suffering a “critical shortage” of special education teachers as students return from the long year of virtual learning, according to a review by the News4 I-Team. A lack of available special education instructors has dogged school systems across the country for years but now risks being exacerbated by resignations, retirements and workload increases caused by the pandemic. A Virginia Department of Education report reviewed by the I-Team lists special education instructors at the top of its list of teacher shortages statewide. A 2018 Maryland State Department of Education report also cites a “critical shortage” of special education teachers. And just last year, the U.S. Department of Education described the shortage of special education teachers as “among the most pressing and chronic problems facing the field.” Read More

https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/critical-shortage-of-special-education-teachers-as-kids-head-back-to-school/2650388/

School District Poised to Ban Suspensions for its Youngest Learners

Two-and-a-half years after its skyrocketing use of elementary school suspensions prompted widespread outrage, Jefferson County Public Schools is on track to permanently ban the punishment for its youngest learners. A district committee responsible for reviewing discipline policies moved forward Thursday with a recommendation for the Jefferson County Board of Education to make permanent its current moratorium on suspensions for students in pre-kindergarten through the third grade. The committee of students, parents, educators and central office staff is expected to present its final recommendation to the school board for a vote on May 25. Past discussions among board members signal there is a clear majority in favor of the change. Read More

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/education/2021/04/23/jcps-early-elementary-suspensions-ban-decision/7299192002/

Female Principals Are Paid Less Than Men. That’s a Big Concern

Female principals make about $1,000 less than their male colleagues annually, according to new research on principal compensation—and that gap can even persist when those women are leading similar schools, have similar evaluations, and work about the same number of hours as their male peers. But what’s driving that pay disparity in school leadership isn’t quite as clear. While factors that undergird salary differences in the private sector—discrimination and personal choices, for example—may explain some of the differences, they don’t explain all of them, said Jason Grissom, a professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University. Read More

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/female-principals-are-paid-less-than-men-thats-a-big-concern/2021/04

 

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

 

Best Buddies Helps Those with Disabilities Get Vaccinated

The Best Buddies organization is helping to make sure everyone who wants a vaccine is able to get one. For those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the crowds and commotion can make getting the vaccine a challenging ordeal. Best Buddies say they want to make it as pain free as possible, so they are working to create an environment that best suits the needs of their members. “They have been very helpful to help kids get vaccinated who have anxiety among all these people,” says Maria Knight, who took her son James to get vaccinated. “Over the last year, he’s been cooped up at home, so this gives him some more sense of normalcy,” she says. Read More

https://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/04/25/best-buddies-disabilities-vaccine/

Taking a Closer Look at Graduation Rates of Those with Disabilities

We’re getting close to the end of another less-than-normal school year. My 18-year-old grandson and many like him are looking forward to graduation although they are not sure what it will look like this year. I stumbled across an interesting article recently that discusses the graduation rate of students with disabilities. In an article published in “Disability Scoop” dated April 19th, writer Shaun Heasley reviews the increasing overall rates nationally of students with disabilities who are graduating from high school. Nationally, the rate rose to 68.2% for the 2019-2020 school year, which was up from 67.1% the year before. Read More

https://www.heraldextra.com/news/community/their-voice-taking-a-closer-look-at-graduation-rates-of-those-with-disabilities/article_bf21d9be-1f84-5459-bc07-463bc1d70463.html

Chicago Bakery Helps Young Adults with Autism

Unique Sweets, a bakery based on Chicago's Northwest Side, helps young adults with Autism develop work and social skills by baking, managing the kitchen and selling their baked goods. Founder Liza Curiel started Unique Sweets from her kitchen in 2018 to help her son Sebastian, who has Autism, bridge the gap between school and the working world. The bakery is a social enterprise organization run completely by volunteers. Each baker and employee gets a stipend from the baked goods they sell. Curiel said Unique Sweets fills the need of a community for adults with Autism. "I felt like there was a lack of resources and programs available to him," Curiel said. "Unique Sweets was an opportunity for him and his friends to come together and work through life skills and employable skills." Read More

https://www.nbcchicago.com/local-2/local-bakery-helps-young-adults-with-autism/2494882/

May 2021

Student’s Snapchat Profanity Leads to High Court Speech Case

Fourteen-year-old Brandi Levy was having that kind of day where she just wanted to scream. So she did, in a profanity-laced posting on Snapchat that has, improbably, ended up before the Supreme Court in the most significant case on student speech in more than 50 years. At issue is whether public schools can discipline students over something they say off-campus. The topic is especially meaningful in a time of remote learning because of the coronavirus pandemic and a rising awareness of the pernicious effects of online bullying. The case has its roots in the Vietnam-era case of a high school in Des Moines, Iowa, that suspended students who wore armbands to protest the war. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the students, declaring students don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Read More

https://apnews.com/article/politics-health-government-and-politics-courts-sports-061e16dc0f4d2f24400820671749078e

Lego Launches Braille Bricks for Children with Visual Impairments and Children Who are Blind

One of the most popular toy brands has a new product designed for blind and visually impaired children. Lego and the Lego Foundation have launched a line of toy blocks called Braille Bricks with studs on top that reflect individual letters and numbers in the braille alphabet. The bricks are available in seven countries including the U.S. and the nonprofit American Printing House for the Blind is shipping the bricks to school districts across the nation for free, according to a news release. "Reading braille means literacy that connects students to lifelong learning and opportunity, " said Craig Meador, president of the nonprofit, in a statement, adding the bricks are an "incredible tool to help introduce students to braille." Read More

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/08/21/new-toy-lego-braille-bricks-released-legos/3411386001/

How to Turn Math Word Problems into Engaging Comics

When assigned math word problems, students often groan and complain. They may try to start solving without making sense of the problem first, or rely on clue words rather than mathematical reasoning. The word problems don’t draw them to engage with the math. What’s a teacher to do? A common tip to boost engagement is to connect course content to students’ interests. Since I knew that comics, graphic novels, manga, and anime are among my students' favorite media, I decided to try to capitalize on that enthusiasm by transforming lifeless word problems into comics with built-in reading supports. Read More

https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-turn-math-word-problems-engaging-comics

 

 

 

 

A Simple Way to Encourage Students to Read More Broadly

Librarians and classroom teachers use various systems of classification to organize collections, from the Dewey Decimal System to interest or reading levels. But what if we were to organize books in a way that deemphasized reading levels and encouraged students to read more broadly?

When educators use the term vertical alignment, we are often referring to a progression of skills or content that increases in complexity. With respect to reading, rather than using achievement or assessment benchmarking levels, which is often discouraged in the librarian world, school librarians use designations that most closely align to education groupings and the comfort or reading-experience level of the reader. Labels like PB (picture book), CB (chapter book), MG (middle grade), YA (young adult), or AD (adult) are often placed on spine labels and in library catalogs to make it easier to identify titles that readers will enjoy, but the readers themselves rarely notice them. Read More

https://www.edutopia.org/article/simple-way-encourage-students-read-more-broadly

 

Pandemic Recovery Will Be Complex. We’ll Need the Best School Leaders

It’s no exaggeration to say that the period since March 2020 has been the most challenging year in memory for American education. Last spring was particularly tough. Shuttering tens of thousands of schools overnight; shifting quickly to remote learning; finding ways to feed and otherwise serve students from afar—any one of those would have been difficult on its own. Taken together, they were nearly impossible to manage. The challenges didn’t stop when the current school year commenced. School and district leaders had to respond to ever-changing public-health guidance; create feasible options for returning to school for families that wanted that option, while generating robust online learning opportunities for others who didn’t; and help teachers learn how to survive and ideally thrive in the new worlds of remote and hybrid teaching and learning. Read More

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-pandemic-recovery-will-be-complex-well-need-the-best-school-leaders/2021/04

 

Gifted Programs Provide Little to No Academic Boost, New Study Says

Gifted education is often a flash point in school desegregation debates; in large cities, these programs often operate as an essentially separate school system, dominated by white and Asian children. Though gifted programs touch only 3.3 million school children, about 7 percent of the U.S. student population, it’s disturbing that Black and Hispanic children are rarely chosen for them. Some progressives have proposed eliminating gifted programs altogether. Others are seeking ways to increase the number of Black and Hispanic students. Only 4 percent of Black children and 5 percent of Hispanic children are in gifted programs compared with 8 percent of white and 13 percent of Asian children, according to the most recent federal figures. Read More.

https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-gifted-programs-provide-little-to-no-academic-boost-new-study-says/

 


 


TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK

THE TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK WILL RETURN ON MAY 14, 2021



UCLA Introduces American Sign Language/Deaf Culture Course to Dental Students

According to the National Association of the Deaf, there are nearly 50 million Deaf/Hard of Hearing people in the U.S. The Deaf/Hard of Hearing community is a patient population that can face communication barriers while going to a dentist, as the average dental professional may have difficulty communicating with them. To improve this communication process, in April the UCLA School of Dentistry launched a five-week long elective course for dental students on Deaf culture, Deaf history, and American Sign Language so that the future dentists will have a basic understanding and be prepared in their interactions with Deaf and Hard of Hearing patients.  Read More

https://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2021-archive/april/ucla-introduces-american-sign-language

Degree Designs Inclusive Deodorant for People with Physical Disabilities

One in four Americans has a disability, but many products don't take that into account. Degree Deodorant has created Degree Inclusive, which it calls the world's first deodorant for people with visual impairment and upper limb motor disabilities. The bottle shape features a hooked design for one-handed use, as well as magnetic closures, enhanced grip placement, a braille label and a larger roll-on applicator. Christina Mallon, a disabled inclusive designer, worked with the company on the new product. She said it was inspired by her own desire to take care of grooming needs independently and her belief that the 22 million Americans with permanent disabilities affecting their arms and/or vision feel the same.  Read More

https://www.cnet.com/news/degree-designs-inclusive-deodorant-for-people-with-physical-disabilities/

 



JOB POSTINGS

* Learning Specialist - Reporting to the Regional Director of Online Programs, the Learning Specialist is responsible for providing personalized academic support services to online Dual Enrollment students and other individuals in the Bay Area, CA who need these supports and resources. To learn more - Click here

* Education Specialist (Special Education Teacher) - We are looking for talented and committed educators to serve as Special Education Teachers & Case Managers, working primarily with students with Individualized Education Plans in inclusive settings, resource programs, & highly specialized Special Education programs. We are a thriving nonprofit network of 16 free, public charter schools open to all students. To learn more - Click here

* [2021-2022] Elementary Reading Interventionist - This position will serve as a school resource for staff and parents with regards to special education services and regulations. The Intervention Specialist will work closely with the Student Support Team (SST) to assist in observing, documenting, and referring students with suspected special education impairments. The candidate should be able to monitor students; continuous progress through data collection and observation and provide information/support and training to teachers and parents around their child's needs. To learn more - Click here

* [2021-2022] ENL Teacher - Reporting to the Academic Dean, the ENL Teacher will be responsible for designing and leading ELL instruction, and collaborating with school staff to provide English language support. This is an exciting opportunity for a dynamic educator who is passionate about improving student outcomes for all students, and eager to apply their vision for rigorous, whole-child education in a growing, collaborative school community. To learn more - Click here

* Special Education Teacher (All Specializations) - We are looking for highly motivated and skilled Special Education Teachers to join our team at District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). We are primarily hiring for several Inclusion/Resource classrooms as well as Communication and Education Supports (Autism) classrooms. We seek individuals who are passionate about transforming the DC school system and making a signi?cant di?erence in the lives of our students with special educational needs. To learn more - Click here

* [2021-2022] ELA Special Education Teacher - Reporting to the Academic Dean, the ELA Special Education Teacher will be responsible for providing tailored support to students with special education needs, through integrated co-teaching, in small group settings, or a combination of both. This is an exciting opportunity for a seasoned educator who is passionate about ensuring all students succeed and thrive in school. To learn more - Click here

* SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHER - (Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary) - (Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary) To create a safe atmosphere conducive for learning and implements instruction in ways that allows all students to learn. Plans and provides for appropriate learning experiences for students. To learn more - Click here

* Lower Elementary SPED Teacher - Reporting to the Academic Dean, the Lower Elementary SPED Teacher will be responsible for providing tailored support to students with special education needs, primarily through integrated co-teaching. This is an exciting opportunity for a seasoned educator who is passionate about ensuring all students succeed and thrive in school. To learn more - Click here

* Elementary ICT Teacher - Reporting to the Academic Dean, the Elementary ICT Teacher will be responsible for providing tailored support to students with special education needs, primarily through integrated co-teaching. This is an exciting opportunity for a seasoned educator who is passionate about ensuring all students succeed and thrive in school. To learn more - Click here

* [2021-2022] Math Special Education Teacher - Will be responsible for providing tailored support to students with special education needs, through integrated co-teaching, in small group settings, or a combination of both. This is an exciting opportunity for a seasoned educator who is passionate about ensuring all students succeed and thrive in school. To learn more - Click here

* [2021-22] Middle School Special Education Teacher - Reporting to the Academic Dean, the Middle School Special Education Teacher will be responsible for providing tailored support to students with special education needs, through integrated co-teaching, in small group settings, or a combination of both. This is an exciting opportunity for a seasoned educator who is passionate about ensuring all students succeed and thrive in school. To learn more - Click here

* [2021-2022] Special Education Teacher (Learning Specialist) - From our schools to our playing fields, DREAM is committed to building a team where each individual can bring their full identity and experience to work because representation matters—it enriches our team culture, enhances our ability to innovate, and strengthens our impact in and out of the classroom. DREAM engages staff that represent and appreciate the diversity of our majority Black and Hispanic student body, while working to ensure that our practices are equitable, welcoming, and productive. To learn more - Click here

* Director, Special Services - Serves under the immediate direction of the Senior Executive Director, Student Services and must possess specialized in-depth knowledge and experience in leadership in the program and fiscal administration of special education programs with primary responsibilities that encompass compliance and program quality assurance, fiscal management, personnel matters, and more. To learn more - Click here

* Exceptional Children's Teachers - Winston Salem/Forsyth County Schools are looking for a variety of experienced and certified EC Teachers at the elementary, middle and high school levels. We offer a variety of benefits including: health, dental, and life insurance. In addition, employees are enrolled in the state retirement plan, accrue paid time off, etc. To learn more - Click here

* New Visions Charter Special Education Teacher - New Visions for Public Schools is the leading non-profit organization dedicated to the improvement of public education in New York City. Today, we support over 1,050 public schools and thousands of teachers, serving 700,000 students, in their most critical work: deciding what and how to teach, helping keep students on track to graduation, and preparing students for success beyond high school. New Visions directly manages a network of 10 charter high schools across the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. To learn more - Click here

* High School Learning Specialist 20-21 and 21-22 - Opportunity Charter School (OCS) teachers are trained in cutting-edge, research-based methodology of evaluating students’ academic strengths and challenges. To maximize each child’s personal development, an individualized education plan is created that is tailored to his or her unique needs. Students receive differentiated instruction in every curricular area with the goal of expanding their higher cognitive thinking. To learn more - Click here

* Special Needs Tutors - is seeking dynamic, state credentialed special needs teachers to tutor on our virtual platform teaching learners all over the world. This is a perfect second job to earn extra money from the safety of your own home. There is no minimum hourly requirement; all you need is a computer, reliable internet, a quiet space and willingness to teach. 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. 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

Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.

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Rosa Parks

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