Knowing What to Say

This spring, I'm taking a course in Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) through the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). At our class last week, the teacher prompted us to write an answer to the following question:

What does it mean to know a word?

I spent a long time thinking about my answer. I believe strongly in Presuming Competence and I wanted to make sure that was reflected in my answer, that my answer did not reflect any unintentional ableist biases around being able to speak (in complete sentences) or perform academic tasks. What I came up with at the time was:

To be able to recognize a word when you hear/see it. To be able to take action based on the word.

That definition got me thinking about the over-reliance on vocabulary identification tasks in special education. My teacher mentor during my student teaching was actually very explicit about it. We were teaching a science unit about the life cycle and she told me, "The state thinks I'm teaching [science] content; really I'm teaching vocabulary." When I think about my own teaching, most of my vocabulary-based instruction is at the identification level. I spend time on identifying the symbol (picture or text) that corresponds to a given word, and on using words in context. I have lots of conversations with my SLP about how my students are so inconsistent in their identification, likely due to lack of motivation for the task, and how we will really be sure they know the vocabulary when they start using them in meaningful context. As emerging communicators using robust AAC devices, they are starting to do just that. This course I am taking is showing me in dramatic relief that I am missing a key middle step to supporting my students success in language and vocabulary aquisition. When I'm teaching symbol ID, I'm presuming knowledge of meaning. Yet, experience has shown me that my students will find the right symbol to express what they mean even if I haven't taught it explicitly. I need to presume competence: that they know what they want to say but I need to spend more time focusing on the middle stage of vocabulary learning -- meaning -- to make sure they know what words to use to say it.

Tiering vocabulary is a common practice in vocabulary instruction (though one I was unfamiliar with prior to taking this course.) Level one vocabulary are the common words that most people know. They're the ones that you can easily take a picture of. In AAC, these are mostly our basic fringe vocabulary. They're the nouns that many of our AAC learners never get past. In a robust AAC system, all these words should already be there. Tier 2 are the tricky words, the multi-meaning words, the pronouns, the phrases and idioms, the connecting words that are so hard to explain but absolutely essential to meaning. It's where most of our AAC core words are. They are the words that are hardest for English Language Learners (ELLs) to learn, and they're also the words we should be targeting with our AAC learners. They make up the bulk of what we need for comprehension. Then there are the Tier 3 words. These are the domain specific words that are needed for a specific text, unit, or subject. Some of these are fringe words, like our Tier 1 words. They're domain specific, so they can be explicitly taught in context, though they are more complex than Tier 1 words. We can go crazy trying to program this vocabulary into AAC devices for students to participate in inclusion or classroom activities using AAC. Kate Ahern has written a wonderful article about why we shouldn't and what to do instead.

So, I propose a four-staged model of thinking about vocabulary knowledge for AAC learners: awareness, identification, meaning, and usage. Our students can show knowledge of vocabulary at any step. A student might show awareness of a word by using other words to make a comment about it, by identifying related words, or by making meaning with other words. This allows us to continue to target our instruction at core words. It avoids what my professor called the "tourist vocabulary" and Kate calls "non-recyclables" - words we only visit once for a unit or maybe once a year and never use again, but still allows us to provide meaningful access to the content and that Tier 3 vocabulary. (What if that topic turns out to be an interest of the student that they want to pursue? Then it becomes a fringe word and into the device it should go! But we won't know that unless we teach it and give them a way to talk about it.) 

We can't just teach core words any more than we can just teach at the symbol identification level. We have to provide access to vocabulary, symbols and meaning, at all levels for students to have rich comprehension of material. That doesn't mean every word has to be in the student's device. That's not possible. We need to teach students the skills to talk about anything, including ideas that no one has ever had before, or we are limiting their communication. Focusing on teaching meaning of Tier 2 vocabulary is a means to that end.

Teaching in the Balance

Where I work, there is a lot of focus on being a Trauma Sensitive School. It's a very sensible program and perspective. We have many students in our program who have significant trauma in their past in addition to their intellectual and mental health disabilities. For the students I work with, who come from stable loving homes, their medical history and long experience with educational neglect and communication poverty (many were teens before being given access to any form of AAC) is another form of trauma requiring the same level of understanding and intervention. When talking about students with complex medical needs, the conversation gets framed in terms of needing to do Maslow before you can do Bloom. It's absolutely true. The problem I see is too many teachers take it too far to the extreme and use it to justify educational neglect. I have heard too many teachers of students with complex learning needs proudly tell me "my students are safe and happy, so I know I'm a good teacher." Or "My student has lived far longer than predicted, so we know we are doing right by him. We are keeping him safe and happy." Some teachers, working with students with trauma and complex behavior needs are even more upfront about it: "We didn't get any teaching done today; but that's okay because the kids were safe and happy and that's what is important."

I have frequent cause to wonder if these teachers are familiar with the difference in definition between a babysitter and a teacher, and which one they feel best applies to them? 

I believe a balance can be found. There is a time and a place for focusing on social-emotional learning; it is an extremely important part of the curriculum for all students, but especially for this population. But those can be hours and days in the schedule or embedded parts of the academic routine - not the schedule and totality of instruction itself.

I think of my student who was so anxious about his mother's illness he could barely stay in the classroom. So we integrated his math and reading goals into the walking and picture taking in the hallway that calmed him and helped him self-regulate. Those math and reading goals actually progressed ahead of expectations, allowing him more time to focus on in classroom goals once his anxiety level decreased. 

I think of another student who simply did not come into the school building for hours. It took the better part of the year and the expertise of multiple teachers, administrators, and outside consultants before we hit upon the magic of a vocational task that provided the right mix of motivation and security and brought him into the building and into class. In the meantime, he missed a significant amount of instructional time in the classroom. But we provided instructional access during that time wherever he was, some of which he was able to access. The amazing progress he made once he began participating in class, advancing multiple grade levels in both reading and math within a year, was proof that our efforts were worth it.

It can be a scary teaching medically involved students, especially those who have experienced educational neglect. (Those who have been kept "safe and happy" with no singnificant instructional demand placed on them - often for years.) When we initially engage their brains in learning, we often also engage their brains in seizures. Brains need to learn to self-regulate as much as our bodies do. That's why they are in school. That is our job as teachers. We cannot stop teaching just because we are afraid of the accompanying increase in seizure activity. We can keep them safe from individual seizures while giving their brains a chance to learn to self-regulate so they can learn and grow. 

Knowing what we know about the effects of trauma on behavior, on learning, and on everyday life, we cannot in good conscience be the perpetrators of further educational neglect. Yet that is what we do when we allow our classrooms to be dumping grounds and babysitting services where the achievement criterion is set at "safe and happy." We need safe and happy, but our students deserve more.

One Word: Connection

Like many teachers, I am convinced that the year starts in September, not January, so this is a period of mid-year reflection for me. Also, most of what I have seen posted and tweeted about #OneWord2016 has been uncomfortably Christian for me. Still, thinking about the idea of "One Word" has been a useful reflection tool as I out together my next units: laying out the lessons for the next several weeks or months. Trying on different words it became very clear to me that there is one word that describes exactly what I want for my students and their learning; exactly what I am trying to instill in them to help them grow:

Connection

I want them to learn to use language to connect with their families and friends, both locally and via social media. I want them to understand that they can use language both to get their needs met and to connect socially. 

I want them to make connections between their real life experience and our classroom experience both to enrich their personal experience in ways they may not otherwise have access to but also help them better understand and retain the classroom material they are learning.

I want them to make connections between where they are and where they want to be, to build goal setting and problem-solving skills, the skills they will need to tackle any problem in their lives in the future.

I want them to make connections between objects and possible actions that object could do or that could be done to it. That is the basis of creativity, of wonder, on which all inquiry and scientific discovery is based.

I want them to become independent learners and this is where it starts: with making connections.

Where are we headed?

The data is clear: my students are making amazing progress this year. They are way ahead of their projected targets on their IEPs. I'm more worried about finding challenging enough objectives for their state portfolios then whether they will meet mastery criteria by the time those portfolios have to be submitted. By all standard and accepted measures, what I'm doing is clearly working.

And yet, all year there's been this little voice in the back of my head that's been asking, "are we headed in the right direction?" I tried a lot of new things this year, with greater and lesser successes. Some of them I definitely want to try again, some of them not so much. That's the story of trying anything new in education. What's nagging at the back of my mind is, "which of them are getting my students the skills they really need?"

The one thing that's been elusive to me all year has been any kind of meaningful project-based learning or maker education. It's taken me a while to figure out why. There's an assumption in education about the in the creativity of children about their intrinsic tendency to explore and create. There's an awful lot of Ableism in that assumption. That physically expressed or linguistically expressed creativity is a developmental milestone that many of my students have never reached; it doesn't mean they don't have the potential, it means they don't have the skills to present it typically.

I hear a lot from other teachers about the problem of "cookie-cutter projects:" getting back 20 copies of the same thing. I hear from other teachers about the problem of students seeing rubrics as a checklist of requirements. If I give out a set of materials or a rubric I won't get back 20 copies of the same thing, but that's because I won't get back any completed work at all. The skill my students don't have, the skill I'm somehow failing to teach, is goal directed behavior. It's not a language problem, though that's related: I know how to adapt things with pictures, and they know how to follow a simple picture schedule. It's the very concept of going from start to finish with an end product in mind. It's such an essential skill for life and we seem to have missed it in our instruction.

I have spent the last year focusing on student choice and following student interests to guide instruction. It has served us well, but looking back some of our most profound classroom moments have come when students made connections between where they started and a goal: students getting excited about spelling target words, students using unprecedented amounts of language to comment when our social studies text contradicted her previous worldview.

And so I find myself with new questions: how can I model more goal directed behavior in our daily instruction without losing the choice and student interest based instruction that has clearly been such a successful paradigm for student instruction? For some students language may be enough, but many of my students will likely need visual or tangible models. What does this look like for activities that do not create product? What effect will it have on formative assessment tools used in the lesson? 

How can I implement more exploration in an accessible and meaningful way for students to learn to express creativity, which will naturally lead to more goal directed behavior?

I'm left with more questions than I started with, but I'm much more confident that I'm headed in the right direction now!

This is the first post in what will hopefully become a series of posts on implementing project-based learning in the severe special needs classroom. However, since this one took me the better part of a year to write, I wouldn't count on there ever being more than one post in the series....

You Can't Teach Self-Determination Out of a Box

We are slowly coming to the conclusion that there is actually very little that you can teach from a standardized pre-made curriculum. If you want students to retain and integrate the knowledge, that is, those higher order thinking skills so prized by the Common Core and its adherents. Progressive educators who are embracing student directed learning and marveling at the changes it has wrought in their classrooms are discovering truths that were taught to me as a pre-service teacher in severe special education: for example using mystery and student interests to engage language. We were talking about requesting and labeling language, they are talking about higher order thinking and reflecting, but the concepts are the same. 

In many ways, special education teachers are lucky because we have no prescribed curriculum. In general, we have no pre-made curriculum or textbook that we are forced to conform to, because our students, by nature, don't conform. Yet, many special education teachers spend hours of the time they do not have trying to find a curriculum that will work for their students. Trying to fit stubbornly square pegs into persistently round holes. Yet teachers keep trying. Searching for curriculums to teach difficult but incredibly important concepts like self-determination and self-advocacy. But you can't teach those skills from a boxed curriculum, no matter how well it is adapted for the population you work with. You can't do it because of the first word in the very concepts: self. Standards can be developed (and I believe there is much work still to be done in that area) but the curriculum must, by its very nature, be personalized and individualized and you can't box that. It won't apply.

Maybe I am so skeptical of boxed curriculums because I have never seen one that was usable 'off the shelf." Even the special education adapted curriculums require so much supplementation, adaptation and modification, that they served more as a guide or idea generation starting point than something I could just use. Don't get me wrong, having that guide was invaluable to me as a new teacher. I still use other people's posted lessons and units as guides or idea jumping off points in a similar fashion, though more and more often now those come from general education. General education is where the teachers are taking the risks to teach upper grade level concepts in a hands-on and student centered way. I can create, adapt, and/or modify as needed from there. 

So, no, I'm not looking for the perfect (or even "a") curriculum to teach self-advocacy and self-determination to my students. I'll teach it the same way I teach everything else: by following their lead and using their choices and interests to guide our explorations. What I would love is for all of us, as a community of teachers, people with disabilities, parents, and policy-makers, to come together and recognize the importance of this sadly neglected area of the curriculum, and to develop state and national standards that speak to what learning and mastering it really mean. I would be happy to spend the time I don't have on that task force. 

EdCamp Relationship Status: It's Complicated

Just about a year ago, before I attended my first EdCamp, I wrote this post expressing my fears that, despite all the championing it gets on Twitter, my preferred PD source, it would simply not be the right PD environment for me.

This is not the post where I say "Then I went to one and it was so awesome, it totally changed my perspective!" (You can find that post all over the web - EdCamps are, for many people, an amazing life/PD changing experience.)

I've been to several now. I'm even considering going back to one or two of them next year. But next year, I'll have a better understanding of how EdCamps do and do not work for me, and hopefully I'll be able to get more out of them next time. I'm not anti-EdCamp, they're just hard for me in a way that I'm not sure is worth it.

The challenges:

• Folks in your PLN update their avatars to make themselves easier to spot/connect with. I'm face-blind and a verbal learner. I never look at people's avatars, and even if I did, they wouldn't help me.
• Even if I can find folks to connect with, I, quite plainly, suck at small talk. I have no idea how to get in or out of a conversation (and forget knowing what to say when I'm in it.)
• Which leads to my next point: the unstructured conversation of an EdCamp. I have no idea when to talk, if I'm talking too long, if what I'm saying is appropriate to the topic (or if my minority perspective is actually unhelpful and I should just shut up and listen.)
• I communicate best when I'm talking about my special interests: inclusion for students with severe special needs, and disability rights advocacy. Even at EdCamps, I don't find anyone who wants to talk about those topics, and when I try to post a session that relates my interest to general education or moderate needs teachers, I completely fail. People will show up and then walk out almost immediately. Among the people who stay, there is never any discussion, and I have no idea how to facilitate making it happen.

Why I get more out of Twitter:

• I can recognize people by name/twitter handle. And if I don't recognize the name, I can use my research skills on my own Twitter account to find out if they're someone I've interacted with before.
• No small talk! (or very structured small talk as part of the "introduce yourself" section of a twitter chat - I know how to do that!)
• There are no conversational turns on twitter, so there's no risk of talking out of turn. If someone isn't interested in your tweet or post, they'll skip it. I can feel safe contributing my perspective without accidentally trampling on people who have ideas more relevant to everyone else.
• Side conversations are probably one of the best parts of twitter chats. I can engage with people who are interested in thinking about my ideas and interests and how they relate to the topic at hand while we both keep up with the main chat as well.

And that doesn't even begin to take into account the social energy expended. Passing as NT is hard work, especially when my social interaction skills are being taxed. I run out of spoons long before the day ends, especially if I try to engage in connecting (socially or professionally) with the other people there. I leave feeling exhausted rather than invigorated. (Though usually with several new ideas running through my head "for when I have the energy.")

Interacting via text is easier than talking. I can't explain why, but it is. And the social connecting part of twitter is much more formulaic (favoriting tweets, following people) - I know how to apply those rules. With only 140 characters, much of the social conventions of interpersonal interaction are skipped. That gives me an "in" to connecting with people, joining conversations and making connections, that I just don't have in the face-to-face world of body language and non-verbal cues. I leave most twitter chats buzzing with ideas: and go and check them out right away, because I actually still have the energy to do something other than sleep.

I still feel a pang of jealousy every time I see posts on my timeline from people I follow who are connecting with others in their (our) PLN at EdCamps. I try to remind myself that even if I was there, I wouldn't be making those connections either. It's a social interaction thing that I Just. Don't. Get. The same thing happens when I see posts from far-away conferences that I would love to attend. My reality is that I can't travel more than a day trip unless it's to or with family or friends who can provide me with the support I need to manage the travel. I'd love to go to one of those out-of-state conferences; my administration will even approve it if I ask. But it's just Not. Going. To. Happen.

The beauty of connecting globally, for me, is the combination of synchronous and asynchronous communication. It's the ability to connect with and learn from amazing people without the baggage of face-to-face social interaction. At EdCamps, the interesting things always seem to be happening next door. 

So I'm going to try again, to see if I can make this PD method work for me. Because there is something to be said about getting your PD from multiple sources - and when all your sources are online or books.... But I'm going to try and do it with the following insights/suggestions in mind:

• use the twitter back channel to connect and comment - done right that can be a springboard for face-to-face interaction with others who are also back-channelling.
• try to use the google docs notes better as a resource during and after the EdCamp
• session-hop more. sessions I don't participate in are emotionally draining, and those are spoons I don't have to spare. Try to find sessions where I'm at least excited to listen. Which brings me to my last point:
• don't post a session unless there is absolutely nothing that interests me on the board in that time slot. expending social energy facilitating a discussion is not worth the limited reward.

I don't know if that will be sufficient accommodation to make EdCamps work for me. I really do want to like the model. I'm going to try. Ask me again in a year, and maybe I'll have a better idea of how to handle being a Connected Autistic Educator. For now, the short answer is: it's complicated.

What are you teaching? What are they learning?

Back when I ran a very behavior based classroom, the fundamental question I asked when designing any program or intervention was "What am I teaching my students with this program?" because I learned early on that you needed to look well below the surface to understand the answer to that question. (That's the point of an FBA.)  The example I always gave was the student who acts out out (yells, spits, runs, whatever) to get attention from a staff member. If you say "stop" the student will stop. But that is not an effective intervention, because what the student has learned from it is, "if I act out, I can get your attention - you will tell me to stop." The behavior will maintain or increase long term. (Effective intervention for behavior like that is a longer digression and not the point of this post.)

I've moved away from the behavior intervention/positive behavior supports model of classroom management, but I find I'm still asking the same question. For example, I have a student who tends to express both joy and frustration by yelling. I made a comment to one of her therapists that she does know how to keep her voice down when traveling in the hallways if you ask her to. Her response was to ask me if we should set up a reward program for walking quietly in the hall.

After my knee-jerk "no reward programs" reaction, I stopped to think about what such a program would teach her, and whether that would be in line with my goals for her.
It would teach her:
1. It is not okay to express joy or frustration in the hallway. (or whatever else she is expressing with her yelling - she is a non-speaking student.)
2. Bending to authority's will is more important than expressing yourself.

For a student already at high risk for abuse (by virtue of being both non-speaking and having physical disabilities) these are most emphatically not lessons I want to teach her!

At the same time, it would be beneficial for my student to learn that the expected behavior in the hallway is quiet and to express herself in a more restrained way when it is appropriate to do so. So when we travel the halls, we have conversations about her voice level. (Yes, conversations with non-speaking students are totally possible. Yes, I do most of the actual talking.) Most of the time she does keep it down, and when she doesn't she usually has a good reason. What's she learning?
1. I should try to be quiet in the hallway.
2. It's okay to express how I'm feeling.

Those sound like the lessons I'm trying to teach! (And yes, I worry about prompt dependency and that she won't learn to be quiet in the halls without having a conversation about it, but if the trade off is her expressing herself too loudly without a prompt vs learning that it's not okay to express yourself at all, then that's a prompt I can live with.)