This blog post of mine originally appeared in Gail and Paul Dennison’s new website Hearts at Play, on Thursday, August 29, 2013. The Dennison’s are the co-founders of Brain Gym® which has helped so many kids with learning difficulties achieve success in school, home, and life. I am happy to connect with them on this...Read More
Recently I was doing a workshop on multiple intelligences for a group of teachers, and I started talking excitedly about the educator John Holt, who leaped to fame in the 1960’s with the publication of his best-selling book How Children Fail, and who later became one of the founders of the homeschooling movement in the...Read More
This blog post originally appeared in Education Week Teacher, April 9, 2013. Recently, a former music teacher told me about a 1st grade student with Asperger’s syndrome who, on their first encounter, announced in no uncertain terms: “I hate music!” Over the next two years, the student used abusive language, had meltdowns, and was physically...Read More
When I was a special education teacher, most of my students had difficulty with academic tasks involving either words or numbers (or both). However, many of these kids were gifted artists, cartoonists, Lego experts, mechanics, visualizers, and in other ways demonstrated competence in visual-spatial thinking. Now, an exciting new article by a Duke researcher makes...Read More
I just finished watching a PBS documentary (part of the POV series) entitled ”Neurotypical”that focused on the lives of a number of people at different stages of life who have been diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. I thought the show was a beautiful depiction of the lives of these individuals; their hopes, fears, loves,...Read More
Chalk up another strength for people who have been diagnosed with dyslexia. A spokesperson for the U.K.’s top-secret electronic eavesdropping program reported that some of their most talented code-breakers are dyslexic. I was just alerted to this fascinating news item from Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide at their terrific web site Dyslexic Advantage. The piece...Read More
On May 19, 2013 I attended graduation ceremonies at Berkshire Hills Music Academy (BHMA) in South Hadley, Massachusetts. BHMA provides post-secondary education to young adults with developmental disabilities who have special interests and abilities in music. This year there were eight graduates of BHMA’s two-year certificate program (they also have summer programs, and an extended learning community program). Students take...Read More
A New York Times article that appeared April 12, 2013 reported that a high school teacher in Albany, New York recently gave an assignment to students asking them, presumably as a lesson on the Holocaust, to write a persuasive essay arguing from the Nazi point of view that Jews were the source of their problems. The assignment...Read More
It’s wonderful to see all the protests around the country against standardized testing. At Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, teachers are refusing to administer the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP). In Texas, hundreds of school districts have passed a resolution saying standardized tests are ”strangling” public schools. The National Resolution on High Stakes Testing,...Read More
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