Any time you mandate that kids must do something, ANYTHING, you’ve automatically created a special category for those kiddos who don’t or won’t – and that’s how labels are born.  Before reading was mandatory for kids, there weren’t any reading disabilities.  Before we descended into this ”short attention span culture” of ours, we didn’t have...Read More

The concept of neurodiversity emerged in the 1990’s as a way for autism advocates to affirm their identity as people with neurological differences rather than as disabled individuals.  The idea has spread as other advocates (including myself) have sought to articulate the ”diversity rather than disability” message to a broader segment of the population than...Read More

A new video series–Dyslexiaville— has come out developed by Academy Award winning director/producer Peggy Stern (Best Animated Short, 2006 – The Moon and the Son:  An Imagined Conversation), that is created by and for kids with a diagnosis of dyslexia and other learning differences.  I watched the first video and it was hilarious – lots...Read More

This is a presentation I made at the 16th Encuentro Internacional de Educacion Inicial y Preescolar in Monterrey, Mexico on October 15th, 2016, which focused this year on inclusion and diversity.  The event was sponsored by an exemplary early childhood education program in Monterrey called CENDI (Los Centros de Desarrollo Infantil del Frente Popular “Tierra...Read More

Today we have a guest post from educational therapist Diana Kennedy.  I connected with her through LinkedIn, and was inspired by her blog post about a student with Fragile X syndrome that she has worked with as first, a special education teacher, and later, as an educational therapist.   Diana’s business is Mindspark – Custom Learning...Read More