The October, 2012 issue of Educational Leadership, the flagship journal of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), in an issue dedicated to “Students Who Challenge Us,” features my article “First, Discover Their Strengths,” which highlights many of the ideas discussed in my forthcoming book Neurodiversity in the Classroom:  Strength-Based Strategies to Help Students with Special Needs...Read More

I was a special education teacher for several years, and during my time teaching, I became aware that not enough emphasis was being placed on the strengths of children who had been sent to my special classes.  This made me resolve to do some research, and I had the opportunity to do this when I did...Read More

 Over the past sixty years, we’ve witnessed a phenomenal growth in the number of new psychiatric illnesses.  The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, first published in 1952, originally listed about 100 categories of illness.  By the year 2000, that number had tripled.  We’ve become accustomed to hearing in the news about “learning disabilities,”...Read More

This essay of mine originally appeared in the New Horizons in Education online journal in 2009. The history of special education in the United States is a dramatic one. Without going into the whole legislative history, suffice it to say that during the 1970’s, due in large part to increasing scientific involvement in special needs...Read More