Technology in the Classroom

The Kent school district has been successfully implementing the use of technology in the classroom. They have a really great website with many videos demonstrating their use of technology in the classroom. They also have a video called "The Faces of Inclusion". It is definitely worth checking out.

Here's the website:
http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/ksd/it/kentfutureisnow/fin_tv/tv/episodes/future_is_now/index.html

Pro Surfer living with Aspergers

Wow! This guy is super cool! Check out this video clip of this pro surfer talking about living with aspergers syndrome.

General education students benefit from all-inclusive classrooms

General education students benefit greatly from the presence of students with exceptionalities in the general ed. classroom. Here I will speak from personal experience. A highschool student with autism that I follow is a good example. The student is in all general ed. classes. He is very smart, creative, and very funny. He is also prone to having frustration that can lead to loud and disruptive outbursts. He can be rude and very ego-centered. The students accept him. Sometimes it amazes me that other students don't get upset with him. When I was growing up, some of the boundary crossing that he does would have earned him a black eye or two. They seem to understand. Many of the students in the class have known him since middle school, where his behavior was much more extreme.
He has much to contribute, and the classrooms he is in wouldn't be the same without him. He is an essential part of the organism.
It seems to me that the students in his classes have been around him long enough to see his strengths and 'weaknesses' to see him as a whole, and not just a person with a disability. I can't read the students minds, but I have watched the interactions.

Exceptionalities

Exceptionalities is a term used to describe individuals whose physical, intellectual, or behavioral performance differs from the norm, either higher or lower, those with extraordinary abilities or disabilities.

The environment in which individuals are observed effects perception of the individual.

Objectivity vs. Subjectivity

Western culture emphasizes objectivity and the scientific method of discovering the truth as more valid and reliable than subjective and spiritual access to knowledge. Objectivity is a farce. How many times have we claimed objectivity in the past? Later we realize that we were swimming in a sea of context that made objectivity almost impossible. Oh, but we know better now people would say. The scientific method works well when one is dealing with the physical, but there is a lot more going on in the universe than the manifestation of form, or the physical. What we can experience with the 5 senses is only a fraction of the possibility of knowledge and understanding. Therefore, subjectivity can play an important role in wholistic knowledge. We should not simply 'write off' subjectivity as unreliable or as holding less weight than the illusion of objectivity. We can and should try to be as objective as possible, but being open to the inspiration, listening to the 'gut feelings' that can illuminate the stale and mechanistic approach.

Journal Entry from 4-20-10

Disability as a Social Construct
A person's needs aren't special, they are ordinary.

Under the materialist/capitalist system, people are classified by their production value or their utility to "society". Our society's zeitgeist is that of unconscious and unmitigated consumption. People are judged and valued according to how much they contribute to this. Being that we know now that the production/consumption paradigm is unsustainable and detrimental to the planet, we can rethink what we see as a valuable contribution to society.
Personally, I have never believed that a "productive" member of society as defined by the mainstream is valuable or virtuous. Being a cog in someone else's machine is not "normal", it is to be a mental slave to the dictates of the market. The light that shines from people who are being themselves, doing their own thing, are always inspiring. They are sometimes threatening to those people who will fight to the death to remain in mental bondage. What we know about human behavior is always changing. All one needs to do is look to the recent past to see the error in our beliefs and understandings in regards to disability or exceptionality. Examples of this can be seen with racial theory, eugenics, words like "handicapped" and "imbecile". If we were in error only a few short years ago, how do we know we are not in error now?

"We live in a society where it is normal to be sick, and sick to be abnormal." -Edward Abbey

On "Meetings"

In the interest of all-inclusiveness, we should reconsider what we call "meetings". The term "meetings" has an authoritarian, top-down feel. When we have "meetings", whether they be team meetings or IEP meetings, there is not a feeling of equality and value. The meetings are usually called by the person in "charge". The reality is that someone has to call it. Why don't we change what we call the "meeting" itself? The gathering of the team should be called a "union" or a "re-union". If we want to create a culture of inclusiveness, we need to take command of the language we use. All words have implications. Our intent with our gatherings should reflect what we call them. Re-union is a wonderful word that implies unity, and a return to unity. Everyone being on the same page holding the same weight.