Indiana University East

Posted in COUNCIL E-NEWS OCT.20,2008   What do the presidential candidates say about disability-related issues? Ohio Legal Rights Services has prepared a side-by-side comparison chart of the presidential candidates’ positions on disability-related issues. The chart is based on information from the candidates’ Web sites, their Senatorial Web sites and supplemented by other sources. It covers heath care, long-term care, early intervention, IDEA, ADA, employment, community integration, and more. In this volatile political and financial climate you owe it to yourself to stay informed! 

http://olrs.ohio.gov/prescompare.htm

This part of the blog is set aside to ask questions, look at answers, check resources and provoke comments about the new formed alliance between regular education and special education that most people are calling “Inclusive Ed”.  The first two “types” of education  have lived side-by-side since the 70’s. Their co-existence has been rough, but normalized so now many people no longer know about or have experience with the old one-size-fits-all  education system that used to be public school. Today, every graduating teacher at IUE will have gone through formative school years knowing there are “regular” kids and “Special Eds”.  The inclusive school movement is like a hybrid of the old education system where the best of what we’ve learned over the past 40 years is celebrated by the notion that no child is regular and every education journey is unique and differentiated to meet the needs of individual learners.

The participants of my intro to sped courses have asked some beginning questions which speak to the issues new teachers have with understanding an inclusive education system in our communities. By the way, all of the communtiy schools served by IUE graduates are fully inclusive schools for children with mild-to-moderate disabilties.

Special Education is famous for the amount of acronyms developed to talk about what we do… LD BD MR EMH LRE LEA IEP OT PT CT VI HI FAPE VR 504 ADA CC  …  The trouble is that more often than not, the only people who understand what we’re talking about is other special educators. Not very inclusive, or helpful, or necessary. Read the rest of this entry »

The notion of adding a special education licensure to the already excellent K-6 teacher education program at IUE School of Education ( yeah- SOE!!)  was put into play long before my arrival [July 2007].  The faculty knew they wanted to enhance what they had created so well {…our graduates are sought after all over East Indiana…} and that meant the new program had to retain all the quality and integrity of the old.  Last fall we began the long hard process of ironing out all manner of difficulities by asking ourselves: What’s best for our community, our teachers, our children, our schools? Read the rest of this entry »