What an honor to center in our shared work with Dr. Paula Kluth this past week. Thank you for so many of you who were able to join us. We have really enjoyed hearing from so many of our colleagues about what resonated with them. A couple of themes of rejuvenation and resonance have emerged around the research, presuming competence, grounding in UDL, and specific strategies (4-3-2-1!).
I was particularly captured by the discussion around presuming competence. In particular, Dr. Kluth focused on how history tells a narrative that demands this call to action. She expertly described the experience of students who were identified with a disability in 1975 through the Education of Handicapped Children Act to the academically focused revision of 1990. Yet, by 1990 the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act included a focus on academic engagement and access. Why the change!? Because over those 15 years from 1975 to 1990, we learned that students who experienced disabilities were LEARNING in the classroom. It was the structures and beliefs that needed to shift.
This presumption of competence and unwavering belief in capacity has been a theme of my summer reading. At the very beginning of the summer Principal Meg Leonard lent me a book (I will return it!) called Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper. The book chronicles a young student's journey in finding her voice with an AAC device and being able to share with her peers and her family her world. I was able to share the book with a close family friend, Stella - an incoming 5th grader. Together we were able to talk about the student's strengths and areas that she overcame to share her gifts with the world. This little book club with a young growing mind has flourished over the summer. Stella now finds and shares books with me. Most recently we read Roll with it and are starting another book about a group of students in a self-contained classroom building their relationship with their teacher and peers. This relationship has been the gift of my summer, being able to share, discuss, and reflect with Stella has been so rewarding for myself and I believe is creating a compassionate young learner who believes in all of her peers.
This theme of presuming competence was brought forward earlier this month by one of our new fabulous learning specialists at Boones Ferry Primary School, Christa Weiler. She shared a recent text she had been reading Underestimated: An Autism Miracle. The book (I am still in the middle of) shares the path for a young man and his family in finding his voice and unlocking who he is. As they find his voice, his dad shares, "I find myself seeing Jamie in an entirely new light, right before my eyes. He’s sitting there, listening, taking everything in, and he looks extremely content, . . . like [he] is telling me something that he’s known all along."
This is the work that we do. We hold belief. We are unwavering. We are collaborative. We are deep listeners. We are partners. We are flexible.
Dr. Kluth asked us to reflect on this question:
If you find out a student is more capable than you realized - what would you wish you had taught them? How would you have supported them differently.
It is with such gratitude that we are able to reflect on our kick off event together. For each of us who had the opportunity to join this event, please share what resonated and was rejuvenating for you with a colleague. Thank you for being the educator that you are.
