Remember when your grandpa would tell you about the bad good old days, when he had to walk ten miles to school in the snow without shoes uphill both ways?  Yeah, well, he ain't got nothing on 16 year old Aubrey Sandifer of Hutto, Texas.  After his school district cut bus services, he has to walk over a mile to school every day. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/us/for-texas-schools-a-year-of-doing-without.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

Over the past two years, Texas has cut over 10,000 teaching jobs, and one district in San Antonio has eliminated 40 special education teaching jobs. 

Once again, the most disadvantaged members of our society are having to bare the burden of the Great Recession.  This should be of special concern for special education teachers, who a) are federally required to provide a free an appropriate education to their students, come Hell or high water, and b) generally serve the most disadvantaged in society, including students with severe disabilities, racial minorities, and students living in severe poverty.  (Of which there seem to be more and more every day!) 

            Last week, I attended a lecture on campus entitled “Liberalism, Self Respect, and the Cultural Aspects of Ghetto Poverty,” delivered by Tommie Shelby, a professor of philosophy and African American Studies at Harvard University.  Shelby discussed several of the challenges that face the so-called “liberal project” of social reform among the black, urban poor, namely that they entail an assumed program of moral reform that seeks to impose itself upon the African American community from without, i.e., from the dominant culture that is different from the culture that it seeks to reform.

            Shelby talked about the individual structures within a community that can or do function as these so-called “programs of moral reform.”  Some of these programs included social work programs, the police, local church organizations, and, of course, schools.  Very briefly, Shelby touched upon the distinction that exists between external programs that attempt to impose moral reformation upon the African American community from without and organic organizations that are formed from within the community that that are controlled and managed by members of the Black community.

            From the perspective of a special education teacher, I am concerned with the integration, collaboration, and cooperation among and between the external structures – as represented by the public schools – and the internal community organizations that have been constructed by community members.  We, as teachers, more often than not fail to reach out and work with these groups.  Included amongst these groups, in Champaign-Urbana, are various Christian youth groups, the Boys and Girls Club of America, and family shelters, as well as “half-and-half” groups, cooperatives formed through alliances between the University of Illinois and local community groups, such as the Education Justice Project and Books2Prisoners.org. 

It is essential to consider reading as a social and cultural activity that is learned alongside an entire host of other activities that act to signify your place within your social groups.  Thinking of reading this way ought to allow us to divorce ourselves from the mystery of where meaning comes from, as in, "Why can this student understand what he just read, but that student cannot?" 

It is a game, with rules and meaning, not all of which are accessible to everyone. 

(This is why I like Brueghel's 1560 painting, "Children at Play.")

Phase I: "Students must be provided a meaningful curriculum with which they can engage in an authentic way."

Phase II: "Effective inclusion entails more than merely placing a student in a general education room."

From The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/occupy-kindergarten-the-rich-poor-divide-starts-with-education/252914/

"One paper found that by the time an upper-income kid starts school, they've spent 400 more hours on "literacy activities" than their less fortunate peers. "

Cognitive teaching theories are predicated on the idea that the student has a mind.  I do not mean this merely glibly; it is a central tenet of cognitive teaching strategies.  Behaviorism, on the other hand, makes no such leap of faith.  And, in my opinion, that is to its credit.  Now, if you were to push me, as a behaviorist, to answer the question honestly, "Do I believe that my students have minds?"  then, eventually, I would have to say, "Yes.  I honestly believe that my students have minds."  However, as soon as I make that admission, I have to begin to ascribe qualities and tendencies to those minds.  And, being the kind of person that I am, that means more or less making the claim that my students' minds in some fashion resemble my own.   That is to say, that, on some level, we must share the same beliefs, convictions, prejudices, facts, and the whole set of propositions that combine to make up this mysterious thing that we call a "mind."  And we know, from experience, that is a fatal mistake for any teacher to make. 

    “It seems at least possible that friendships developed in inclusive settings will not be extremely deep or enduring when students are perceived as having very few skills, and when skill deficits often cause their peers to become caregivers. Under such conditions, the competency/deviance hypothesis would predict serious threats to the membership status and the social relationships of students with severe disabilities. As a possible example, Evans et al. (1992) observed that the assistance and physical affection provided by typically developing students declined by the second half of the school year. "Unfortunately," they noted, "so did other positive interaction categories" (p. 211). Alternatively, the students with disabilities might continue to be accepted as "members," or even be identified as friends, but their membership status could be reduced to the role of "mascot" because they are consistently perceived as aberrant (Cook & Semmel, 1999; Dentier & Erikson, 1959). Neither outcome is acceptable.” Billingsley and Albertson (1999)