I remember when our son, Dylan was born, one of the things I worried about was if others would tease him, would he be accepted at
school and expected to learn… As a special education teacher, at the time, I knew it could be challenging to have students with disabilities be included in general education classrooms –not just sitting at the back of the room coloring – but really participating and learning in general education classrooms.
In today’s blog post we’re going to be learning how to
help teachers keep our children engaged and be more successful at school.
Usually when we go to IEP or 504 meetings the first thing we hear are all about our child’s deficits, their low test scores, their behavior challenges, what they can’t do – right? Have you been to those kind of meetings? I know we can do better. Let’s talk about changing the focus from the student deficit approach to a student success approach.
A big part of how we can change from a deficit based model to a strengths based way of teaching students is by using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
UDL came from the field of architecture. When buildings were designed in the past there wasn’t much thought about all the different people who would use the building. As a consequence, we saw stairs only, no ramps, doors you could only open, only if you pushed or pulled them open.
As more people with disabilities struggled to
get inside these inaccessible buildings, companies discovered they need to add things like ramps and automatic door openers. The retrofitting of buildings was expensive.
Architects discovered if they planned for a diverse group of people that would be using the buildings up front they wouldn’t have to make expensive changes later. The bonus they discovered was that the things they added when thinking of people with disabilities actually benefited many other people – parents with strollers, business people with rolling carts, someone using crutches for a recent broken leg, all benefited
from the ramps.
Educators looked at what was happening in the field of architecture and thought there would be ways to apply these concepts to teaching. In the past when teachers planned lessons they often thought of only reaching the “average” student. If during the school year a teacher had a student with disabilities join their classroom they would have to scramble and decide how to make changes to their lesson plans so their new student who happened to have a disability could also be actively engaged and learn with their classmates.
The teaching framework now known as Universal Design for Learning was created. Teachers
discovered if they planned for a diverse group of students up front they wouldn’t have to make changes on the fly. The bonus they discovered was that the things they added to their lesson plans when thinking of students with disabilities actually benefited many other students – students learning to become better readers benefited from
having closed captions on videos – not just a student that was deaf, having a visual schedule in the classroom helped all students know what was going to happen next, not just a student that needs visual cues.
The 3 principals of UDL are: engagement (how to make lesson interesting) representation (how lessons are presented), and expression (how a student shows what he knows and has learned).
The 1st UDL Principal is student engagement. One way to apply this principal in the classroom is to use what the student is interested in.
Let’s say you
share with the teacher that your child loves playing with legos. How in the heck is that going to help the teacher?
Legos can be used in many
different academic subjects to teach new skills. You could teach contractions with Legos. The bottom Lego could have the contraction written on it, for example, who’s, and then the two smaller Legos on top could have written on them who and is. That can help your child learn another
way to say who is, is who’s. If your child likes Legos it could also mean he would like using math manipulatives such as base 10 blocks when he is learning about place value. The teacher could let your child make a Lego structure during free time and then ask him to
write a story about what he created during Writing time.
The idea is to use what your child is interested in, what he excels at, to help your child learn new skills.
When we
offer engaging ways for students to learn new subject matter, all students, students with and without disabilities will learn more in school. What are some ways you think your child can stay more interested/motivated at school? Share these ideas with your child's teacher. Write them in the accommodations section of your child's
IEP.
In the coming weeks we'll focus on the other two principles of Universal Design for Learning - how teachers can present information in ways that matches how your child learns, and how your child can show what he knows/has learned.
As we
look forward to a new week, give yourself credit for all you do! If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or confused, feel free to set up a free 30 minute phone consultation with me. Just email me at [email protected] and we'll set up a time to
talk.
So keep on keepin’ on. You’re a change maker for your child and for so many children to come. Thank you!
