A Feeling About SPD

One of my nieces will be a senior in high school this year and has been looking at colleges that offer programs in Occupational Therapy. I think this is a great field to examine because I suspect that OT services will be in increasing demand as Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) becomes a more common diagnosis in schools.

A succinct description:
"Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD, formerly known as "sensory integration dysfunction") is a condition that exists when sensory signals don't get organized into appropriate responses. Pioneering occupational therapist and neuroscientist A. Jean Ayres, PhD, likened SPD to a neurological "traffic jam" that prevents certain parts of the brain from receiving the information needed to interpret sensory information correctly. A person with SPD finds it difficult to process and act upon information received through the senses, which creates challenges in performing countless everyday tasks. Motor clumsiness, behavioral problems, anxiety, depression, school failure, and other impacts may result if the disorder is not treated effectively." (SPD Foundation website)

There is a growing body of research on SPD, no doubt made more comprehensive by advances in brain imaging. But what brings an issue to the forefront sometimes is not research but the reporting of research.

SPD may be following a similar path. Articles in mainstream sources like Time Magazine and the New York Times have raised awareness in the general public. I tend to think that in ten years, SPD will be seen, as the Time article suggests, as the next Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is good news and bad news. A diagnosis of ADD or ADHD can have positive results for families and children so diagnosed. There are many strategies associated with the field that have been helpful to many people. The problem arises when a term or diagnosis becomes a catch-phrase that is either too broadly applied or used as an excuse.

Attentional issues exist on a continuum - the child who exhibits classic ADHD symptoms during story time may be able to sit with a box of Legos for hours. Internal and external environmental issues greatly influence the appearance, severity and duration of ADHD symptoms.

This may well turn out to be true of SPD, in which case mis-diagnosis may be followed by backlash. In the meantime though, occupational therapy looks to be a career path with very solid prospects.

Shelfari

Mark Twain is credited with the following quote: "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
We'll excuse Mr. Clemens his gender specificity long enough to ponder his meaning. In a recent graduate course I taught to reading education students, I assigned them the task of interviewing secondary-aged students about, among other things, their attitudes towards literacy. A distressing commonality existed in many of the interviews - even students who were proficient readers tended to place little value on reading.
It was a small sample and I won't draw any sweeping conclusions, but I do worry about today's students who have so many other draws on their attention. And it is certainly true that many people of my own generation do not actively read, yet have turned out to be well-adjusted and productive adults.
But there is quite a world that literature allows us to visit, and anything that promotes reading gets a thumbs up from me.
That is why I'd like to thank a friend for introducing me to Shelfari, a social networking website that revolves around reading. It allows you to keep track of books you've read or want to read, and see the comments of other readers.
I have added my current list of books I plan to read on this blog, and I encourage you to visit the site and join up - it's free. I can see this site being another tool educators can use with students to promote literacy by providing a sense of belonging and connection.
Thanks, Mara!

Charter Woes

Charter schools have been part of the educational reform landscape for a generation now. As with all things educational, there are many mixed feelings about them.

Locally, the big story is the Philadelphia Academy Charter School and the shenanigans perpetrated by the people who have run it. Simply put, they gamed the system in every way they could think of, as outlined in the story. It leads one to wonder if there wasn’t even more fraud – like identifying kids as special education students, writing an IEP, and demanding the higher per-pupil spending that comes with identified students. Let's hope that angle gets investigated.

Taxpayers have taken a hit from PACS.

But so have other charter schools.

What happened at PACS will be used by critics of the charter school movement to cast aspersions on any charter school. And it would be hard to argue that the same types of things couldn’t be happening at other schools in the city and across the nation. Many charter schools are providing students with great opportunities to be successful, but incidents like this one provide people who wish to paint with a broad brush the tools to do so.

Nice job by the Philadelphia Daily News in their opinion piece today.

Assessment and Analogies

In the springtime many a school’s fancy turns to assessment. Despite increasingly agreeable weather and spring colors, assessment season becomes a nerve-wracking time for many students, parents, teachers, and administrators.

The high stakes nature of our current assessment process has fostered a sharp competitive climate that does much to hamper the real purpose of education – and that doesn’t need to be the case.

Let’s talk analogies to create some perspective.

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Elmer Smith wrote a piece some years ago about a Philadelphia high school student who received good grades, was a highly competitive chess player, and was by all personal accounts a hard-working and dedicated learner. However, his standardized test scores were fairly low, and as a result he found his choices for higher education were limited. Smith used the metaphor that the test results were a single still shot in the movie of the young man’s life – imagine deciding on an Academy Award based on a still. (While I contacted Smith some years ago and got his permission to use the analogy in a presentation I was doing, I never thought to archive the column – my regrets.)

On April 1, 2008, GE stock closed at $38.43. Should you base your decision on the quality of that company based on that day’s performance? Wouldn’t it be better to also consider that two weeks later it closed at $31.98, and two days ago it closed at $32.81? Looking at ongoing data gives investors a far better chance to make good decisions.

Nobody would be satisfied if their doctor just took their temperature and proclaimed them healthy. We would want to share our symptoms, to use information like blood pressure and heart rate, and maybe have blood drawn before feeling confident in the clean bill of health.

If you served on a jury, a single eyewitness account of a crime would make a verdict far more tenuous than one made with multiple eyewitness accounts, physical evidence like fingerprints, and surveillance video.

While it may be too strong to say we are prosecuting students with only a single form of evidence, the high stakes assessment model has overstepped its limits. Many educators and parents know that an ongoing diagnostic-prescriptive model based on daily observation and ongoing authentic assessments better serve students, yet every year many in the process become as skittish as Pennsylvania deer in late November.

Please refer to http://www.fairtest.org/ for a more cogent case against our current assessment model.

A New Old Model

At a recent workshop on Math, the presenter suggested that it might be worth using a different evaluation model because of the cumulative nature of the subject. Instead of using the standard letter grades, we could ‘certify’ students who demonstrated proficiency in basic math criteria, like number sense, word problems, fractions, etc.

This is nothing new, of course. An educational generation ago, when I was starting my career, Outcomes Based Education (OBE) was the hot topic. Students would show their mastery of specifically chosen, measurable outcomes in order to progress through school.

There was considerable controversy over OBE, which essentially sunk most of the ship though there are some places that practice it. The Coalition of Essential Schools promotes an extensive form of OBE. What has remained alive of the original concept of OBE is standardized testing, minus the other types of authentic assessment.

But given the tense climate of the educational world with swirling controversies over assessment, NCLB, teacher training and burnout, the disconnect between traditional curricula and current global realities, perhaps revisiting a fuller OBE would be a reasonable venture. Could the weaknesses in the old OBE model be addressed and remediated?

The first prerequisite in examining this would have to be crystal clear: determining learning objectives could NOT be mandated at a federal level. That would create more dissatisfaction than the current ‘one size fits all’ nature of NCLB that has so many upset.

Yet this would be a legitimate fear: it seems that educational entities often tend to acquiesce to higher authorities too easily – states to the federal government, districts to the state, schools to districts, and so on. I compare the creation of central standards to franchising, the attempt to create a singular educational experience for all students. Anyone who has spent time in a classroom knows the impossibility of this model, yet . . .

(originally posted 4/26/08)

Dream Schools

There is a thread on the City-Data Education Forum that asks people to ruminate on their dream vision of public schools. I'd like to flesh out my response a little more here.


In grades, K-5, I would see children taking a core process curriculum with literacy, math, physical education and the arts (music, visual arts), and a core content curriculum for science and civics (including history and citizenship). Cooperative and communication skills would be embedded.


In grades 6-8, students would continue to take literacy, math, and p.e. on a regular basis. Students would formally learn technology, metacognition and study skills on a repeating basis. Students would also cycle through a variety of electives including science, civics, arts, finance, languages, and vo-tech subjects.


In grades 9-10, students would continue to take literacy and math regularly, but begin to focus on some sort of disciplinary track, like college prep, vo-tech, health, technology, international studies, or arts. They would still take at least one course per semester in a different discipline track. By grades 11-12, students would focus mainly on their chosen track, with some elective opportunities. In this way, a high school would actually be a conglomeration of a number of departments.


Instead of homework, students would have independent follow-up work, and the school day might be extended to allow students time to complete it. The focus would be on research and extending one's understanding in the field. There should also be resource centers that would give students a place to receive help and find information.


Allowing students the opportunity to pursue areas of interest while providing a foundation of skills might cut down on a very basic problem in schools - many students are disengaged from what they are learning. By fostering their natural affinities, students would have greater internal motivation and would be better prepared for the post-secondary world, whether that means college, technical or vocational school, or the work force.

(originally posted 4/12/08)

Developing New Minds

I must give credit to Pat Bassett, the president of the National Association of Independent Schools. A recent workshop he gave on effecting change for the 21^st century provided a framework for me to clarify some of my thinking.

Over a year ago, I read the book A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. While intended mainly to provide a business perspective on our changing economy, Pink’s assertion that the information age is giving way to a conceptual age has definite implications for how we (should) educate students to give them the best chance for success.

What follows is the beginning of a synthesis of the workshop, the book, and my own perspective. While perhaps being guilty of some ivory-tower idealism, it would be nice to see schools ride the crest of the changing world rather than trying to catch up to the wave in the next generation.

The digital age has broken through the barriers that used to limit access to information. Students no longer need to find information in a book or hear it from a teacher, which means they no longer have to be in class or have the right book handy or have to wait until the library opens. Search engines provide almost instant access to more data than generations of students could have imagined.

But – not all data is created equal. A single search can yield a spectrum of data that ranges from highly regarded science to sheer quackery. Educated students need a more strongly developed ability to evaluate and synthesize what they read, skills that are high on Bloom’s taxonomy in the cognitive domain. Basic factual comprehension and understanding inferences are no longer enough.

Along with the consequences of unlimited access to data, there are the economic realities that Pink lays out in his book. Traditional information age jobs can be automated or outsourced. The abundance our culture provides does not limit our purchasing choices to what we need, but rather what we want, meaning that aesthetics can play a larger role in our commerce than utilitarianism.

It is incumbent on our education system to adapt to these realities.

New Start

While transferring blog posts from another hosting site, it seems like a good time to update my information.

The old: I'm a reading specialist, teacher, school administrator, professional development facilitator and adjunct professor in Pennsylvania. You can check LinkedIn for particulars.

The new: After 17 years, I'm leaving the Center School at the end of August. For at least the foreseeable future, I will continue my adjunct teaching for Cabrini College and facilitation work for the All Kinds of Minds Institute. In addition, I will be working privately with schools, families and students on subjects of literacy and learning. I also hope to do research and development on the changing and emerging literacies of the 21st century.