Suggesting new ways to see school, education, disability, and learning design Part 2

Barbara Lindsey of the University of Connecticut asked me join her, her students, and colleagues Wednesday for a conversation about Universal Design for Learning and re-imagining education.

You can actually watch the whole Elluminate Session here.

Before the session, those participating sent me ten questions. They were ten great questions, and as I began answering them I began to see an "FAQ" developing... So I wanted to share this widely. This is part two - with my suggested starting points in the search for answers. Part one, the first five questions, is here.

Rethinking Everything. Michael Thornton Photo.

Q6: "How can we concretely make special needs education more visible at the institution level? Could these policies be spread to all students as each student is different and has his/ her own difficulties? Would that make sense? and how?"

The primary thing is to break “the medical model of disability” and to stop letting the institution see “disability” in pathological terms: http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/05/may-day-retard-theory.html
and begin to understand what, exactly, our human differences really are:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/06/dyslexia-and-life.html
Next, however you can, make your environment open to all, because this is seen, it is highly obvious:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/07/it-doesnt-have-to-be-expensive.html
http://youtu.be/8waKT0qzAy0
But understand, I am not at all sure many people want all students to succeed:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-getting-to-universal-design.html 


The Iridescent  Classroom: Learning is transparent, knowledge is constantly shared,
the art of being a child is continually embraced

Q7: "What are some key elements that allow us to implement UDL into our lesson plans?"

I don't really believe in "lesson plans" and I advise teachers not to create them. I'd like you to think more in terms of starting an activity with a "learning goal" or a "learning target." That is, "what will your students be able to do, or understand, or how will they be changed, if your activity/lesson succeeds."

If that is your starting point, then you'll have a real goal which students can focus on, and you won't be trying to specify paths in advance for any of your students. This is essential because specifying paths not only limits creativity, prevents critical thinking, and builds dependence, but it really limits Special Needs students by stopping them from exploring their capabilities.
http://mthornton78.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/cave-painting/ http://mthornton78.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/welcome-to-the-future/

Suppose you are teaching a maths lesson.  Consider, ratios. Different students can choose entirely different routes and completely different tools - based on their needs, interests, preferences. You could use blocks, or food, or a calculator, or a computer, or draw on the floor - you might approach it conceptually or mechanically, the trick - Montessori style - is to have this wide range of tools and supports available. What I call your "Tool Crib."

Similarly, my 9th year English teacher offered us print copies of books, audio books, and movies made from the books. (long before computers) We could write, or type, or dictate to a friend, or record our voice. If we really didn't like the book, he'd help us find something else to read which would allow us to be part of the conversations. This was a class full of "failures," the school referred to it as "Dumb English." Most of us had never read a book before or written more than half a page. Yet with this very low tech UDL we produced hundreds of pages of poetry and short stories and arguments, and read through most of the great dystopian literature of the 20th Century.


Alan from Paul Shapiro on Vimeo.

My high school English teacher, reshaping education to allow all to succeed.

Q8: "It is extremely important not to make feel student with disabilities different but what is a practical example of it? If you have two different examples of cases with different disabilities even better!"

Maybe we begin with what NOT to do.  We don’t want to “disable” students with our choices:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/04/humiliation-and-modern-professor.html
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/12/week-in-hospital-constructing.html
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/03/constructing-disability-second-class.html
and then move toward what to do, we want to reimagine our classrooms so that there are always choices which enable students:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/03/reading-is-not-goal.html
“For some kids alphabetic decoding will be a quick and efficient method of grabbing that information. For some kids, writing with a pen will be a great, fast way to get ideas down into recorded form. For some kids, writing numbers and/or remembering "the times table" will be a short route to manipulating numbers.
  “And for others, those routes will not work, or they will not work well enough to really give them access.
  “For all those kids, we need to find other routes to get them content, to get them involved, to get them excited, to get them communicating.
   “Which is all easy now. We have the technology, from Click-Speak to WYNN, from WordTalk to Windows7 Speech Recognition, from audiobooks to mp3 conversion, to switch to access systems that work. We can use calculators (free ones) and Word's Equation Editor.  We can get kids in, connect them right now.”
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/04/technology-and-equity.html

Q9: "Do you think usage of media in a classroom is beneficial towards UDL or could the over-usage of it inhibit the main purpose of UDL?"

It’s all media. Books are media, they’re technology. Pens are media, they’re technology. I think offering numerous ways in to any subject lies at the heart of choice.
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/08/hulu-in-classroom-building-literacy.html
What makes flexible contemporary media “better” is its adaptability to differing student needshttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/04/culture-and-comprehension.html
The questions regarding technology are complex, but we rarely ask the right things... http://education.change.org/blog/view/technology_the_wrong_questions_and_the_right_questions

Q10: "Why do we use the term "universal design" when we introduce a concept that avoids creating a universally accurate design for all students? Isn't it better when we emphasize diversity?"

First, I need to ask, what is “a universally accurate design”? Can such a thing exist? Even in rocket science, the US and Russia always embraced radically different design ideas.

So, if there is no learning design which can be "universally accurate," we choose to embrace our humanity and acknowledge that we are all different. Diversity isn't something which needs emphasizing, it is simply a fact of working with people instead of products.

It is important to know that the idea of "same for all" teaching and assessment is a relatively recent concept, reaching only back to the start of the Second Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of the American and "Second" British Empires. Until the late 19th century most students continued to go to schools with all ages, individualised lessons and evaluations, they came to school when finished with family chores in the morning, and left school when they were done with their work.

The "all the same" idea, treating students "as if they were any other manufactured product," as Ellwood Cubberley - the chief advocate of this - said, was designed for two purposes (a) to train single function workers for factories and offices, and (b) to fail 80% of students - there are eight grades before high school, each grade was supposed to chase 10% of students out, leaving 20% to go to high school. In fact, as recently as 1960, evidence shows, few more than 25% of American students finished high school.http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/09/designed-to-fail-education-in-america.html http://education.change.org/blog/view/counting_the_origins_of_failure

Those are the purposes behind the design of our schools. If those are no longer our purposes, the design must change.

- Ira Socol

Suggesting new ways to see school, education, disability, and learning design

Barbara Lindsey of the University of Connecticut asked me join her, her students, and colleagues Wednesday for a conversation about Universal Design for Learning and re-imagining education.

You can actually watch the whole Elluminate Session here.

Before the session, those participating sent me ten questions. They were ten great questions, and as I began answering them I began to see an "FAQ" developing... So I wanted to share this widely. This is part one - the first five questions with my suggested starting points in the search for answers. Part Two is here.

Q1: “I have a question about assessment. I think the idea of universal design is a great idea. But, if we start implementing different learning tools individually designed for each student, how do you end up with assessment?"

Consider what you are assessing... It has nothing to do with “disability” for us to understand that all students come into any classroom in different places, with different skills, and will be heading different places via different paths. http://education.change.org/blog/view/evaluate_that_-_schools_for_children http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/04/testing-cannot-be-anything-but.html


Does anyone really need an "exam" to assess any of the learning in this video? Could you
create a test that would meaningfully measure any of it?

Now, to me, there are two different kinds of courses, there are courses where demonstrated competence in a single skill is the point, to quote a structural engineering prof I once had (in a pass/fail grading system), “no one leaves my class knowing 95% of what it takes to make a building stand up.” http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/06/great-schools-3-profession-without.html So, in that course, 95% was “failing” except, there were no tests, and every student’s project, demonstrating their knowledge, was different. You didn’t have to be “perfect” - but your building design had to work.

The other kind of course, say, what I teach, involves moving students from where they are to a place they need and want to go. So there, I have to ask the students where they are at the start. I ask lots of questions, and ask them to respond to ideas, and then we have a point on the map for the students to begin their journey. My measures in a course like that are based in progress and effort and accomplishing what they set out to accomplish - or how they adapt if they have to change paths.

Q2: "Teachers need to interact with students but these students need to be willing to do so. What could be done in compulsory school (or even University) if students are not interested? How according to UDL we can try to motivate them?"

This may sound radical, but if a student doesn’t know why they’re in a class, they’re going to space out and not interact, and most students have no idea why they are in a class. Even though I can do architectural engineering and pretty good statistics, I still don’t know why I ever took any of the Algebra classes I took, whether I failed or got an A.So, step one, explain to students what this class will do for them, Not for their school career, but for them. Why are they - to put it in micro-economic terms - wasting their “opportunity costs” on sitting with you? If you can’t explain that, well, they should check out.Now, some students - oddly the ones we traditionally consider “good” students - have few internal motivations, and for them - because they rely on external motivation, we can bribe or threaten, which is what grades are. But in my experience that’s about a third or less of students, the rest don’t care about grades - and the ones who do will tend to be “pleasers” - students who only want to give “the teacher” whatever their teacher wants. Which isn’t learning - its compliance.

To work as Universal Design, courses need to be choice-based project-based learning, or passion-based learning. Every student simply cannot be doing the same thing at the same time (most of the time). The course has to be designed - from the start - to be flexible.
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/02/passion-based-learning.html
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/01/middle-school-that-works.html

Toolbelt Theory 2.0 v.2

View more presentations from Ira David Socol.

Q3: "Considering your experience with alternative education, are there non-traditional subjects or activities capable of raising interests among students of any level and that should be introduced to them? How could new technologies help with that?"

As in the question above, Passion-Based Learning is what raises interest, we need to connect what we are teaching to what students want and know they need to know. I don’t care if this is first grade, why would any kid work really hard to figure out a text they’re not interested in? Or in graduate school, if I can’t twist the class into something which matters to me, I’m not interested. Only when you’ve hooked kids through their interests and passions can you begin to expand their world by leveraging those interests.

Quoting Alan Shapiro and Neil Postman regarding what they described as their “judo theory of education,” “we are assuming (1) that learning takes places best not when conceived as a preparation for life but when it occurs in the context of actually living, (2) that each learner ultimately must organize his own learning in his own way, (3) that "problems" and personal interests rather than "subjects" are a more realistic structure by which to organize learning experiences, (4) that students are capable of directly and authentically participating in the intellectual and social life of their community, (5) that they should do so, and (6) that the community badly needs them."
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-schools-1-changing-everything.html

When it comes to new technologies, I think we need to build a new conception - I call my “ideas” “Toolbelt Theory” http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/03/csun-2008a-toolbelt-for-lifetime.html
and it is based in using learning technologies as we humans use any tools http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/03/writing-without-blocks.html http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/05/freedom-stick-and-massive-resistance.html
and as an overviewhttp://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/width-of-world.html
also Karen Janowski http://teachingeverystudent.blogspot.com/ has built a great Wikispace filled with tools and ideas http://teachingeverystudent.blogspot.com/2008/08/free-tech-toolkit-for-udl-wiki-edition.htm

Q4: "According to your own experience, how do students face these new-non-scripted assignments? Did you need any previous "training"? Sometimes I feel that most students just want, "do A, B, and C in the X way", and they feel terrified otherwise."

The longer students have been in school the more they have been trained in compliance, and the more creativity scares them. Its fairly easy to get first graders to try anything http://adunsiger.com/   http://avivadunsiger.wikispaces.com/ much harder with university first years who, being typically the most compliant “pleasers” in their secondary schools, haven’t thought on their own in many years. But there are tricks. A middle school music teacher told me this week that he told students they couldn’t play a certain type of song in his band room unless they had written it themselves. Half the class began composing music. At universities I often ask students to base a part of their project on themselves, or create it for a family member, this makes originality a personal necessity.
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-help-students-see-differently.html 

Q5: "My question is contextualized in a school/high-school where teachers are sometimes just asked to become a nanny for 25-30 students. How do we deal with this individually? How can a teacher manage an appropriate environment for each individuality?"

I think teachers choose to become babysitters. I’ve never understood that, but they do. In order to break that, if this has become “the school norm,” you have to be really aggressive, and you have to be blunt with kids. Get them out of their seats, get rid of their chairs if you can, and get them out of the classroom.

See this classic film clip, using cartoons to get non-interacting kids talking

Blackboard Jungle, 1955

or read Alan Shapiro’s very blunt message to his “school without walls” students http://foody.org/3i/first_i_on_falling_apart.html
or read Tomaz Lasic’s blog http://tomazlasic.net/ he teaches in a school for extremely troubled students in Perth, Western Australia - including http://tomazlasic.net/2011/08/i-did-nothing/  http://tomazlasic.net/2011/08/a-kindred-soul-in-our-school/  http://tomazlasic.net/2011/09/can-scootering-save-schools/
or Deven K. Black from The Bronx, NY: http://educationontheplate.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/we-need-to-teach-so-that-kids-will-care/

- Ira Socol