Can You Relate…? You’re a special education teacher (or maybe you know one) sitting in a building-wide staff meeting. In the meeting, the results of your state’s annual, standardized test scores were released. The results are good, except for one segment of students that are not showing enough improvement and thus hurting the school’s overall
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Learning and Soft Skills Empower Special Education Students
Are we aiming to have our students “college ready” OR “career ready?” OR both? If both, do we get them “college ready” first, then “career ready?” These are many of the questions that educators seem to wrestle with on a regular basis as our country works to prepare future generations for workplace success. Let’s cut
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Study Skills = RTI (Response to Intervention) Solution
Many schools are using SOAR® Study Skills for RTI! The following is an e-mail we received from a frustrated educator: “I work in a middle school and see the severe lack of study and organizational skills of the students entering this academic arena. The wheels seem to fall off these students! Most have never been taught
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Teaching Students with Autism: Science that Empowers What Your Heart Already Knows
Teaching Students with Autism There’s a very good chance you could teach me a lot about teaching students with autism. You’re in the trenches, working with students every day, So, I’m NOT here to tell you what you “should be doing differently.” Nor am I here to point out “where you’re dropping the ball.” I
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How to Help Students Manage Anxiety
The key to helping students manage anxiety is to understand what’s happening in their brain. “Emotions are the on/off switch to learning,” says Priscilla Vail, author of Smart Kids with School Problems. You and I both know this is true. We know from our own experience that it’s pretty hard to learn geometry theorems when
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How to Build an “Anxiety-Free” Environment in Your Classroom
Previously, I wrote about How to Help Your Students Manage Anxiety. If you haven’t read that article yet, I suggest you start with it, here. It explains what causes anxiety, which is key to understanding how to manage it. Today, I want to share some strategies for building an “anxiety-free” environment in your classroom. Obviously,
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Special Education Teachers: What Makes You Sing Like Taylor Swift?
Dear Special Education Teachers, why do you do it? You have to deal with loads of paperwork, angry parents, impossible state standards, and flack from administrators. Doesn’t it feel like you’re constantly swimming upstream? Teaching has become a job, not a passion. Schools are not a warm and fuzzy place anymore. The focus has changed
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College and Career-Readiness for Special Education
“My students think they are ‘broken,’” lamented one special education teacher. “They don’t have dreams because they don’t think their dreams matter.” The truth is, our education system is not equipped to help any student explore their dreams and options beyond high school. But special education students have an even greater disadvantage; they don’t think
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How to Use a Planner… with Dysgraphia
I was recently asked by a tutor using SOAR, how to help a student who has dysgraphia use a planner. (Dysgraphia is an extreme difficulty with writing.) It’s such an important question, I wanted to share my response with you. Q: Do you have any suggestions for my student who has dysgraphia and has difficulty writing in
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The Brain Biology of ADHD & Autism
Welcome to part 3 of our 3-part series on special education. In part 1, we explored the brain biology of learning disabilities. In part II, we explored How to Solve and Prevent Learning Disabilities. The brain biology of ADHD & autism is very similar to the brain biology of learning disabilities, as explained in the previous article. Just like learning disabilities,
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