Activity may save your kid’s life

 

image by: Tundra ice

The Center for Disease Control lists inactivity as one of the leading causes of preventable death in the US. That’s a scary statistic. It’s likely to get worse. Just in the last few years that I’ve been teaching I’m seeing an increasing amount of kids that are choosing to sit during recess. They’re just hanging out, not interested in getting out there and running around, increasing their heart rate, working up a sweat.

 

I see adults that are doing the same things, when is the last time you ran around, just to run? You know, for the fun of it?

Kids with disabilities are wired the same way. There may be a piece not quite working correctly, but that doesn’t stop the basic biology of the child, and that is one that requires activity, movement, and learning. It’s important to get kids out there moving around.

How can we do this? One way is by setting the example, that means you have to get out there too. When I’m playing on the playground with my kids with visual impairments, I play too. I chase them, they chase me, I climb the structure in novel ways that are “outside” what its supposed to be used for. I push the limits.

I’m doing this because its fun, but also because it demonstrates for them what can happen, and what can be done. I get lots of good feedback, in the form of giggling, and smiles, and ooohs and ahhs, the kids get REALLY impressed. So, its good for my ego too.

Every kid is different from the others, not just the ones with disabilities, so its important to look at your kiddo, and then visualize the edge of his or her current ability. I have a student who is very unstable when she walks. She often goes to all 4’s even if its just going up the stairs. She’s not quite ready for work on a balance beam yet, but she can do some running! Turns out, she kind of likes it, it gives her a lot of feedback to her body, and is probably teaching her system how to handle all these inputs. She seems to really like walking in uneven terrain, so now we’re trying to run in that uneven terrain. Now, this currently does not resemble the running that you and I may identify with, but its at the edge of her ability, which is where most of my teaching is focused.

Why? Because I’ve learned that staying on the edge of a person’s ability forces them to create more ability. It is like lifting weights. Would you expect to get stronger by never picking up a heavier weight? The idea is ridiculous. Learning is no different.

Pushing the edge is what a lot of play is about. Exertion, taking yourself to that feeling of exhilaration, bathing in that excitement and sense of risk, its critical to future development, and mature decision making as an adult. The ability to judge risk, weigh the consequences and take action are all critical to functional adulthood. It all starts with play.

Parenting should be active, baby Einstein dvds do not replace in any way what you have to offer as the sun in your child’s universe. Set the example, keep those expectations high, and your kids will rise to the occasion.

This sets them up for a lifetime of activity, which as more research is showing, can stave off a number of additional health concerns later. Do we really need MORE medical stuff involved in our kids’ lives?

How are your kids playing? How are you playing with them?

~Mickey

Disability Disapears When You Look at the Whole Person

Image by: Chrisjfry

When I talk to people about working with kids with disabilities, I’m often asked if it makes me uncomfortable, or how I deal with it, or if it makes me sad. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all anymore, though it used to.

I’ve thought about it a good bit, and to be honest, I remember being in college and being VERY uncomfortable with working with people with cognitive disabilities, blindness never really bothered me.

At the university where I also teach, I’ve found many of my students feel this way also. When I’ve talked to them about this, and looked into my own mind about it, I think there are a couple of reasons for this feeling. Understanding these reasons can help people to get passed the negative feelings, it seems to help my college students anyway.

First, the reasons for the discomfort I’ve found is that it’s really scary, its hard not to imagine yourself in that same situation, and you feel very funny about it. Its unnerving. Of course we can’t step out of ourselves and truly into the mind of someone else, so we don’t really know what it would be like to have a cognitive impairment, but, we often try. I can say this with confidence, most the kids with disabilities I work with are very happy people. I’d say proportionately much happier than your “typical” person in society.

What I’ve discovered over time is that I don’t see the disability so much anymore. There is more to the kid, or person than the disability. It doesn’t scream out to me like it did when I started in this field. I came to realize that everybody has their own characteristics, some folks are quite stubborn, or happy, or silly, or arrogant, or fearful. It’s a part of their nature, as is that they are tall, skinny, chunky, white, black, purple, etc. The disability has become just a piece of the whole kid for me. Joey is just Joey to me, all of him. I know his likes, his dislikes, I can categorize him as a high school student, or a guy, he doesn’t have to fit into one category, and  “disabled” doesn’t knock him out of any of the other categories. In fact, the easiest way to describe Joey, I’ve found is to just say “Joey”. If you’ve ever met him, you would get Joey-ness just by hearing his name, because Joey identifies the whole kid, where those other labels don’t even begin to tell his story.

None of us fit into any one category, we’re all infinitely complex, and my kids with disabilities are the same way. Even the ones with the same label are completely different from each other. So now, when I work with my students, I’m working with a person, with their personality, and all their ins and outs. I’m not working with a disability, I’m seeing the whole kid, and I encourage you to also.

It’s not unlike how I see anyone, the woman down the hall who is really happy, but a little on the obnoxious side, but bakes some mean brownies. Or the principal at that one school who would do ANYTHING for a student, but is quite overbearing to his staff. Or the classroom assistant that seems to drive everyone crazy, but is never late for a day at work, and would never scoff at a request for help from anyone. Then there’s Joey, a happy guy, who loves running, and meeting people, is always eager to try something new, and who is also blind with significant cognitive delays.

All people, all here on the planet with us. All deserving of respect, caring, dignity, and expectations of ability within their potential, and if we’re not sure of their potential, it never hurts to raise the bar, just to see. None of us are alike, we all have disabilities somewhere, some stand out more than others, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re all people.

So now, when I work with my students, I’m working with the WHOLE student, not the disability, I can see the WHOLE person, and I can by example, and my expectations, lead the way for others to see everyone as people first, and maybe eventually, not label by disability, but maybe just by a name, like Lisa, or John, or Kelly. I’m not sure when this changed from when I was in college, but I’m glad it did.

Have you had similar experiences? Does disability make you uncomfortable? Have you ever asked yourself why? Please share in the comments.

Parents, You are the Lead Teacher!

image by: Dom Cram

You know I’ve been seeing an ever increasing trend in the schools, and it concerns me, and should concern you. It is this:

Parents are outsourcing their role as primary educator of their children to the school system. Parents are not asking questions, they are not coming to meetings, they are not taking an active role in the education of their children. I’m not just talking about children with disabilities, I’m talking about ALL children.

We live in a world of expertise now, and we are being conditioned to not ask questions of experts. This is so wrong and misguided. This child is YOUR child, you are the primary educator, you are the team leader; not the classroom teacher, not the ESE teacher, you.

Why?

First, because he’s your kid, and you like him more than the school does. I’m being funny, and I’m being completely serious. No one cares about your child the way you do. You will still be with Tom when he graduates college, or gets his first job. You will be there when he is 19 years old and is going through his first major break up. Heck, you will be there next year! Few professionals on your team can say the same thing.

Entrusted to you, the parent, is the story line of your child. You are looking at the long view, when the school system is barely writing chapters in his book. On top of this, some of these teachers are writing hundreds of “chapters” a year! Can they really give your child the love and attention that he needs to be the most successful contributor to society that it is within his ability to be? Its a rhetorical question, but just in case, the answer is NO.

Here’s a horror story:

I was at an IEP meeting, and most of you know the IEP, the Individualized Education Plan, is the document, the PLAN that drives the education of every child with a disability in the public school system. So, REALLY important. So anyway, I was at this IEP meeting, and I had a parent tell me, and the rest of the team, that it was our job to teach their child, it was their job to love her. Think about this for a second. Wow. Years later, this still baffles me, saddens me, and makes me a little fearful for our kids with disabilities.

These parents were just the first ones to say it to me, many of the rest of them may as well be saying it by their actions. They don’t show up to parent/teacher night, they don’t return phone calls, they don’t go to IEP meetings. These parents are letting someone else write the story for their child, someone who really doesn’t care about their kid in the way only a parent does.

Parents are the primary educators; we, the school professionals are their support staff, and they should view us as such. The president of a company doesn’t know graphic design, but that does not stop her from holding the larger view and direction of the company, while instructing the graphic design department in how to best fit into this idea.

Now imagine, you work for a company where the boss is not in touch. In fact, the boss isn’t even accessible. You are human, as we all are, how long does it take before your work starts falling off track. Not long. Then when you realize you won’t be called out for shoddy work, and you still get paid, it gets really off track. Its not much different with an IEP team. Look at it like a company, and you are the boss. Your kid is the product. Without your guidance, due attention and diligence, that product is not going to be very marketable. Your CHILD may not be very successful. The boss is as much to blame as anyone else on the team for this problem, if not more so. The boss is the boss.

That’s what the schools need from parents. We need parents to keep that long view, to always keep in mind the future adult that is sitting there on that big wheel tootling down the driveway and getting mud under her fingernails. She’s cute now with pig tails and a skinned knee, but soon, she’s going to be swimming in the big ocean, and she needs to be prepared.

The schools are increasingly being forced to only care about performance on major academic tests. The staff in the school don’t want to, trust me on this, but the system, legislation, and misguided voters are forcing this attitude. We need the parents to keep the children human for us, and not a test taking machine. Parents by their words and actions need to remind the system what we’re really here for, and that is to raise a future adult. Without that reminder, and all the pressure to perform better and better on a test that really only looks at a small slice of what little John is going to need to succeed in the big world, our goals fall way out of whack and John will suffer. If you can’t hold a decent conversation, and you can’t follow basic social conventions it doesn’t matter how good your math is, you won’t get a job.

Parents, you are valuable, you are important, you are the most critical component of the team of people surrounding your child. We need you, your child definitely needs you, and because your child will hopefully be a key player in the world we live in, the world needs YOU.

Be engaged, pay attention, and don’t give up the power and direction of your child’s education to someone else. It doesn’t matter if they are professional teachers, don’t be afraid. You are the lead teacher. You are in the driver’s seat. Drive. Teach.

~Mickey

Using Scaffolding to Create Greater Independence

Photo by Kevin Dooley

Most of us are familiar with scaffolding, it’s the stuff construction crews put up next to buildings as they work so as to make the construction possible. Without scaffolding, it would be impossible to successfully complete the building.

In education we also use scaffolding, but not the metal sort. A man by the name of Lev Vygotsky developed this theory called “The zone of proximal development” ZPD. I’ll describe what this is, then quit using complicated language. I want this to be an easy discourse, not a college lecture.

The ZPD is the distance between what a child, any child, can do on his own with no help, and the next increment of learning that would require some assistance. For example, we have a child that is trying to put on her shoes independently. She can get the shoes on, and she can get the laces pulled tight, but she just can’t get the rest of the tying done without some help. That is the zone of proximal distance, that little gap in ability between needing help, and being independent.

So scaffolding in teaching, much like scaffolding in construction, is the support offered to the little girl so that she can tie her shoes. It’s any support necessary for her to accomplish the task. With children who are visually impaired, we often do “hand over hand” or “hand under hand” where they can ride on the backs of our hands going through the motions, or I can guide their hands through the motions. This is scaffolding.

Most people have no problems with scaffolding, and with many children without disabilities they quickly tell, us the parents or teachers, when they do not want that support anymore. They essentially kick the scaffolding over and say, “I can do it myself!”

This is not often the case with children with disabilities. Children with disabilities are notorious for not saying, “I can do it myself”, instead allowing us to continue supporting the activity, and they seem perfectly happy to let us keep doing this until the end of time. This becomes a problem when we aren’t paying attention.

So much of parenting and teaching happens below the surface, deep down in our minds, the part that’s not even a “mind” anymore, but an instinct driven collection of neurons. We unconsciously respond to the cues given us by our children. When they push for independence, we give them a little more, removing a little more scaffolding. Eventually that child is a “completed” construction project, all scaffolding removed, and standing there all new and shiny, a newly minted adult. I’ve over simplified this process, I realize that, but you get the idea.

With our kids that have disabilities, they don’t fight for independence. Which is what typical kids do instinctively, instead they allow our support, forever. When they don’t fight for independence, that animal brain deep inside our minds, does not get the cues it needs to allow us to back off. It’s a very sneaky, unconscious process.

So what happens when the animal brain doesn’t get the cues it needs? We keep giving the support, and the child never learns to be independent and stand on her own. They NEED the scaffolding forever, and we have a teenager that has the potential to independently brush her teeth now at 17, still having mommy do it for her. That’s the danger. Now, is this young lady on track for entering society in the most independent way possible for her? Our goal as teachers and parents is to create a fully functioning, successful member of society, or as close to that ideal as is within our children’s true potential, not the one society would force on them.

We as parents and teachers must be mindful of this process with our kids. We have to ask ourselves in every interaction we have with our children, “How can I make Sally more independent here?” If you are still giving Sally a bath at 12 years old, could she do anything to add more independence on her part? Instead of tilting her head back for her as you dump water on her head, could you ask her to tilt her head back? Could Sally squeeze out some body wash on the wash cloth for you? Could she even lift her arms so you can wash under her arm pits, rather than you picking her arm up for her?

There are MANY parents that still do this when they have a child entirely capable of bathing themselves. It’s REALLY tough to move what is so much an unconscious process into our mind, I get it, but the consequences of doing it are profound.

Using our hypothetical friend Sally, she could very well be fully bathing herself within a couple of weeks, or months, slowly adding in more pieces that she’s doing for herself. Before you know it, you are sitting on the edge of the tub and she’s doing most of it herself, if not all of it. Then, you are getting the water started and leaving her to it, then you are letting her get the water started, and before you know it, Sally has private bath time, and Mom has private Mom time. You both win. Sounds glorious doesn’t it? It can be that way with a constant question, repeated throughout parenthood so often it becomes a motto. “What can I do to help her be more independent in this instance?” Ask it every day, every moment, every interaction. Sure, time gets in the way sometimes, but if you are always asking yourself that question, you will capitalize on opportunities that would have been just a habit in the past.

You can add scaffolding and remove it when your child really needs it slowly taking as many of those supports away as you can, while your child continues to be successful. Your child can be the beautiful building, the member of society she is meant to be, fulfilling her true potential. Buildings always look better when the scaffolds come down, be mindful of how you use them, and when to remove them, and your child’s independence WILL increase, guaranteed.

I look forward to your comments and questions, lets start a discussion.

~Mickey

The Power of Expectations

photo by orvalrochefort

Whether you think you can or think you can’t— you are right. (Henry Ford)

If talking about students, Henry Ford may also have said, “Whether you think they can, or think they can’t – you are right.” This is as true for “typical” students as it is for students with disabilities. Studies have shown that the expectations of an educator have impact on the performance of students, yet in our world, often people forget this when it comes to a child with a disability.

We see the disability before the child, when really the disability is only a characteristic of that child, not the entire child. The power of expectation cannot be understated.

I often tell parents of my students that its like the fish in the fish tank story. The one where the fish grows to the size of his tank. It’s not true, fish outgrow their tanks all the time, but, children often don’t. Your expectations are the tank surrounding the child, and if you keep the tank small, you’ll get exactly what you are looking for. Raise the expectations up, make them bigger, and you’ll be surprised at what you see.

Often we won’t let our kids show us what they can really do. We fear for their safety, we prevent them from taking risks. They are crying out for a bigger tank, and we as teachers and parents won’t let them. We don’t want them to fail or hurt themselves. The other side of this coin is that if we don’t allow them to fail, we also are keeping them from success.

This morning, I was working with one of my students, a 5 year old, that was just added to my caseload. She is significantly visually impaired, autistic, and unbelievably adorable. She has cerebral palsy that seems to mainly affect her legs. Whenever she misses a drop off that puts her off balance, she immediately goes to all fours and makes these sounds that remind me of the old furbies. “Whoaooo!, woooo!” in this high pitched voice, that sounds just like a Furby. It’s SO cute. She wants to go on all fours when going up stairs and down stairs because she feels more stable, the question I asked myself is, “Does she have to go on all fours, or is it a behavioral habit?” It turns out, with a little prompting and support, our friend can go up the stairs with one hand on a rail. She needs to be reminded not to go down to all fours which is what habit tells her she should do. Now, one session with her won’t fix her situation, but now that I know that ability is in there, you can bet that I will share these higher expectations with everyone that works with her. She’ll grow to fill our fish tank, I’m certain of it.

Can our expectations be too high?? Absolutely, yes. The trouble is, these expectations have to be tempered with realism. A few years ago, I assessed a student that had some major cognitive impairments, was totally blind, and was missing a lot of world concepts. His parents were convinced that he’d grow up and be a sound engineer for Disney. These parents couldn’t see who this kid really was, and the potential he really had without this unrealistic filter clouding their view. Before we can expect real work on the part of the parents, we had to remove this filter, but delicately.

So, how do you adjust these expectations? How do you know when you have high expectations, or that they are too high, or too low? What I have found works for me is coming to the student with an empty mind, free of all expectation. Allow them to show you what they can truly do. For the moment, toss away your emotional connection and bias, and see the child from an objective viewpoint. This is REALLY hard, especially for parents and teachers unused to disability. It is often also hard for teachers that work with disabilities all the time, because there is a tendency to group kids together. A teacher might say, “John is just like this kid Jacob I used to have”, when in fact, John is nothing like Jacob. Sure they may have the same kind of disability and similar personalities, but I’ve yet to see two students that looked identical on paper actually turn out identically in reality. They are always very different, but we have powerful minds that can cover that if we aren’t careful.

So, come to the student with an empty mind, devoid of expectation. Allow yourself to really see what she is doing. Watch with curiosity how she reacts to things in her environment, does she show interest in the same thing as you walk by it every day, can you use that as a teachable moment? Does she seem interested in trying something new? Ask yourself if maybe she can, rather than can’t.

Look at yourself, your reactions, and those of the people she interacts with, and question all of them. Are you appropriately reacting to the child, or your sense of what the child should be? Its delicate, but its very important.

From there, we begin to build on behavior, and uncover ability. This new way of seeing your kids becomes infectious. Without knowing exactly why, other people in her universe will begin to see her as more capable and competent. What they are doing is following your lead. They are unconsciously aligning their expectations with yours. When this happens, you have a wonderful opportunity to really educate.

When you walk around believing in the ability of your students rather than wallowing in their disability, when you start demonstrating success, people want to be a part of it. When everyone is working toward the real growth and potential of your student, you can finally develop his or her full ability.

In my next post I’ll talk about the concept of scaffolding, and shaping behavior, which are magnificent tools for building and creating behavior, and helping it stick. If its not getting too crazy, I’ll also talk about how accommodations should really work for kids with disabilities. Somewhere along the line, we’ll talk about classroom staff, and getting the entire team on board for success. So fun things are coming, if you have anything you’d like to see, leave it in the comments, or email me.

Tell me about your expectations, what success stories do you have? When have you seen the power of expectation at work?

~Mickey