Jeff Pino Christmass 2013

For Jeff Pino

Honoring Sandy Hook

Sage King 20 Little Angels

Focus

Focus and Autism. 

IQ's Corner: Psychometric taxonomic models of intelligence: A visual tour from g to CHC

IQ's Corner: Psychometric taxonomic models of intelligence: A visual tour from g to CHC

DS Advocate: Investigation into California Special Education ~ Denying & Delaying Services is happening across the Country!

This happens all of the time. Thank you for finding and posting this!

DS Advocate: Investigation into California Special Education ~ Denying & Delaying Services is happening across the Country!

Sage King

Sage King

Sage is only 16 but he sounds really awesome! Not the best video but listen to him rock. So glad we're friends with his parents! Thanks for inviting us out to the Italian Villa.

Classroom Games and Technology: Music Creation in the Classroom

Classroom Games and Technology: Music Creation in the Classroom: Music has always been a huge part of my personal life and over the past school year I saw firsthand how it can motivate students in school...

Experts & NewBIEs | Bloggers on Project Based Learning: Project Based Learning vs. Problem Based Learning ...

Experts & NewBIEs | Bloggers on Project Based Learning: Project Based Learning vs. Problem Based Learning ...: By John Larmer , BIE Editor in Chief At the Buck Institute for Education, we’ve been keeping a list of the many types of “_____ - based ...

The Reason I Jump Daily Show Interview

This was an interesting interview with David Mitchell and Jon Stewart about the book "The Reason I Jump." There has been some negative commentary about the efficacy of facilitated communication as well as the translation from Japanese. However, it seems to have provided hope and understanding to both Mitchell and Stewart. It is possible that it will do the same to countless others.

The Catcher in the Rye: The Need for Appropriate Mental Health Services and Social Connections for Children

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, was required reading for my tenth grade English class. I remembered it as a story about the struggles of adolescence, the yearning for independence, and the reluctance to let go of youth. My son is now about the same age as I was when I read the book and we are living through his own nudge for independence, which sparked my interest to give the story another read. Before I began, I wondered what my take on the book would be at this point in life having survived adolescence and received training and experience in child development in addition to having a teen in the house. This reading accentuated the unresolved grief, family dysfunction, mental illness, and lack of social connectedness of the main character, Holden Caulfield, and how these difficulties exacerbate the issues experienced during the typical maturational process. As the country still debates gun control laws in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, and as we try to recover from the Boston Marathon bombing, The Catcher in the Rye reminds us about the importance of developing meaningful and genuine connections with our children and the need to address their mental health issues.

The Catcher in the Rye begins as a flashback story about Holden Caulfield’s experiences leading up to his nervous breakdown prior to Christmas. Holden narrates the story while receiving inpatient psychological treatment on the west coast. The events begin at Pencey Prep in Pennsylvania, where Holden has been expelled due to poor academic performance, and conclude in New York City as Holden attempts to return home. During the course of his journey, Holden attempts to make connections with a number of people however, he fails miserably due to his social ineptitude, lack of appropriate treatment for what may possibly be bipolar disorder, and inability to believe that other people are capable of being genuine. Holden eventually makes it home and connects with his younger sister. By that time he has decompensated to the point that, even though he is no longer experiencing suicidal ideations, he feels disconnected, misunderstood, and alone. Holden decides that he is going to go away, to escape from society and the rejection, the loneliness, and the pain that he feels. However, Holden makes one last trip to see his sister Phoebe before he disappears. Phoebe’s caring, anger, and innocence provide Holden with the connection he is looking for; she is both a peer and dependent to him. Through Phoebe, Holden is able to cling to his childhood and put off making the leap to young adulthood and independence.

One theme that I was more attuned to during this reading was the unspoken dysfunction of the Caulfield family. Holden frequently compares himself to his younger, deceased brother, whom he describes as brilliant and athletic, as well as his older brother, who has become a successful author. It is suggested that Holden is a challenging child, and somewhat of a disappointment to his parents as he has been unable to live up to their expectations. He has been expelled from at least four preparatory schools due to poor academic performance, he has difficulty socially connecting with others, and he has frequent mood swings. It is possible that Holden’s parents were drained from watching their youngest son battle with leukemia which left them with little strength to effectively deal with Holden’s grief and potential disability. In Holden’s eyes, they appear to have emotionally and physically divested themselves from him. He has little to no emotional family support and what appears to be very little communication with them. Holden is left adrift to navigate this tumultuous time in his life without support, understanding, and treatment. His efforts to reach out and communicate, including failing out of schools and getting into fights, are not understood as cries for help but are seen as personal shortcomings.

Holden perceives most people as being phony, superficial, and hypercritical. This may in part be due to his social awkwardness, lack of maturity, and feeling of being abandoned by his parents. He is continuously let down by everyone that he reaches out to for help as they either don’t live up to what Holden has built up in his mind, or they try to take advantage of him. Therefore, Holden comes to believe that everyone is phony who doesn’t or is incapable of meeting his preconceived expectations. In addition, Holden clearly experiences moments of mania during the story, which are often followed by feelings of sadness to the point where he does express some suicidal thoughts. It seems that the lack of communication with his parents, the unresolved grief and guilt over the death of his brother, and the inability to effectively and appropriately connect with others result in Holden being unable to interact with others on anything but a superficial level. The exception to this is Phoebe. Her reluctance to let her brother leave provides Holden with the strength to go home and ask for help. However, in the end, Holden continues to suffer from a lack of love and feelings of loneliness. He states, “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” At this point, Holden continues to find it difficult to have genuine, meaningful relationships believing that when you open up to people that they will turn away from you in order to keep the relationship on a superficial level. Holden continues to be plagued by this emotional void and, while there is a hunger for social connectedness, he will continue to experience emptiness and rejection due to his quirkiness.

For me, reading The Catcher in the Rye in high school highlighted the struggle for independence and Holden’s war on hypocrisy. On this reading, I was able to obtain a better understanding of the tragedy that occurs as a result of Holden’s parents being unable to provide him the emotional support that he needs to overcome his brother’s death and deal with his mental health needs. Holden’s repeated failure to socially connect and develop a meaningful relationship with anyone other than his sister and the lack of treatment for his mental health issues made me think of the recent tragedies in Colorado, Sandy Hook, and Boston. It reinforced the need to take mental health needs and services seriously; just because these conditions are unseen doesn’t mean that they aren’t debilitating. Feeling cared for and connected to others reduces the stress, stigma, and isolation that are associated with these conditions. It made me wonder whether these tragedies could have been avoided if the people involved had received appropriate therapy and treatment. They may have felt connected and accepted, and these tragedies may have been avoided. The message of being accepted and cared for from The Catcher in the Rye continues to be relevant to young people today as we all strive for acceptance.

How to Teach Things to Preschool Children

How to Teach Things to Preschool Children

As adults, we often think of play in terms of fun and relaxation, or we trivialize it as a waste of time because it doesn't seem to accomplish anything. However, play is a primary way for young children to learn. Through play, young children learn about social relationships, social skills, self-control, the physical environment, thinking, and language. Allowing preschoolers time to play, guiding some play activities, and providing them with different objects, people, and situations to interact with promotes learning and future school success.

Play helps young children test out their ideas about the world, build the skills necessary for critical thinking, learn to solve problems, and it helps them feel good about their ability to learn. Self-directed, pretend play helps develop abstract thinking and to view situations from another person's perspective. These are all skills necessary for school and life success.

This translates to: Young children learn by observation and doing. Therefore, if you want to teach something to a preschooler, give her the opportunity to observe, experiment, and replicate.

Young children are motivated by their own interests. You can use these interests to direct their learning by choosing appropriate activities for them.

Social skills

Learning about social skills is often underrated. However, without appropriate social skills elementary aged children have a difficult time adjusting to classroom routines, following directions, and interacting with peers in school. Teaching social skills begins at home. Children observe parents, siblings, and other people who come into contact with them. They imitate these observed behaviors, and the behaviors are often transferred to their pretend play. When children take turns playing with toys, negotiate the rules to games, or try to enforce the rules, they are learning about social skills.

When young children say that their friend or toy feels a certain way they are developing perspective taking by seeing events from another person's point of view. This is important as it helps develop empathy and understanding.

Other social skills that are often observed during young children's play activities include saying "please" and "thank you," asking for help, listening appropriately, offering assistance, and sharing. These skills can be taught through everyday activities and reinforced when they are observed. Often, these concepts are introduced or observed in children's literature. Pointing them out when reading to children further reinforces their development.

Language

During play, preschool aged children use their language to tell stories and understand the stories that other children tell. This is important for the development of reading and writing skills in elementary school. Language skills can be taught by offering children opportunities to tell stories about their experiences and play activities, to take part in make believe play, and to listen to stories. An excellent place to teach social skills and practice language skills is around the dinner table. Dinner is typically a social event and it provides a very good arena to practice and teach skills to young children.

Thinking

Playtime with peers is not going to be without conflict. Young children learn problem solving and conflict resolution during these situations which helps with the development of thinking skills. Pretend play allows for children to develop abstract thinking skills. When they use different objects to represent another item, such as a pot for a drum, then they are learning that one object can represent something else. This is the beginnings of abstract thinking. It will serve them well later on when they are taught that letters represent sounds and numbers represent quantity.

I didn't touch upon physical or sensory learning but they are also important types of activities for teaching children. What is important it that young children are offered as many age appropriate real life experiences as possible in order to learn new skills. Young children need to try things, to observe, and practice, and experiment with other children and their environment. In order to teach them things, you need to let them play.

specialedterms

Some terms one may encounter in special education.

Blizzard Nemo

About 30 inches of snow in one shot. It's nice to see Mother Nature back in action! Only about 8 hours of shoveling.

Depth

One of my favorite pictures and sayings. We are often so quick to rush to judgment after hearing only one side of a story. Most have two or more sides that you never get to hear. It is hard to keep an open mind when all you're interested in is the tip of the iceberg.We all have unseen depth.

The Eagle

Bald Eagle
Stone Zoo