BSE Bulletin for Educators
Dec 2022
Prior to and after an extended break from school, progress monitoring should be done to determine if progress toward the goal has changed in any way.
If data following a scheduled break show a regression of performance, educators can make a data-informed decision to respond to the learning loss with targeted interventions and remediation strategies that promote the recoupment of skills. The team can also consider this data when determining the need for Extended School Year Services.
For more information on progress monitoring, download this article from the IRIS Center:
How do you accommodate students who don’t celebrate holidays?
Many of our classrooms include students who don’t celebrate, and unfamiliar teachers may not know how to manage this type of situation. Read on to find tips and ideas to guide you in what to do when students don’t celebrate holidays.
- Communicate with parents
- Communicate with other teachers and staff
- Agree on a plan for holidays and birthdays
- Adapt classroom activities when you can
As teachers, we have learned to make accommodations for a variety of student needs. With a little foresight, parent partnering, and planning, we can also respectfully accommodate children in our classrooms who don’t celebrate holidays.
Best practices for making positive phone calls home a manageable, sustainable routine.
Here are seven educator-approved tactics for making positive home outreach—whether by phone, email, or text—an uncomplicated, sustainable, and beneficial practice:
- Ask For Student Input: On the first day of school, give students a survey that includes the question: Who would you like me to call when I have good news to share about how you’re doing in my class?
- Break it Down: Calling families takes time, and you may feel you don’t have a second to spare. The trick is parceling it out and keeping track, teachers say.
- Keep Track: At the start of the school year, create a chart to keep tabs on the types of interactions and contact you have with families.
- Script the Call: Writing a short script for yourself will help keep the call on track and ensure you hit all of the positive observations you’d like to share.
- Align Calls to Classroom Goals: Do you have a student who has been staying after school to get help with new material before a big test? A student showing small improvements on meeting homework deadlines? Any time you see them taking small steps or strides, keep a positive phone call in mind.
- Make it a Schoolwide Effort: At Riverdale Elementary School in Thornton, Colorado, classroom teachers aren’t the only ones making positive phone calls. Principal Kristin Golden collects feedback from teachers about positive student accomplishments, then brings students into the office to celebrate the good news with a call to their family.
- Recognize Small, Quiet Actions: A high grade on an assessment isn’t the only type of achievement that might justify a call home. Keep an eye out for the development of soft skills or quieter, less overt displays of positive behavior, like a student acting as a mediator to a disagreement in group work, pairing up with a lonely peer, or showing empathy to a fellow classmate who is having a rough day. Even a student arriving right on time for class or asking an interesting question during a discussion are great opportunities to celebrate the positives you notice.
Please join us as Dr. Barbara Boone and Hadley Bachman, from the Family Engagement Center at The Ohio State University, present a training session on Tiered Family Engagement.
Learn how to:
- Apply the MTSS model to your family engagement planning.
- Ensure that all families have the opportunity to engage in their children’s education in multiple roles meaningfully.
- Determine decision indicators for increasing opportunities for support and engagement.
- Practice creating and evaluating a plan so that you can confidently apply this process to your own program setting.
You are invited to build connections with other special education personnel across Pennsylvania as you share ideas, engage in problem-solving, and learn from one another.
The following sessions will be offered across the month of December:
- December 2 - Special Education Teachers in the Department of Corrections
- December 6 - School-Based Speech and Language Pathologists
- December 8 - TVIs and O&M Specialists
- December 9 - Speech and Language Clinical Higher Education Leaders
- December 14 - Emotional Support Teachers
- December 15 - School Psychologists and Supervisors of Speech-Language Programs
To register for the session(s), please visit the PaTTAN training calendar.
To learn more about these opportunities and others like them, visit the APR Repository.
Are you a novice special education teacher, administrator, or school psychologist? Would you benefit from being able to have open dialogue around your new role and its many demands with someone who has travelled this career pathway before you? If so, consider joining the APR Mentoring Project.
The APR Mentoring Project continues to accept applications for any Pennsylvania special education teacher, special education administrator, or school psychologist with three or less years of experience in their current position. If you, or someone you know, could benefit from being paired with an experienced mentor for the 2022-2023 school year, you are encouraged to apply. Access the application by using this link: https://fs25.formsite.com/3fHiZQ/mentee22/index.html.
Receive support, ideas, and resources throughout the year from someone who knows special education and has a vested interest in helping you to navigate it all. Contact Christine Moon, APR statewide lead, at cmoon@pattanpgh.net with any questions that you may have about this project.
The Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE) will hold its annual conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA on November 8-10, 2023. This is a tremendous opportunity to learn alongside the nation’s leaders in special education without having to leave Pennsylvania. More information will be available soon on the CASE website.
The PaTTAN Literacy for Low Incidence workgroup is asking for YOUR support in understanding literacy instruction for students with complex learning needs.
The survey (linked below) will ask questions about the current status of reading and writing instruction for your students. The survey information will help PaTTAN develop and provide continued and targeted literacy support for educators and caregivers.
Thank you in advance for all your hard work and for providing us with information that can support students, educators, and families. YOU are making a DIFFERENCE!
8 Signs of Anxiety from Child Mind Institute
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health challenges among children and teenagers. But it can be hard to tell when kids are feeling anxious.
In this video, you'll learn how to spot these 8 signs of anxiety:
- Worrying
- Avoiding situation and participation
- Difficulty concentrating
- Trouble sleeping
- Disruptive behavior
- Clinging to parents
- Being hard on themselves
- Physical symptoms
There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago.
Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, and an education system upended.
The mission of the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network (PaTTAN) is to support the efforts and initiatives of the Bureau of Special Education, and to build the capacity of local educational agencies to serve students who receive special education services.