Yeah, yeah...

I got a rather nasty email from Sean earlier today saying that I should update. Here's the deal - I'll update if you comment. And don't pretend you're not out there reading this! I have a site tracker and I see that lots of people read this thing. I better get a few comments from this post and the next ones.

Today I applied for NINE positions. Go me! Most of them are special ed positions and a few are elementary. One in particular caught my eye because it's almost exactly the same thing I'm doing now - 50% special ed and 50% kindergarten. I think I might have a shot at that one. I'll be really disappointed if I don't even get an interview out of one of these jobs. I mean, REALLY. This job hunt thing is getting ridiculous.

I discovered the joys of facebook. What a terrible invention. Thankfully I was only addicted for just under a week and now I'm back to checking it once a day just to see what other people are up to. I figure that if I didn't keep in contact with my "friends" before, why should I now just because I have a facebook account? I must admit that it was kind of nice reconnecting with some old childhood friends but I'm not going to suddenly become buddy-buddy with everyone again just because we're "friends" online. Not to be cynical or anything.

On a more serious note, I'm absolutely in love with the textbook for my new class, Overview of Learning Disabilities. I can't remember the last time I could hardly put a textbook down; seriously, it's fascinating. The book is called "A Mind at a Time" and it's by Mel Levine. He talks about the 8 neurodevelopmental systems that enable people to acquire certain abilities (attention control, social thinking, higher thinking, motor, sequential ordering, spatial ordering, language and memory). Everyone has better skills in certain systems, just as everyone lacks skills in other systems.

Levine's perspective on K-12 education made me realize how tough school is for some kids. He points out that when we choose a career/vocation, our decisions usually reflect our strengths rather than our deficits. For instance, my motor system is much weaker than my language skills, so I would never choose to become a professional athlete. Yet in our schools we expect students to master every neurodevelopmental system. Is this fair? I don't think so. Why should a student who struggles in attention control be made to feel like he/she is a failure or a "bad" child just because his/her brain hasn't developed in such a way that success is possible in that area?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't expect students to sit reasonably quietly in class or give their best efforts in all areas of their life. Now that we have this information on how the brain works, we don't have any excuse to not use this information to teach to each student's needs. If we know that a student lacks appropriate memory skills, we should be teaching specific memory techniques that will enable that student to be more successful. This isn't to say that they will be able to memorize a phone book or suddenly develop an amazing memory, but educators should at least give the students the experiences necessary to develop each system to their maximum potential.

Having this information shouldn't provide us with excuses as to why a student isn't succeeding - it should enable us to help that student to gain the best skills he/she can. I've never wanted to read ahead in a class more than I have in this one; I'm glad, because if I feel so passionate about a topic like this then it obviously means I'm on the right track by working on my special ed certificate.