Teaching Science to Special Education Students: A Reflection

by Sandrine Colson-Inam, Ph.D.
Beacon High School

When I started teaching science to special-ed students, in addition to learning how to understand disabilities, I had the challenge of developing a science curriculum that would fit their emotional and learning needs. As many teachers know, teaching science to all students can be difficult enough, without additional challenges.

Skills required to learn science include reading and writing, the translation of word problems into mathematical equations, and the development of a wide range problem-solving techniques that involve mathematical manipulation. Science students must also record data in an organized format so they and others can decipher the clues presented in various data tables and equations, identify emerging patterns, and draw conclusions.

Clear visual representation of data in the form of graphs facilitates the analytical reasoning that allows a student to make sense out of these graphs and organize his or her findings into a formatted lab report. To support the scientific conclusions that emerge from applying these processes to solving problems, students must also develop supportive arguments through critical thinking.

In addition to this formidable list, we also ask students to memorize mathematical formulas, scientific laws and processes, and specialized vocabulary, in part to help them pass standardized tests. These time-limited evaluations require memorization, intense short-term focus, and a very high level of concentration, skills that an ADD/ADHD student or a student with executive functioning issues can find very challenging.

These tests sometimes do not take into account that, with the increasing use of Internet for finding or identifying educational information, memorization may be becoming increasingly obsolete: the capacity for critical thinking may well prove far more valuable to students than the bits of information they struggled to memorize.

We also ask students to complete and remember multi-step processes independently with minimal instructional support. Many students including those with emotional challenges—want to know the meaning of things and the underlying connections that give them their value. In the classroom, we are sometimes unable to spend enough time explaining where things come from or why they are relevant to the student’s life because of the amount of curriculum content needed to be covered to satisfy standardized science curricula.

There are many different types of disabilities, usually categorized as Learning Disabilities (LD) or Emotional Disabilities (ED). Very often, students struggle with a combination of several disabilities, making our job as educators much more challenging. For students I have encountered who struggle with serious disorders (NLVD, ED, AD, ADD/ADHD, depressive, perfectionists, executive functioning, and others), acquiring one or all of these “science” skills is like climbing Mount Everest. The students are lost, they don’t know the surroundings, they don’t speak the language. They can’t find any clues to help them climb because they don’t know where to look. They don’t know where to begin, and they are not convinced that it is worth trying. This strange new landscape does not seem relevant to their lives. And even if they manage to start climbing, it may be impossible to make it to the summit so why try?

Although there are many resources I found to help teach special-ed students, I did not find many that specifically addressed the teaching of science to LD and especially ED students. Wouldn’t it be convenient, I thought, to have an online community for special education science teachers and other educators to exchange ideas, activities and resources? With the goal of helping new teachers and existing ones improve their “bag of tricks” and excite our classrooms. ASSET, the Association of Science Special Education Teachers was born.

Our ongoing challenge as special needs science educators is to navigate the maze of mental, medical, physical, genetic, and environmentally caused disabilities presented in our classrooms and teach scientific knowledge and skills to our students. This job becomes easier when we help each other by sharing what we know so one can learn, grow, and help our students be the best scientists they can be. Who knows? We may inspire careers!

To learn more about ASSET, visit http://www.spedscience.com/ and to join our community, visit http://spedscienceasset.ning.com/ . All teachers, education and special needs professionals are welcome and encouraged to participate.

Therapeutic Crisis Intervention training for families at Walker

Josh Lechter, assistant director of child care for the Community-Based Acute Treatment program at Walker, has written a paper featured in the most recent issue of Refocus, the Residential Child Care Project newsletter published by Cornell University.

His paper, Using TCI’s Family Care Provider Training To Break Down Language Barriers Between Residential Treatment and Life at Home, discusses the success of a new initiative at Walker to share therapeutic crisis intervention training and techniques with the families of Walker students.

Therapeutic Crisis Intervention For Family Care Providers (TCIF) is a curriculum-based class adapted from the same crisis prevention and behavior management skills taught to The Walker School staff. Developed by the The Family Life Development Center at Cornell University, the 5-day course involves modeling and role playing to familiarize family members with strategies and techniques for deescalating problems and emotionally volatile situations with their children at home. According to the developers at Cornell, Walker is the first organization to offer TCIF training to the families of children with serious emotional and behavior issues.

Judging from the enthusiastic response of participating families, the availability of this specialized training for parents and caregivers will help to improve the likelihood of a child’s successful transition from residential treatment to home and community. In the paper, Lechter recounts the comments of several grateful parents, including one who said, “the course was a blessing.  I now do not feel alone in helping my children with their mental health needs.”

You can read the paper in volume 14 of Refocus.

Walker Partnerships professional expertise featured at Boston-area education conferences

This coming weekend, Dr. James Earley, managing director of Walker Partnerships, will help to extend the influence of Walker to our professional partners as he shares his special education program development expertise at two area conferences.

On Friday, Dr. Earley will be at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Programs in Professional Education 24th Annual Learning Differences Conference, where he will participate on a panel discussing challenges faced by special education programs. Along with Dr. Stephen Gould, Patricia Sclafani-Hinkley, and Kathleen Fucci, Dr. Earley will contribute to the panel discussion “Overcoming the Separation Between General and Special Education.” With the help of expertise like that developed by Walker Partnerships, the conference will seek to address the problem of providing differentiated instruction to effectively teach all students in our public schools.

On Saturday, Dr. Earley will present the keynote address at the Perkins School For the Blind’s second annual conference Envision the Future…Transition from School to Adult Life. His address, “Building Partnerships towards a Successful Transition” will draw from his extensive work with Walker Partnerships to develop programs with strong transitional support for students with special needs and unique challenges. This expertise is highly relevant to Perkins students and families facing difficult transitions from intensive and highly structured programs to more independent programs that integrate community-based services.

Animal-assisted therapy finds a home at Walker

The newest employee at Walker is only four years old, but she is already making important contributions in the lives of some troubled children. Meet Nya. She’s part Labrador retriever, part poodle, and part expressive therapist.

Nya’s owner, Beth Silvestri-O’Neil, has long been one of Walker’s pioneers. She brought expressive therapy to Walker more than three decades ago, when it was still a brand new field and mostly unknown outside academia. Her commitment to helping troubled children find new ways to express themselves and understand their emotional challenges has led to the newest therapeutic program at Walker: animal-assisted therapy.

Offered as part of the expressive arts therapy program, animal-assisted therapy (AAT) allows children to interact with a specially trained pet and share their thoughts and feelings in a safe, nurturing, and fun environment while they develop responsibility and empathy.

Children chosen for the AAT program are typically struggling with the lasting effects of trauma, often the result of abuse or neglect. AAT promotes improved self-regulation and stress management strategies and seeks to decrease aggressive and acting-out behaviors. “Spending time with Nya has given some kids new access to their feelings in ways that are very different from more traditional therapies,” says Beth.

Working with animals for therapeutic benefit is not entirely new at Walker; for the past decade, some Walker students have participated in “Bootstraps”, an off-campus horseback riding program with similar goals. But Nya, who has been certified by the Delta Society for therapeutic work, is the first four-legged member of the Walker Needham campus community since its days as a dairy farm in the early part of the last century.

So far, the initial response has been very encouraging. The AAT program serves five students, but Beth would like to expand the program to serve more children–an idea that is just fine with Nya. “The kids love her,” adds Beth. “And the feeling is mutual.”

(republished from the October 2008 printed issue of Walker Talk)

New legislation would improve the safety of residential programs

This week the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation to protect teenagers attending residential programs from physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Approved with strong bipartisan support, the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2009 (H.R. 911) will also increase transparency to help parents make safe choices when evaluating residential treatment options for their children.

Last April, Walker medical director Dr. Christopher Bellonci was invited to offer expert testimony in Washington at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Education and Labor. He cautioned against programs that isolate children and adolescents from their families for supposed therapeutic benefit, noting that “the research in residential treatment consistently shows that the processes and outcomes of care improve in correlation with the degree of family involvement.”

While Walker does not provide residential treatment to teens, we strongly support these new measures to ensure the safety of all children and adolescents in residential programs.  You can read more about the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2009 here.

A compass for navigating children’s mental health services

Walker medical director Dr. Christopher Bellonci was recently quoted in the New York Times opinion pages blog “Domestic Disturbances”  by author Judith Warner. The post, “Children in the Mental Health Void” describes the recent crisis in Nebraska that resulted in parents of severely troubled children abandoning them under the state’s “Safe Haven” law.

Warner’s conclusion, which will come as no surprise to many in the Walker community, is “this problem of lack of access to care—and lack of access to truly good care—is the real mental health ‘epidemic’ affecting children in our time.”

Dr. Bellonci mentions the desperate measures taken by some familes—sometimes even the surrendering of parental custody—to find help for their children. Describing their search for services that often do not exist as a “navigation to nowhere,” Warner notes that “it’s really in our interest to provide them with a compass. “

Another example of Walker’s “spread of effect”, we are proud to acknowledge Dr. Bellonci’s leadership role in advocacy on behalf of children and families facing serious challenges.  You can read the whole article here.