how to improve IEP's

The problem is public schools have their way of doing things and everything else is essentially off limits or disregarded. In a one-size-fits-all model, recognizing different learning styles and using brain-training and educational coaching to improve a child's ability to learn are simply not recognized.

Understanding a child's learning style and teaching them HOW to learn, is key to their improvement.

ps: I'm NOT talking about the outdated learning style model (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). I'm referring to a new model that uses 4 distinct learning styles, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Schools need to STOP trying to change children into something they are not. They need to STOP teaching to a child's weaknesses. They need to understand and appreciate a child's strengths.

Here's an example: A child is identified as having ADHD (possibly Dyslexia). Everyone's talking about what he can't do. He can't focus. He can't pay attention. He can't retain what he reads (probably mis-read and poor comprehension). EVERYONE is focused on what he can't do.

That same child probably has exceptional puzzle-solving skills and pattern recognition. He has amazing visual-spatial acuity, IF he can be taught to use it. With brain-training and some stress-reduction exercises, he could be taught to focus. If taught to read and spell visually rather than auditorally, he can memorize anything. given simple strategies to organize his thoughts, he can be an amazing writer.

Hope that helps.
swish4fish

The Animal School

Once upon a time, all the animals got together and decided that they must do something to prepare their young to face the challenges of the world, and so they organized a school. They adopted a curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying. And to make sure all animals were competent in all of the important skills, all the animal children had to take all of the subjects.

Duck was an excellent swimmer, better in fact than his instructor, and made passing grades in flying, but he was very poor in running. Because he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also spend less time swimming, in order to spend more time practicing his running. This was continued until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But, average was acceptable in the new animal school, so nobody worried about that except the Duck.

Rabbit started at the top of her class in running, but later she had a nervous breakdown because of so much make-up work in swimming.

Squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in flying class, where his teacher made him start from down on the ground instead of from up in the treetops. His feelings of frustration spilled over into all his other classes and he ended up with a C in climbing and a D in running.

The newest student in the school was a strange animal called the Snakehead fish. He was very different from the other animals and often felt out of place.

At first he struggled and was behind in almost every subject. But by the end of the year the Snakehead fish, which could swim well and climb trees and also walk on land, was the number one student in the entire school and was voted valedictorian of his class.

What is called, "Thinking" -- Heidegger

People still hold the view that what is handed down to us by tradition is what in reality lies behind us, while in fact, it comes toward us because we are its captives, and destined to it. The purely historical view of tradition and the course of history is one of those vast self-deceptions in which we must remain entangled as long as we’re still not really thinking.

That self-deception about history prevents us from hearing the language of the thinkers. We do not hear it rightly because we take than language to be mere expression—setting forth the thinker’s views, but the thinker’s language tells what is. To hear it is in no case easy. Hearing it presupposes we meet certain requirements and we do so only on rare occasions.

[To hear the language of the thinkers,] we must acknowledge and respect it. To acknowledge and respect consists of letting every thinker’s thoughts come to us with something, in each case, unique, never to by repeated, inexhaustible and being shaken to the depths by what is un-though in his thought. What is un-thought in a thinker’s thought is not a lack inherent in his thought. What is un-thought in a thinker’s thought is there, in each case only as the un-thought.

The more original the thinking, the richer will be what is un-thought in it. The un-thought is the greatest gift that thinking can bestow. But to the common places of sound common sense, what is un-thought in any thinking always remains merely the incomprehensible, and to the common comprehension, the incomprehensible is never an occasion to stop and look at its own powers of comprehension, still less to notice its limitations.

To the common comprehension, what is incomprehensible remains forever merely offensive. Proof enough that such comprehension, which is convinced that it was born comprehending everything, that it is now being imposed upon with untruth and sham.
The one thing which sound common sense is least capable, is acknowledgment and respect. For acknowledgment and respect call for a readiness to let our own attempts at thinking be overturned again and again by what is un-thought in the thinker’s thought.

There are Four Communication Styles (and they're not what you think).

Anyone involved with communication or education has had the 3 communication styles drilled into them--Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. We routinely talk about people being visual or auditory thinkers.

While this model has proven helpful in some areas of communication, it is at best, an over-simplification of a complex process and with respect to education (a critical aspect of communication). Research now shows that the Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic model of teaching/learning to be completely ineffective and in many cases has actually impeded effective learning for many children and adults.

After spending the last six years deconstructing how children communicate, learn and process information, the model of learning and communication that I have identified more closely resembles the four Greek Temperents: Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholic and Phlegmatic.

The model is based on two sets of opposing thought processes: Visual vs. Auditory and Logical vs. Kinesthetic. Each set can be though of as a continuum or spectrum from one extreme to another. It should be noted that we, as human beings are a collection of all four processes, however far we may lean to one side of the spectrum.

So the four "new" communication or learning styles are: Visual-Kinsethetic (Sanguine), Visual-Logical (Choleric), Auditory-Kinesthetic (Melancholic), and Auditory-Logical (Phlegmatic). See image.

For fun and clarity, I've also correlated these four communication/learning styles to the four main characters in Winnie the Pooh. The Choleric is Rabbit. The Sanguine is, of course, Tigger. The Melancholic is Eeyore. And the thoughtful Phlegmatic is Pooh. Lastly, for those familiar with the Meyers-Briggs meta-programs, I have included their approximate location in the model as well.

For help with communication and learning, visit our web site, http://www.swish4fish.com

PDD-NOS the Un-Diagnosis

To me, the PDD-NOS is a perfect example of what is wrong with the medical and educational communities, particularly, when it comes to Autistic Spectrum and Developmental Spectrum disorders. You just have to read the name to get it...
Pervasive
Developmental
Disorder...
NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.

PDD-NOS is not a DIAGNOSIS. It's a NON-diagnosis--an Un-Diagnosis. It simply states that if you are kind of like these guys over here and these people over there, but you don't actually fit into any of the artificial boxes that we've created to fit these and those people into, then here's a catch-all box to put all the left-over people into.

It's like the odd-sizes bin at Walmart. Well, these pants don't match any of the REAL sizes so we'll invent this new 'size' called, "Not Otherwise Specified" and any pants that we can't fit into the real boxes will all get put into the Not Otherwise Specified box. It really is my favorite so-called disorder in the DSM.

And this comment is not about the children or the parents or even the doctors. It is about a system which passed itself off as science when it is little more than an attempt to overlay a system of arbitrary divisions to something which effectively has no divisions--it is a continuous spectrum, be it the Autistic Spectrum or PDD Spectrum. We're talking about a spectrum of behaviors that IMHO does not lend itself to these divisions.

No where in the DSM does it indicate what the source of those behaviors might be. A diagnosis tells you nothing about the source of the child's struggles, nor does it tell you what a child's strength are. No where in the entire DSM does it talk about the gifts an Autistic child or PDD child might have--no where.

I can't speak to other interventions, but I have NEVER, EVER found any help for a child by looking at what was WRONG with the child. Whether ADHD, Autistic, SPD, APD, or PDD-NOS, virtually all the progress I have ever made with a child is focusing on their natural strengths and abilities. That is just my take on it. http://www.swish4fish.com

Why Public Schools are Failing

One the fundamental presuppositions of our current educational system is that key to educating a heterogeneous population is to 'improve' (modify) the curriculum and/or teaching methods to presumably include as many children as possible.

IMHO, this is a false presumption and our current 'institutional' model of educating our children is outdated and obsolete. It is based on a one-size-fits-all, assembly line technology that was developed to enable factories to mass-produce cars, dishwashers and hamburgers in a cost-effective manner.

The first problem with this model is that Children are not one-size-fits-all. And as we place more and more academic demands on our children presumably to compete effectively in a post-industrial economy, the more children fail to succeed in this on-size-fits-all institutional model.

The second problem with the model is that the teaching model is no longer cost effective. The time, energy and money required to remediate, accommodate and otherwise ameliorate the ever-increasing academic struggles and failings of our current student population (not to mention the social cost of these failing students) is growing at a staggering rate (more that 24% of K-12 students are experiencing significant struggles in one or more areas.

If we are to move forward and deliver to our children the education that they need to succeed in the 21st century, post-industrial age, we must get the focus off the institution, and back on to the children--not as members of a group , but as unique individuals. We must acknowledge or at least consider that unless each individual child is taught to learn effectively using his or her unique combination of skills and abilities, he (or she) will never live up to his (or her) potential. Any future success will subsequently be limited.


Therefore, unless we are willing to consider a radical change and a fundamental shift in our presuppositions about what education and learning is, our educational system will, according to the current trend, continue to fail even more and more children.

What can be done? IMHO, it is not the teachers who need more skills to teach. It is the children who need the skills to learn. If the answer is so easy and obvious, then why aren't we doing this already?

I think one answer is simply that the nature of any organization or institution is to survive and grow. In our culture, that means more clients, bigger budgets and lower costs. In our institution of public education, that means more students, larger classrooms and problems that only licensed (unionized) teachers can solve.

Consider, what would happen to our schools if students could receive the same or better education by first 'learning to learn' using their natural gifts, and second, receiving individualized instruction at home and via the internet?

There is already a great deal of evidence to suggest that many students will assimilate the same information in one-half to one-quarter of the time given the skills to learn and an individualized, self-paced online curriculum.

If this model were to grow, these huge institutions called schools would no longer be needed. The teachers and administrators who 'run the factory' would be no more needed than an auto worker in Flint, Michigan (a nod to Roger More). All the publishers of the ever-changing text books would also no longer be needed.

I'm not suggesting that every parent pull their child from public school. But I am suggesting that armed with a set of 'Essential Learning Skills', virtually any child can succeed in any school, with any teacher and any curriculum.

At the NLC, we offer parents and children the opportunity to acquire those 16 Essential Learning Skills in as little as 14 days. Visit us at http://www.swish4fish.com and download our free booklet on Understanding Learning styles and Strategies.