Does your child have dyslexia? Teach him Japanese!

I just read an article in the WSJ on this fascinating topic called Unlocking Dyslexia in Japanese.  In case you can't read it (I know it's subscription only), here's the gist:

A mom noticed that her 12-year old son, who had spent the past two years at a specialized school for kids with learning disabilities, was excelling in one class in particular at his new, mainstream school - Japanese.  Even though he could barely write legible English words, his Japanese characters were sharp and distinct.

Researchers have hypothesized that Japanese and Chinese - both languages where single characters represent entire words or ideas - may be easier for kids with dyslexia to learn.  Kids with dyslexia tend to think visually, and to rely on memorization to get through reading challenges - both skills that serve them well in decoding Japanese and Chinese.  Now, there's no getting around the fact that English-speaking kids with dyslexia are going to need to learn to read in English.  But teachers and developers of curriculum could design reading and writing programs to help develop methodologies that are more effective - working on repetition, memorization, pattern recognition, etc.

I love this story for several reasons.  First, I love that his mom didn't give up on him.  Yes, he was having difficulties in school, but she didn't assume that was irreversible, or somehow his fault.  She kept trying different ideas, and kept believing in him.  Second, the fact that a child with dyslexia may have an advantage in learning Japanese or Chinese characters is just yet another example of how we need to support a variety of brains!  Our kids learn differently because their brains are literally wired differently.  Let's support them, not try to change them.  Third, I'm fascinated by this school that offers instruction in Japanese.  Maybe instead of teaching kids French or Spanish (French being really only useful in restaurants, sorry Parisians), we should be focusing on Japanese or Mandarin Chinese.

And perhaps most importantly, this story shows just how far we have yet to go in understanding neuropsych disorders like dyslexia.  We need more research dollars, we need more creative thinking, and we need to raise awareness that these kids have amazing untapped potential.

Web Accessibility: Advanced Topics II - Copyright

Copyright!  My favorite!  It is the most commonly relied upon, and least understood, intellectual property right that we have in the US.  Everyone thinks that copyright law defends any and all uses of digital media, and that once you buy something (or, heck, rip it online), it's yours.

(Sidebar:  NO!  It's not!  You cannot "borrow" music files from ZenMaster201!  You cannot rip your own ringtones!  Fair use is a BAD defense!!!)

Ok, let's back up, now that I've gotten that out of my system.  For our purposes, here's a very brief summary of copyright law: The author of a original work is entitled to the copyright rights for that work - the right to reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute, and publicly perform the work.  These rights arise from the creation of the work (you don't necessarily have to register the work, or file it, like you would for a patent or federal trademark).  No one can modify your work without a license from you, unless they have a defense.  "Fair use" is such a defense - this is essentially the right to quote an article, or to parody a song, or to make scholarly comment on a book.  It helps your case if you're not commercially profiting from your use of the copyrighted work, and if your use of the work is small in comparison to the work as a whole.

Weekly News Roundup - Frontier flight gone wrong

Hey folks,

Last week's news roundup was pretty weighty, with the Arc's disability supports report, and the WHO's report on international incidence of disability (still plowing through that one myself!).  Nothing quite as big this week, but just one story that reminds me of how much further we have to go in our collective respect for those with disabilities.

Frontier Flight Gone Wrong. This past Sunday, a young man named John Morris who is quadriplegic was not permitted to stay on a Frontier flight from Dallas to Denver because the pilot thought it "unsafe" to permit him to stay.  The excuse was that since he had limited upper body control, it would be unsafe for him to fly.  Nevermind that there was no problem with his flight from Denver to Dallas two days earlier - John had simply used the seat belt extension that the airline carries to secure his chest, and he was traveling with two companions who were quite familiar with his needs.

In the discussion that followed, several passengers overheard Frontier employees saying that company products couldn't be used as medical devices.  (Wha?)  And so these passengers volunteered their own belts or whatever they could to help John.  That was rejected.  Instead, the pilot called the local police!  No really!  The police talked to everyone, concluded it was not a police matter, and told the pilot.  Pilot still refused to take off with John on the plane.   Finally, John and his family left the plane and boarded a later flight.

Repercussions for the pilot?  Zero.  Repercussions for Frontier (so far)?  Zero.

This kind of intolerance is unacceptable.  If you agree, let Frontier know, and vote with your feet.  You can file a complaint here.

Why Attorneys are Helpful (sometimes!)

I recently discovered a study that analyzed outcomes in due process hearings in Illinois, and whether or not outcomes were correlated with the parent having an attorney (the school board always has an attorney).

Dr. Melanie Archer looked at approximately 350 due process hearings in Illinois between 1997-2002.  The first thing to note is the relatively low rate of due process hearings compared to the overall number of children receiving special education services (about 300,000) - that's less than 0.2%.  So the next time a school district attorney complains about how special education is the "next big litigation explosion", take it with a grain of salt.

And then there's the question of outcomes - who wins?  Not the parents!  Parents lose 70% of the time. Twenty hearing officers made between 4 and 28 decisions during this time, with some officers never finding in favor of parents.

Welcome to Holland.

Today, I want to repost an essay I just found by Emily Perl Kingsley.  It seems to be quite well known in the disability community, but it was new to me and I want to share it more broadly.

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I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved


Here's the original link

Weekly News Roundup - Arc Survey, WHO Report, and a TV show with a silly premise

Big news week, actually!  Let's dive right in.

ARC Report on Disability Supports:  The ARC is a great non-profit organization that focuses on improving and supporting the lives of people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (commonly shortened to I/DD).  This week, they released the results of a survey of 5000 individuals with I/DD and their family members about everything from employment and educational opportunities to family and local supports.  The full report is on the ARC website here.

The results were a little discouraging.  While progress has definitely been made - witness the closure of state mental institutions, for one thing - we are falling short in supporting individuals with I/DD.  Here are just some of the reported stats:

• 52% of families reported that their family member with I/DD left school without receiving a high school diploma, including 10% that never finished high school.
• Only 8% report having any college level experience
• 4 out of 10 parents report being dissatisfied with the quality of education their students with I/DD received in primary/middle (40%) or high school (38%).
• 85% of families reported that their adult family members with I/DD were not employed, either part-time or full-time.
• 58% of parents/caregivers report spending more than 40 hours per week providing support for their loved one with I/DD, including 40% spending more than 80 hours a week.
• 1 out of 5 families (20%) report that someone in the family had to quit their job to stay home and support the needs of their family member.
• More than 75% of families report they can’t find afterschool care, non-institutional community services, trained reliable home care providers, summer care, residential, respite and other services.
• 62% of families report that services are being cut in the community, limiting or eliminating access to community life and opportunities for their family member with I/DD.
• One-third (32%) of parents/caregivers report that they are on waiting lists for government funded services, with an average wait of more than five years. They are waiting for personal assistance, respite, housing, therapy, employment supports, transportation and more.

Given this situation, the ARC has issued a call for action to all of us.  We need to publicly support individuals with I/DD - support their inclusion in the community, education, and workplace opportunities.  We need to vote. 

World Health Organization Survey on Disabilities: For the first time since the 1970s, an NGO tried to determine the incidence of disabilities world-wide.  The WHO survey states that about 15% of the world population (about 1 in 7, or, 1 billion people) lives with some kind of disability.  Their disability categories included individuals with difficulties seeing, hearing, walking, remembering, taking care of themselves or communicating. Worldwide, the most common disability in people under the age of 60 is depression, followed by hearing and visual problems.

That's pretty similar to the 1 in 6 figure recently estimated by the CDC.  So while data collection and reporting may be imperfect (especially across international boundaries), at least it seems in the right ballpark.

In the forward to the report, Stephan Hawkings offered the thought that we, society, have a moral obligation to remove barriers to participation for individuals with disabilities.  After all, the chances are that all of us, at some point in our lives, will be disabled, temporarily or otherwise.  (Picture progressive vision or hearing loss; a temporary mobility problem; menopausal memory loss).  I'm not sure we're going to get very far towards social change, however, with a moral argument.

I'm hoping that there are economic or other arguments in the report.  Since it's 350 pages long, I haven't had a chance to fully digest it yet.  I'm sure I'll be posting more about it.

Switched at Birth: Ok, this TV show (on ABC Family) has the worst name, and the silliest premise of pretty much any show on TV right now.  You guessed it - it's about two families where the daughters were (drumroll) switched at birth!  Ugh.  However, it is oddly well done, and the reason I mention it here is that one of the daughters is deaf.  So she and her non-birth-mother-who-raised-her are fluent signers, she goes to a deaf school, and her best friend is deaf.  It's the first time I've ever seen people using sign on TV, and I think it's just great. 

You can download the first two episodes from iTunes for free, if you missed them.

And in personal news, I got my echo LiveScribe pen!  I am so excited to start making audio books for Siobhan.  I will let you know how it works out.

The Montessori Method for Special Needs Kids

From my posts lately, you might be justified in assuming that I think technology will solve every ill in our educational system.  Just to clarify: I don't think it will.  New technologies like e-readers, and the iPad, and the LiveScribe pen *could* change the classroom model, support inclusion and diverse learning styles, and drive a universal design for learning (UDL) approach.  But it will require flexible thinking and a willingness to change the status quo, support from school administrators, and changes to teacher training, both for teachers already on the job and those obtaining their education degrees.

Even without the latest gadgets and toys, however, classrooms can embrace the principles of UDL using a time-honored, well-researched approach - the Montessori Method.  One could almost consider Maria Montessori to be the earliest UDL proponent.  She was an educator, an advocate, and a researcher in children's education, primarily in Italy in the early part of the 20th century.

There are some great on-line resources that explain the Montessori method, which you can check out here and here.  (Which I would recommend you do, because I am not Montessori trained and certainly don't want to misrepresent the program).  Basically, the core idea is respect for the individual child, and her interests, pace of development, and ability to succeed.  A Montessori classroom is organized at the child's level, with appropriately sized worktables and tools (like sinks), and is designed to be a calm, home-like environment.  Montessori materials (or "work") are designed to engage all the senses.  Research has shown that kids who attend Montessori preschools are better prepared, and possibly even ahead of their peers in reading and math skills, for elementary school.

For kids with special needs, though, I think the Montessori approach has particular power.  Here's a non-exhaustive list of attributes of the approach that I think are great for such children: