SpEd

Cautionary Tale - Avoid learned helplessness at all costs: Broken Escalator Video

Useful Websites

The Center for Literacy and Disability Studies

http://www.med.unc.edu/ahs/clds/index.html

David Koppenhaver’s Personal Website
http://www.gac.edu/~dkoppenh

Koppenhaver, an education professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in

Minnesota is a pioneer in the area of literacy and disability. His website includes several useful links to articles, resources, and research. 

Currents in Literacy
http://www.lesley.edu/academic_centers/hood/currentshome.html

The Center’s mission is to promote literacy learning and use for individuals of all ages with disabilities. It is the belief of the CLDS that disabilities are only one of many factors that influence an individual ability to learn to read and write and to use print throughout their life and across their living environments. 

*Paula Kluth’s Personal Website:  www.paulakluth.com

Beautiful and powerful obituary written about a son with a mental illness:

From the time he was a very little boy, ____ demonstrated a unique sensitivity, a deep caring for others' welfare and desire to please. As an adult ___ lived a mostly itinerant lifestyle, though he deeply longed for a “normal“ life with “normal“ familial and societal ties. He tried desperately, and to the best of his ability, to achieve this. ____ was exceptionally intelligent, which was evident from his earliest years, where he was at and above the 90th percentile in all areas of intellect and physical skills.
Being a chef was a dream of his, and he attended school with great courage for as long as he could sustain. He taught himself .... He loved his sisters and brothers with all of his heart and expressed heartfelt wishes for their happiness.
___ succumbed to an invisible yet insidious disorder. He suffered for most of his life from the ravages of a physically transparent disease. His mental disorder, as deadly as any cancer, is a disease of perception and of thoughts that can cause unimaginable emotional and mental pain.
We have long grieved the loss of what we would have had for him: a happy, useful and successful life. We miss him terribly. May the honesty in this obituary take away some of the silent struggles against shame and blame from even one family suffering in silence out there. There are those who understand.