Rigor for Students with Special Needs

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program my good friend, Dr. Barbara Blackburn. Barbara is the author of more than 35 books and is a full-time consultant who works with schools around the world to help them raise the level of rigor and motivation for professional educators and students alike. Dr. Blackburn has been repeatedly named to the top 30 education gurus by Global Gurus, and she is the author with Bradley Witzel of Rigor for Students with Special Needs, the second edition of which we're here to talk about today.

[00:44] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:46] SPEAKER_01:

Barbara, welcome back.

[00:48] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, it is always so much fun to be here with you, so thank you for having me back.

[00:52] SPEAKER_01:

Well, likewise, and I'm excited to talk about this book because I feel like a lot of people might just naturally assume that this book could not exist. Rigor for Students with Special Needs. There's this perception out there that rigor and special needs are kind of opposites. That, you know, you have students who need rigor and you have students who have special needs and near the twain shall meet. Take us into why that is a misconception and why it actually is possible to have rigorous expectations and rigorous learning for students with special needs.

[01:22] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm going to back up and tell you how the book came about, because Brad and I were colleagues at Winthrop University. Oh my gosh, now I don't want to think about how long ago. The number one question, I would come back to campus, and he would say, how'd your workshop go? And I'd say, gosh, I got all these questions about special needs students. And I said, I don't understand why people don't get the fact that you can have rigor for students with special needs. And he said, oh, I totally agree.

[01:47]

And his specialty is special needs. So we had this great conversation, and we said, we need to write a book. So, ultimately, we wrote the first edition, and then a few years ago, we wanted to expand it. We felt like that there were a lot of new strategies, there was a lot of new information, so that's where the second edition came from. My work is informed not only by him, but by my work with students with special needs. I taught struggling students, and many of them today would be labeled as special needs.

[02:16]

They were not at the time because we didn't know enough to do that. And so what I found was... that if all I did was lower expectations, then they just lowered right along with it. They would live down to those expectations.

[02:28]

But if I would expect more and provide the right support, then they would rise up. Maybe not as high as I would like them to, but they would get there sooner or later. And when I talked with Brad, he said the same thing. And one of the things that he talked about that really resonated with me was he said that the majority of students with special needs are learning disabled, and that learning disabled students, most of them are at or above average intelligence, so it's not a matter of they can't do it. It's a matter of we have to find the right way to help them do it, and that resonated with me because it really mimicked what I had seen with my students, that I needed to use different strategies to help them get there, And if you're a teacher listening to me or a principal listening to me and you're going, you're telling me I'm doing a bad job.

[03:20]

No, I'm not. I'm telling you that the more we know, the better we can meet students' needs who have special needs. And that's what we've really got to focus on.

[03:31] SPEAKER_01:

And I'm glad you mentioned the importance of having high expectations that students can rise to because, you know, we know the opposite is true. If we don't have high expectations, there's nothing for students to rise to. They will not rise to them. And if we lower expectations, that...

[03:46]

I mean, does that create a ceiling on student learning? Is our expectation of students that powerful?

[03:52] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, absolutely. What we believe about students is communicated very clearly through our actions, through our words. Even if we think we are not communicating them, we absolutely are. And so we either limit them or we tell them that there's hope. And that's a choice we make. And I don't think we always realize that we're doing that.

[04:12]

For example, Robert Marzano did some work a while back on expectations and how that plays out. And so if I've got Justin, who's a really great student and just does well and just thrives, I have high expectations for Justin. Well, maybe I've got Barbara, who's a special needs student, and I want to have high expectations for her. I say I do, but, you know, sort of down inside, maybe not. And so, here are the kinds of things that happen. You know, when you answer a question correctly, I say, that is great.

[04:41]

You are exactly on target. Can you expand on that? And if Barbara answers the question right, I am so grateful she answered it right. I just let it go. I say, that's great, and that's it. That's all I do.

[04:50]

I don't push her higher. I will give Justin more eye contact and closer proximity. And I don't do that with someone I have lower expectations of. Let's say homework. You know, you brought in all your homework. And I go, that is fabulous.

[05:06]

I knew you were going to do this. I knew you were going to do all your homework. You always do. But with Barbara, she brings in her homework, and she brings in about a third of it. And instead of really going with that, I go, well, you know, bless her heart, that's probably the best she can do. And bless her heart, in our language, is, okay, low expectations.

[05:24]

And so Robert Marzano found that out, and that's been years ago. And John Hattie's pulled some pieces that really do support that. So we may not realize we're coming across to our students with our high or low expectations, but we absolutely are. And you've got to decide how you want your students to think about you. And it's not what they think about you, it's what they think about how you think about them.

[05:51] SPEAKER_01:

Well said. I feel like there's a new language for lowered expectations that is dressed up in compassion, that is dressed up maybe in trauma-informed language, that is intended to be sympathetic toward the student. But if we think about what we've known from this research on high expectations for years and years, we're not doing our students any favors by having that mindset of lowered expectations and communicating those lowered expectations in the name of compassion. And for our listeners who are not in the American South, you may not have heard that expression, bless your heart, but it definitely is one of kind of barbed compassion where there is an implication of kind of pity built into that. And I think we need to recognize that that is not just a Southern expression. Like, that is everywhere in some of the thinking and the assumptions about

[06:42]

You know, students who, you know, we feel sorry for, and we don't know what to do. Like, we don't think it's possible to maintain high expectations, and certainly not for rigor.

[06:53] SPEAKER_00:

So, let's take that example about Bless Your Heart, because it really is a very barbed, you know, expression in the South. And I'm from the South, and I have used it at times I have regretted it. So, you know, you gotta be careful. But here's how you can redo that, all right? So, Barbara only does a third of her homework. Instead of just accepting it and saying, great, what I can do, instead of saying, bless your heart, is I can say, you know, Barbara, I really am impressed how much of this you got done by yourself.

[07:23]

You know, you've been able to make a lot of progress by yourself. What I'd like to see us do, notice I say us, what I'd like to see us do is make even more progress. So, let's try to figure out how we can do that, whether that is you and I working together after school, if I need to call your mom, not punishment, but for me to just sort of be here to help, or if that's a way for you to do more of it with somebody at home helping you, but let's look at a way that we can build on this progress and make even more. That is totally different from, oh, you only did a third of it, bless your heart. I mean, that is just so totally different.

[08:00] SPEAKER_01:

Right, and the continuing to push for effort, to push for, you know, the best we can do, the best students can do... I think we don't do that because we're afraid of discouraging the student. We're afraid of, you know, burning them out. We're afraid of them, you know, kind of hitting a wall and saying, like, this is all I can do.

[08:21]

I don't know what you're talking about. You know, like, we have some legitimate fears there, right? That if we don't have high expectations, what do you think about that?

[08:29] SPEAKER_00:

But notice that what I said was, how can we... How can, how can us, you know, do it together? So, the key about rigor that a lot of people forget about is, it's not just raising the expectations, it's providing the support to help the students get there. And that is particularly true with students with special needs.

[08:48]

I'm not going to throw her under the bus and say, just finish it. I'm not going to do that, because if she could have finished it, she probably would have. What I'm going to do is try to build a web and figure out what we can do. What can I do? What can a parent or a grandparent do, even if it's just sitting there with her and encouraging her? What can maybe a sibling do?

[09:08]

You know, I'm going to look at how, how can we provide the right support? Maybe the right support is, the expectation is not that she does 20 problems. She got Five done, and maybe the expectation is that we're shooting for ten. That's okay. You know, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna look for that, and I want to go back to what you said about effort, because that is so critical. What we know about effort is, the more we encourage effort...

[09:34]

The more effort a student will put forth. And I remember talking about this. I was in, uh, New York, and I was presenting, and my husband was there with me, and we'd been married maybe a year at that point. And so he was there with me, and we're back in the airport, and he said, you know, um, I heard what you said about effort. He said, can you explain the whole thing to me? And I said, well, it's effort and ability.

[09:57]

If all we praise is ability, then students think they've either got it or they don't. They're either smart or they're not. But if you praise effort, they will work harder. And what studies also show is the more effort you put forth, the more achievements you get. But if you try to slide on ability, over time, your achievement actually will go down. And so he just sort of pondered that on the plane.

[10:20]

And we get back to the airport here. And he said, you know, here's why I've been thinking about that. He said, Hunter, who was at the time 12, his son, he said, Hunter... All I do is praise him for his ability.

[10:32]

I tell him he's so smart, that he's really good at something. He said, that's all I tell him. Anytime he shows me something, I talk about how good he is and how smart he is. He said, and I'm doing exactly the opposite of what you've just said to do. And I said, well, you can tell him he's smart. You can tell him he's good.

[10:48]

But you've also got to talk about the effort, because the effort is what will make a difference. And he started doing that, and math was not Hunter's strongest suit. And over time, his math scores went up. So that by the end of the year, he scored above average on the state test. And I absolutely know it's because Pete was really switching how he praised what Hunter was doing. So that's another one of those that I've seen the research, but I've seen it happen.

[11:16]

And with special needs students, we've got to praise the effort. You cannot skip that, because if you do, you are ignoring the one good thing they're doing. If they take the time To do one problem, or to even do part of a problem, that is better than not trying. So, let's go for that and build on it. So, I know I've been on a little soapbox with that, because I really do get on a soapbox with that.

[11:42] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think that's such an important thing to talk about, because I think in so many cases, accommodations and modifications that are specified in IEPs somehow either get written or at least get interpreted as lowered expectations, or the student doesn't have to try. And I don't think those IEPs are written correctly if they actually say that, but I'm hearing from teachers... the, you know, the expectation that's being pushed to them is, don't make the student try, or the student has an aid, and the aid is going to essentially do the work for them. And I just really have to wonder, like, how is that student going to learn anything without their own personal effort?

[12:21] SPEAKER_00:

So one of the things that I tell teachers is this, because IEPs are really good. They serve a very good purpose. Sometimes our interpretation can be a little different. Sometimes the way we write them can be a little different. But here's the thing about an IEP. The IEP is the floor.

[12:36]

Not the ceiling. And that's what you're talking about. Can you tell I'm passionate about special needs students?

[12:44] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Well, and as with so much else, when it comes to rigor, it seems like a lot of this comes down to planning, that we can anticipate some of the difficulties that our students will have, we can anticipate some of the needs that they will have, and not just, you know, show up and throw things at a wall and see what sticks, but actually design our lessons in such a way that much more sticks because of the intentionality that we've brought to it. So, help us understand rigor and the needs of students with special needs as planning issues. Take us into that a bit.

[13:18] SPEAKER_00:

You know, I think it's a matter of anticipating needs. And it's not really any different than it is for any other students who are struggling. The way I always planned was with three columns. The middle column was, here's my standard lesson. My top column was advanced students, if I had advanced students. But my column to the left was students with special needs or other struggling students.

[13:40]

They might be second language, those kinds of things. And what I do is this. I plan my standard lesson because that's what I know everybody needs. And then I go over here to the left and I say, all right, what do I need to add in here instructionally so that struggling students, special needs students, can achieve what I've got right there in the middle. So if I've got people reading something, are my special needs students going to need me to pull them and read with them? Are they going to need a reading guide?

[14:12]

Because I don't want to pull them all the time and isolate them. So maybe they need a reading guide. Maybe they need a graphic organizer. Maybe they need to listen to a read aloud on the computer. What do I need for each of those aspects so that they still can do it? And things like, if I've got some writing, you know, they probably do need some sentence starters or a paragraph frame.

[14:36]

You know, there are different things. And I'm still realistically asking them to do the work. I'm just beefing up the amount of support. And, you know, I get pushed back on that sometimes. I get pushed back with, well, you know what? If they can't do it, we just shouldn't bother.

[14:54]

So, I'm going to tell you a story.

[14:58]

It is very embarrassing, so for all of you listening, don't go tell a lot of people. I have decided to learn how to crochet because my grandmother tried to teach me that when I was 15. So, I've bought these kits where you learn how. There's videos, there's directions. So, my first one is supposed to look like a penguin, okay? Like a little egg penguin, okay?

[15:18]

And I got it finished, and my husband came in, and he was like, so, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm doing this, and I showed him the picture of what it was supposed to look like, and then I showed him what I did, and he tried very hard not to laugh, because mine looked like a french fry. Okay? It did not look like a penguin. It looked like a french fry.

[15:39] SPEAKER_01:

It's a skinny penguin.

[15:42] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, no, it was not even a skinny penguin. So bad. So bad. And, you know, he's like, well, it's okay. You know, uh, what did you learn from it? Uh, and what are you going to try next?

[15:55]

He did exactly what I do with kids. And so I felt like a little bit of a special needs student, okay? Because I should not be doing that. I've got a doctorate, even though that has nothing to do with crochet. But that's how I felt. And, and when I thought about it, you know, and I'm working on the second one, and I've had some stumbles, and he said, now, what are your tools that you could use?

[16:15]

So, I've got videos. I've got a written guide. I've got a Facebook group that if you post pictures, they will give you feedback. And he's like, are you using all of those to help you do better? And, you know, that's really what we want to do. And I am, uh, it was just like an aha moment of, I can't believe that I hadn't thought about this being exactly what we do with special needs students.

[16:38]

And so when you plan, that's what you plan. That third column over there needs to be, what are the ways you're going to support them? Do you have to use all of them? No. Do you need to use all of them with all students? No.

[16:50]

But you're probably going to need some of them with some students and some of them with all students. And if you don't plan them, then you're going to get caught in the middle of the lesson and not know what to do. So planning is so critical for everybody, but particularly for students with special needs.

[17:06] SPEAKER_01:

I want to refer our listeners back to an earlier interview I did with Dr. John Myten of Jump Math. And, Barbara, one of the things that he talks about in each lesson is just reviewing some of the foundational concepts that you need in order for the lesson to make sense. It doesn't take a lot of time. He's not saying spend half your time reviewing old stuff. He's saying, if there's a foundational concept, and if kids have forgotten it, they're not going to get this lesson, just review it really quickly.

[17:32]

And they build that in both at the beginning of the year... And at the beginning of units and lessons, and he said it makes an incredible difference, an incredible difference in who can succeed in those lessons.

[17:43] SPEAKER_00:

And so let me give you two quick ways to do that, in addition to you just reviewing it, but things that can spur you on. As every student comes in, give them a post-it note and ask them to write one thing they know about fractions, whatever it is. And stick them up on the board. And then while they're getting started, you group it by the ones that are similar and different. And then you use those to review. And it's great because you can say, eight people said this, and wow, apparently I did a pretty good job yesterday because that was the main point.

[18:14]

And so, for all of you who said that, that is really good. You were exactly on target. Now, my favorite answer that's up here is this one. Because this person said, and see, you've got no names on it, so we're totally anonymous. This person said this, And boy, does that tell me that I missed the boat yesterday. I apparently didn't explain that well enough.

[18:31]

So, and then you go from there. Now, the other way you can do it is put posters up around the room with words or concepts, and they go right on there what they know about them, and then you use the same thing. You can, um, actually use it to review. You can have the students read the room, wander around and read the room and take notes. You can do a couple of things there, but those are two really quick ways to beef up your review.

[18:56] SPEAKER_01:

I think we've got to remember at all times that knowledge sticks to knowledge, right? That if students are struggling to learn something new, we've got to look at, like, what is that knowledge sticking to? And they probably have, you know, if we go back far enough, they have some knowledge that we can build on, that we can tap into and tie the new learning to. But if we're throwing stuff that appears to be new, that appears to be unrelated at students, it's going to have a much harder time sticking. Yeah. How about some of the tools you have in the book?

[19:25]

Because as with all of your books, this one is loaded with tools for planning, for thinking about what needs to go into lessons. And one tool that your co-author, Bradley Witzel, put in the tool from some of his earlier work is the Optimize Planning approach. Because as we've been discussing, planning makes such a difference. And this is particularly for working with a textbook. So, especially for teachers of older students who have a textbook at the middle school or high school level, or perhaps beyond, Looking at a textbook, uh, Bradley has some strategies for teaching with a textbook, but not relying only on the textbook. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that OPTIMIZE approach, which is an acronym?

[20:05] SPEAKER_00:

I actually love this, because it does balance paying attention to the textbook, but not over-relying on it. And so, the whole focus here is to say, let's take the drone chapter four. You want to really pull out the skills that are actually covered, and put those in order. Um...

[20:22]

And you're making sure that your sequence, okay, because you've probably got a sequence in your head, you want to make sure your sequence goes with what the textbook is doing. And look at anything that's similar and different, because you may think that something should come at the end, but the textbook puts it at the beginning, so you've got to pay attention to that. Then, look for those differences. So, it doesn't teach three things. The chapter doesn't teach three things that you think should be in there. Alright, is that in an earlier chapter?

[20:47]

Is that in a later chapter? Are they going to get it somewhere? Because if not, you've got to pay attention to that. Uh, see if there's any supplemental guides that have anything in there. What kind of additional instruction do you have to do? Then come up with the optimal structure, okay?

[21:03]

Optimize that chapter. Do you need to rearrange it? Are you going to go with it and you're going to pull in a couple of things in between? And then every year you evaluate and improve the sequence. But you're taking what's in your head about what needs to be taught, matching it with what's in the textbook, and then where else are any of the differences? So it's a really cool approach because...

[21:24]

I will say, I worked for, you may not even know this, Justin, I worked for two textbook publishers back in the days, and it's amazing how much a textbook assumes. You know, it just assumes that you already know something. And, uh, so I think it's really important to make sure you're paying close attention and always use the textbook as a tool, not as everything you're depending on.

[21:49] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, very good point. And sometimes, you know, those textbooks will be designed to review key concepts. They will have definitions. They will help us in a lot of ways, not to be perfect resources, not to be, you know, completely usable as is without any work on the teacher's part in planning. But there are a lot of resources there as well that can help us think through that sequencing and that scaffolding and be kind of a baseline that we then build on and modify for our students. Let's talk a little bit more about some of those modifications.

[22:16]

You know, we read our students' IEPs, we participate in those IEP team meetings, we talk with the parents, we get a sense of what students' needs are. Take us into how we think about scaffolding, accommodations, modifications, and all of that for the individual student, because we don't want to, as we've talked about in many of our previous interviews, we don't want to scaffold out the rigor. We don't want to say, I'm going to remove any possibility of failure for this student So I'm going to essentially do all the work for them and then they just have to kind of sit there. We know that's not going to result in learning. How do we think about scaffolding and accommodations and modifications?

[22:53] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that if you think about everything we've said so far, I've been talking about accommodations. I've been talking about you're teaching the same thing, but you're doing what you can do to help them achieve it. So, you are accommodating their needs so that they can achieve the same things. So, that's the easiest way to think about accommodations. Modifications is that you actually change what is being taught. So, there may be a situation where...

[23:22]

You're teaching... I'm going to have to stick with math just because it's concrete enough that I can come up with something. Maybe you're teaching irrational numbers and they don't have enough of a background in rational numbers to be able to do it. So, I'm going to have to change and not even teach irrational numbers.

[23:37]

Or I'm going to have to slow it down and teach it at a later time. So, a modification actually does modify the content. Whereas an accommodation, uh, lets them achieve the same thing just in a different way. My bias as a teacher is always accommodations where we can do it, but I recognize that many, many students need modifications, and so then we have to do those things. Um, so, one of, one of the strategies, um, that can work, honestly, with both, if you tweak it a little bit, is something we've talked about before, which is layering meaning. So, I've got an article about biomes and And I've got my six special ed students can't read it, so I find them an easier article also on biomes.

[24:24]

They read that first, build background knowledge and build vocabulary, and then they come back up and read the on-grade-level article. That's an accommodation. But the modification would be they read the easier article, and that's where they stop. I work from that. I don't bring them back up to the on-grade-level article. Does that make sense?

[24:45] SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah, I appreciate that distinction between accommodation and modification, and sometimes we provide the easier article in order to prepare the students for the more grade-level article, and sometimes we use that instead. Talk to me a little bit about time and speed, because, you know, I think once upon a time, slow learner was used as an insult, and certainly we want to remove any aspect of insult from, you know, any talking about learning, talking about students with special needs, but I think there's also a reality that students do learn at different speeds, and sometimes students do need more time if they're going to get to the same place. Is that okay? Is that a real thing, to talk about speed of learning and differences in how long it takes students to, you know, to gain a concept or a skill?

[25:33] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a real thing. I wish I had a solution for you. Um, that's one of those, if I had a magic wand, um, because it does just take some of them longer, and we don't always have good ways to provide that extra time. Uh, one of the things that was a positive that did come out of COVID...

[25:54]

was a lot of the extra time that was provided and an extra help that was provided for struggling students, uh, that included special needs students, but we're not limited to them. Because, uh, we do know that it takes extra time. And now we're losing a lot of that because that funding has gone away. Um, so those options for extra time are now sort of falling back on the teacher. So what do you do? Well, you stay after school.

[26:20]

Okay, well, there's all kinds of stigma with that, but you try to do your best with that. Uh, at my school, we had the opportunity where they could do lunch with the teacher. And it was lunch and extra help. Um, and some students did not like that. Some students did. Um, and so, you know, we were able to access that for some students.

[26:41]

I've been in schools where the buses get there early, so before school becomes a time, um, that you can do things. I was just reading an article today about schools that are more in the Midwest-West that do four-day weeks... And the fifth day, uh, technically the teacher's off, but a lot of them come in to do their planning, and students will come in for appointments with them. So, I do think people are trying to find some innovative ways to do it.

[27:08]

I don't know that we have a good solution.

[27:12] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I'm interested in schools that are doing support classes at the secondary level where there's reading and students get grade-level instruction, but there's also reading lab and students get extra time to finish their work, to get individualized help, you know, and have that extra time that they need to succeed with grade-level work. And in math, you know, there's grade-level instruction, grade-level standards, and then a math lab where students get additional time additional support. And I think that is a promising solution. In a sense to me, it's more promising than a lot of other solutions because the time is really there, right? It's not wishful thinking that, oh, we can just kind of, you know, sprinkle some fairy dust on this and have students, you know, catch up when obviously they need more than they're getting.

[28:00]

So, not always an easy thing to schedule or staff, but yeah, definitely a possibility worth thinking about. Well, Barbara, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of these philosophical issues because sometimes it is uncomfortable to do that and to talk about, you know, speed and support and scaffolding and all the different things that we've touched on today. I wonder if we could end by just having you take us through some of the tools and topics that you address in the second half of the book around literacy, math, general instructional strategies, and the tools for teachers that you include.

[28:32] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, goodness, there's so many. Literacy, one of my favorites, is an old one. It was used when I was a student, so it's definitely old. But it's one that is very effective. So, if you're not using it, it's one that's worth taking a look at. For primary students, and it's called masking.

[28:49]

And what you do is, when you're teaching new words, new vocabulary, you actually cover the word up, and you slide the cover one letter at a time. So you reveal one letter at a time so that they can do that. And what is really interesting with that is that the students see each piece, but then they begin to put it all together a little bit at a time. And so it's very, very effective. Um, and so, that's one that is an old school reading strategy, but I've seen that work with a lot of students. Uh, a math one, uh, I really like say, ask, check.

[29:30]

So, the first thing that happens is the student just reads the problem, but asking himself or herself, do I understand the problem? Do I understand what it's asking? So, that's the say. Then the ask is, they sort of build an internal dialogue. What is the question asking? How do I use the information in the problem to answer the question?

[29:49]

How can I paraphrase the word problem? And then check, they compare their answer to the question that was actually posed. So, that's sort of a nice one that's really getting into the thinking process. And then, let's do one of my favorites. Let's do red herring, okay? Uh, this comes under a lot of different names, but what happens is, when you're teaching a concept, you give a student four examples.

[30:13]

So, I'm going to give you Virginia, Georgia, California, and Arizona. And what you're asking the students to do is to figure out which one doesn't belong and why. Okay, some students will say the answer is Arizona because it starts with a vowel, which is true, but that's not exactly the answer I'm looking for because today I'm teaching something else. The answer is Arizona because it's the only one without a coastline.

[30:43]

So, that one is a really fun one to start a class out with, and you can have students work together to come up with the answer, and then you can have them create their own red herrings. It's just a lot of fun.

[30:55] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Rigor for Students with Special Needs. And of course, so much of what we talked about today is good for all students, is just good teaching. And Barbara, I have to say, it's really interesting. If I think back on my teacher education, I didn't have a lot of cognitive science in school. that teacher education, and I have not heard a lot of cognitive science being taught in our profession since then, but as I have encountered more and more in recent years, and then I go back and look at some of these strategies that, as you said, some of these have been in use since we were kids, but there is sound... there are sound connections, there is sound reasoning there with that cognitive science, and I think if we look at some of the things that we've been missing in recent years that we've forgotten as a profession, I just really appreciate the way

[31:41]

you call us back to some of those fundamentals of teaching and thinking about what our students need, as well as bring us new strategies every time. So, Barbara, if people want to get in touch with you, get some of your resources, where's the best place for them to go online?

[31:53] SPEAKER_00:

The best place is my website, barbarablackburnonline.com. There are over a hundred free resources. There's articles on just about everything. One that's particularly applicable to students with special needs is there's an article on learned helplessness, and that's a really good piece. Um, you also can go, you just go to free, and then sort of go from there to, like, articles for teachers.

[32:13]

You can go to downloads for books, so you can go to the downloads for this book, and there's all kinds of things, so you can download all of those. We're gonna post a couple of things, but there's other things that are on there. So there's a little bit of everything you can get in touch with me. There is a way to contact me through my email. There's also a phone number you can call me. People are always amazed when I answer the phone.

[32:33]

But you can call me, and I will talk to you. And that's the best way to get in touch with me.

[32:39] SPEAKER_01:

Wonderful. Again, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[32:43] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.