3/2

Today I listened to an episode of the LD podcast, a podcast put out by parents of LD kids for parents of LD kids. This one was an interview with an administrator, Courtney Rau, the special education department chair at a Massachusetts school district. The parents seemed really excited to get an administrator's perspective. They discussed inclusion, and I was surprised that the mom was skeptical of inclusion programs. I would have thought that the parents were more supportive of it, but in some cases the school is just trying to cut back on faculty by throwing kids who need more attention into an inclusion class. They also discussed ASD quite a bit, which I of course found interesting since I've been looking into that. They talked about some programs that weren't balancing working on social and academics skills and the negative outcomes of that for ASD students. They also talked about some terms like "least restrictive environment" and "LD," questioning such blanket statements that are expected to cover all situations. What do these things mean? I was surprised when they were talking about "residential setting" schooling. At first I just thought this meant pull out classes or a separate building for special ed. But as I listened, I realized they were talking about boarding schools for special ed students. I didn't really think this kind of thing existed, it doesn't seem like that great of a solution to me, so I 'd like to learn a little more about this. (Maybe I misunderstood?) The main point the administrator reiterated is that teachers want to teach all of their students the best they can, and I hope that is a statement that is actually true! (I know some lazy teachers...) The website for this podcast is : http://ldpodcast.com/images/show20.mp3. This is probably a better resource for parents looking for support, it was long and I didn't feel like the information was very rich for my purpose. I'm not sure how I feel about podcasts either, I get too distracted to sit and listen to it!