No matter how hard we tried all week, we were at a loss for this week’s blog topic. First we were grappling with the tremendous loss in Pennsylvania and not being able to say words for something that continues to happen—that our places of learning, schools and places of worship are still targets for hate and fear for our communities. And we still had to get on top of the major release we are currently preparing for December. Then we had this major interruption called “Halloween” which results in all students on any given campus having trouble focusing so that really becomes the “first thing” we have to address to support all students over anxieties and reminding of school appropriate behaviors.
So we struggled really with this week’s blog. But then we realized, we’ve written it based on what we saw our colleagues across the #BetterTogether.
This week, from Amanda Morin of Understood.org, she went and looked at the importance of drills and her son’s anxiety. We have an accompanying article we wrote about the things to consider when doing drills for students and what to talk to administrators about.
Through Twitter, we were mentioned multiple times as resources, and the resources that we were named alongside aren’t folks to ever ignore. Our friends at several different places have always provided us a lot of information when we don’t always know what to do. Understood.org, Think Inclusive, Nicole Eredics from The Inclusive Class, and The National Catholic Board on Full Inclusion are our typical associates, but we also rely on Kids Included Together, Removing the Stumbling Block, Shelley Moore (Check out her YouTube Channel).
Speaking of Twitter and #BetterTogether: We saw some of friends in the Jewish community of Pennsylvania help each other rally together. And this reminded us of something bigger.
Why bother connecting the dots? Because we’ve learned from so many professionals over the years that education cannot be a solo endeavor. Without the demonstration of community, we do not bring inclusive communities to our schools. We ignore the foundations of how we try and build our world up in our little corners to help be shored up by more than one set of hands at a time. In that modeling, we provide our students in and out of school that connection to understand the world by working together. ParaEducate doesn’t come up with the blog posts in a vacuum, we are honestly influenced by social changes in the world and we see the interactions of hundreds of educators on a daily basis and we collectively swap ideas how to help each other.
Education is not a solo act. It’s a hard concept to learn, even by educators who have been there a long time. But we’re all here. We’re figuring this out together.
Do you have any comments about this week’s blog? Do you have a question for us? Would you like to be a guest blogger? Would you like to have an opportunity to pilot some materials at your campus? Find ParaEducate online here, here, here, here, and on our website. Paraeducate is a company interested in providing materials, information, and strategies for people working in special education inclusion settings for grades K-12. ParaEducate, the blog, is published weekly during the academic school year on Thursdays, unless a holiday. ParaEducate shares their findings at conferences, through their books, and their academic adaptations.
