When The Tide Comes In All Boats Should Rise!

Nothing explains what we attempt to do with students with special needs better than the title of this article — When the tide comes in all boats should rise.  In fact, I believe it should be the philosophy that guides us with each and every student we work with, and should be the guiding principle as we attempt to meet individual learning needs for all students.

Let’s look a little closer at the quote.  While I have not done it many times in my life I have had opportunity to sit on a beach or a dock, or near the shore, and watch the tide come in.  Quite honestly, I have found that to be somewhat magical and relaxing, which is a reason that I would love to have a place where I could do that each and every day!  We all can imagine seeing boats rise a little bit, and it certainly makes sense that all of them would.  So how does this relate to education?

First of all, there is a shift going on to personalize education as much as possible for each student and their learning needs.  This is a tough prospect, but one that is emerging with practices in schools and classrooms.  It is a further shift away from the one-size-fits-all, assembly line education that many of us experienced in our high school days.  Back then, the teachers taught what they taught, assessed everyone the same, and basically as a student you learned what you learned.  Some of the more serious and bright students might learn quite a bit, and those that were not interested or struggled did not get much out of a particular lesson or course.  Common belief was that was just fine as not everyone was supposed to be college bound.  Public education was a sorting process designed to move the best and brightest forward into the most important careers.  Then a funny thing happened . . . some parents said that’s not right!  In essence they said that just because their child may not be the best or brightest, or may have some learning disability that prevents them from learning the same as others or as fast at others, does not mean they shouldn’t get the same opportunity as others.

The Individual with Disabilities Education Act, first referred to as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, became law in 1975 and was reauthorized in 1990 by the United States Congress under the current name.  The fundamental goal is to provide children with disabilities the same opportunity for education as those students who do not have a disability.  In public schools our obligation is to “level the playing field” by accommodating and modifying for these students, so at that point they can rise with every other student.  The extent of the disability determines the services that need to be provided.  Many examples of students who have excelled because of this support exist, including a number of graduates from our school.

Another “tide” that came in a little over ten years ago was what is commonly referred to as NCLB, or No Child Left Behind legislation.  This act targeted all students with the goal of “1oo% of students in our country becoming proficient in reading and math, a utopian goal that while not met, certainly forced a number of states, school districts, schools, and teachers to change how students were taught.  In retrospect some very important changes took place in a number of schools, including attention given to changes to address the individual learning needs of each student.  This is a tremendous challenge, and a huge responsibility.  But when one breaks it down a bit, we have to realize that we cannot afford to have students slip through the cracks, nor can education in this country continue to be modeled after the factory model of producing thousands of identical products each year.  The demands of the changing economy will not allow that.  Thus, we look at each student and work to figure out how he or she can rise to meet their potential.  Some of the ways this can be done is through broad strokes, but we also have to look at each student as an individual too.

So, how are we doing that?  Our advisory program continues to evolve, which is a key to “shrinking our school” so that relationships are built and people know the individual student.  We have integrated a very successful job shadow program during the junior year that helps individual student’s better understand their academic needs.  Our career management requirements are changing so that we give more of our kids a chance to learn more about themselves and what their educational program should look like.  We continue to evaluate our course offering and curriculum, adding and changing classes to better meet the current and individual needs of our students.  A recent example is the addition of PLTW courses and a variety of language arts courses.  Job shadowing during the junior year gives students a chance to explore an area of personal interest, and programs like I Have A Plan Iowa allows us to get a better perspective of each student and their future path.  The changes we are making in grading are really focused on making sure that students know specific content and can demonstrate specific skills to that we have proof of what they know and can do.  

When the tide comes in we want all of our students to rise.  We have worked hard to put things in place for that to happen.  Hopefully the crew is ready for this journey!