In this issue you will Find Topics On:
Career Awareness
eTrac Online Job-Seeking Information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tr-wugIZOU
eTrac provides job seeking/retention information in a YouTube video to help promote independence and confidence. Midwest Special Services (MSS), a non-profit serving adults with disabilities, developed eTrac based on their own experience and best practices to help job seekers achieve employment success. The program walks the job seeker through every step, from the initial job search, to the interview process, and the skills necessary to retain and advance at work. Assistance accessing the on-line video (for information on pricing or to pre-view a demo copy of the program) is available from MSS by emailing or calling Josh Franzen (jfranzen@mwsservices.org or 651-777-7220).
Collaborative Professional Learning
Alliance for Excellent Education Archived Webinar: Assessing Deeper Learning: The Ohio Performance Assessment Pilot Project (January)
Archived Webinar
https://all4ed.org/webinar/jan-16-2014/
The Alliance for Excellent Education, after hosting “Assessing Deeper Learning: The Ohio Performance Assessment Pilot Project,” a January 16 webinar on using curriculum-embedded performance measures to learn and demonstrate deeper learning competencies students need for college and a career, archives the event. The webinar focused on the Ohio Performance Assessment Pilot Project (OPAPP), which includes a system of learning and assessment tasks aligned with the Common Core State Standards. OPAPP includes sustained, collaborative professional learning through all components of the program, including formative assessment to support student learning, technical training, and writing and scoring of assessment tasks. It explores the use of performance tasks to elicit and assess complex thinking and communication skills and what this means for designing curricula and varied structures for professional learning to provide teachers with the knowledge and skills to help all students attain high-level cognitive and intrapersonal skills.
Community Participation
Friends: Connecting People with Disabilities and Community Members (November 2013)
Manual
https://ici.umn.edu/index.php?products/view_part/579/
“Friends: Connecting People with Disabilities and Community Members” is a manual from the Institute on Community Integration’s Research and Training Center on Community Living that provides concrete “how-to” strategies for supporting relationships between people with disabilities and other community members. It describes why such friendships are important to people with disabilities and why it is important to promote community belonging and membership. The manual includes specific activities to guide users in creating a plan for connecting people. This manual is designed for agency staff, but can also be used by parents, support coordinators, teachers, staff, and people with disabilities to support community relationships. Additional Activity Worksheets are available.
Delinquent Youth
Vera Institute Launches Status Offense Reform Center Web Site (December 2013)
Toolkit & Resources
https://www.vera.org/project/status-offense-reform-center
The Center on Youth Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice has launched the online Status Offense Reform Center. This Website, supported by funding from the MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change Resource Center partnership, is a one-stop shop of resources for policymakers and practitioners interested in diverting youth engaged in noncriminal offenses – such as truancy or running away – from entering the juvenile justice system. This interactive site provides a toolkit for planning, implementing, and sustaining status offense system reforms; profiles of reform efforts nationwide; research briefs; Webinars; podcasts; a blog; and a help desk.
Reading Outcomes
IES Releases Synthesis of Research on Improving Reading Outcomes (February 2014)
Report
https://ies.ed.gov/ncser/pubs/20143000/
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has released “Improving Reading Outcomes for Students with or at Risk for Reading Disabilities: A Synthesis of the Contributions from the Institute of Education Sciences Research Centers,” a report on improving reading outcomes for students with or at risk for reading disabilities. The synthesis describes what has been learned from research grants on improving reading funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) National Center for Special Education Research and National Center for Education Research and published in peer-reviewed outlets through December 2011
Requests for Participation
2014 Southwest Conference on Disability Call for Proposals
https://cdd.unm.edu/swconf/
The 2014 Southwest Conference on Disability will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 7-10, 2014, and the conference is soliciting proposals on the following themes of: “Disability, Diversity and Social Justice: Looking to the Future Through a Common Lens,” “Life After a Brain Injury: Pathways to Increasing Quality of Life,” and “Increasing the Quality of Life of Youth in Transition: Breaking Down Barriers.” The deadline for proposals is June 15th, 2014.
Relationships
Lessons of Reciprocity and Relationships (January 2014)
Essay
https://tinyurl.com/n8jtnpd
“Community Works Journal,” an on-line magazine for educators, has posted “Lessons of Reciprocity and Relationships” as a featured essay on service learning and making sure that both the volunteers and the population they are working with feel the real benefits of their relationship, and that the activity is purposeful and empowers all those involved.
The Soul of a Teacher (January 2014)
Essay
https://tinyurl.com/kdwt455
“Community Works Journal,” an on-line magazine for educators, has posted “The Soul of a Teacher” as a featured essay on the importance of keeping in touch with the unique experience of each teacher’s interactions with the students and with other educators. Each learning opportunity, each conversation, each perception, is worth taking the time to listen for it, and to allow and encourage it to be expressed, and not letting it be lost under the weight of standards, testing, scales, and standardized curricula.
School Discipline
Supportive School Discipline Series (2014)
Archived Webinars
https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/supportive-school-discipline-webinar-series
Continuing the efforts of the Federal Supportive School Discipline Initiative, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education hosted a Supportive School Discipline (SSD) Webinar Series in 2013-2014. The Series is designed to increase awareness and understanding of school disciplinary practices that push youth out of school and many times into the justice system, and provide practical examples of alternative approaches that maintain school safety while ensuring academic engagement and success for all students.
Supportive School Discipline Initiative (February 2014)
Report
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/school-discipline/index.html
The Supportive School Discipline Initiative (SSDI) has released an “Overview of the Supportive School Discipline Initiative” report. SSDI is a collaboration begun in 2011 between the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to target harsh and exclusionary school disciplinary policies and in-school arrests that push youth out of school and into the justice system, a process also known as the school-to-prison pipeline. The Overview summarizes and provides links to recent findings on the impact of school disciplinary practices on students’ academic success and juvenile justice involvement.
Transition
7 Steps for Success (2014)
Guide
https://www.cec.sped.org/Tools-and-Resources/CECommunity/Transition-Publications
The Council for Exceptional Children has released “7 Steps for Success,” a book on the transition from high school to college. This transition is challenging for any student, but for young adults with disabilities, it can be even more difficult. In addition to increased academic demands and less structure and support, students have to navigate a disability services system very different from the one they knew in high school. This practical guide describes how the system for accommodations works and students’ rights and responsibilities within that system, uses the voices of actual professionals and college students to explain the skills and strategies students should develop while they are in high school to ensure success in college, and answers questions students with disabilities frequently ask about disclosing their disability in the admissions process.
Universal Design
Universal Design in the News at the Center for Universal Design in Education (2014)
Resource List
https://www.washington.edu/doit/CUDE/
The Center for Universal Design in Education (CUDE) at the University of Washington has added a new item to its resource collection, “Universal Design in the News.” which shares recent articles and posts relevant to the application of universal design in education: to instruction, to student services, to physical spaces, and to information technology.
Vocational Rehabilitation Services
Simply Said: Introducing Vocational Rehabilitation Services (February 2014)
On-Line Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT9pKlcTQMg
Planning for employment and post-secondary education is an important step in preparing young adults with disabilities for life after high school, and it’s never too early to begin the planning process. In this short “Simply Said” video, youth with disabilities will learn how their local Vocational Rehabilitation Services (VRS
