Spectrum of Possibilities

PDD is not a four-letter word.

They Get Their 'Cool Heads in a Crisis' From Me...

		Monday, 14 May 07 - 11:36 AM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

Understand: In many ways, the boys and I are brave, stoic, resourceful types. You want someone to stand up for what is right and good, beneficial to both mankind and mother earth? We will COME to your peace vigil. We will MARCH in your rally. We will make and carry concise, insightful signs that will bring the brotherhood of man to its collective knees in a glorious, communal EPIPHANIC understanding of JUST WHERE THINGS WENT HORRIBLY AWRY! We are also, to the last, very, very good at regaling peers and loved ones with well-constructed tales replete with credible story arc, fresh imagery and topically relevant soundtracks!

But bugs. We are not so good there. MmmmMMMmmm!

To illustrate my point, one of my all-time favorite fraternal exchanges:

James, aged 4: ISAWASPIDER! ABIGBLACKSPIDERWITHHAIRYLEGS! (scrambles up the couch)

Ben, a very sage 7: (dismissively) THAT is a daddy longlegs. You've been reading too many books about bugs. You are developing a phobia.

James: I DON'T have a phobia!!! I'm just scared!!! (author's note: pronounced 'sceh-wid')

Ben: You do have a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear. Like my irrational fear of boat propellers.

James: Well, I don't have a phobia of BUGS. Just ARACHNIDS.

Although, for the record, both children AS WELL AS THEIR MOTHER have always gone certifiably berzerk in the face of anything with waving antennae. Personally? I like to think of this as PART OF OUR CHARM.

So, you can only imagine with what chagrin one nest-building hornet-ish looking thing in the southwest kitchen window was then greeted the other day. With the above-mentioned stoic resolve and speedy reflexes I closed (and locked!) the window, moved lessons out to the couch (just to be safe!), and announced that Dad would most certainly take care of the issue when he got home that evening.

Which he did. Dad dutifully waited until nightfall, carefully slipped off the screen and storm windows, and hosed our little friend and her papery starter-home into the winged hereafter.

"Wow, she was really BIG!" the husband noted, subsequently gazing at the soggy, lifeless VERY LARGE form on the ledge. "What should we do with her?"

And here is where I had...what in literary circles is oft referred to as a moment of 'tragic hubris'. I'd just that afternoon read a WONDERFUL article to the boys from the latest edition of Home Education Magazine about a home schooling mother who decided to end a unit on Egyptian history with an attempt to mummify an oven roaster--with, of course, disastrous and unexpected results. Logically, this made me say:

"Let's keep her. Maybe the boys would like to take a closer look at her tomorrow. Maybe they'd be more comfortable around bugs if they understood them a little better. We'll just put her in a resealable bag to keep everyone safe." (See, the mummifying chicken in the article was stored in a resealable baggie...)

Well. Holy chitinous exoskeleton, Batman! Guess who was alive and doin' the Texas Two-Step next to my vase of Mother's Day flowers this morning?

I ALMOST DIDN'T SEAL THE BAGGIE!!!! Me! The woman who once spent six hours alone in a bedroom in central Florida waiting for her spouse to return from his traditional sixteen-hour work day because a palmetto bug had flown into my living room AND IF I'D LEFT THE BEDROOM...well, then, it could GET ME.

"What do you think, now?" the husband dubiously asked this morning.

And James and I, in unison, agreed: kill it, KILL IT, KILLLLLL ITTTT!!!

Life Skills 101: Don't Let Your Uncle Marry Your Mom

		Thursday, 10 May 07 - 11:05 AM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

This right here is a wonderful article. Happiest, best, most positive thing I've read...um...definitely this week. And it's been a nice week. No complaints vis a vis the week thus far. But, still!

Here, let me read you a bit:

PEABODY - Crystal MacLarty stands at the front of the class with a sword in her hand. She is lecturing on "Hamlet" and uses all the tools of the trade to relate one of Shakespeare's most memorable plays - even brandishing the plastic prop.

On the computerized white board behind her, she beams a slide presentation full of story bullet points. A student at the front of the class uses cutouts of the main characters on a small felt board to help him understand the story. He follows along in a version of the play that has been translated into helpful word symbols.

"Put yourself in Hamlet's shoes," MacLarty declares. MacLarty asks the 18 students to draw three squares: one for their mother, one for their father and one for their uncle. She tells them to cross off their father's name and draw a line from their mother to their uncle. "This is the situation Hamlet found himself in," the teacher announces. "His father died and within a month, his mother married his uncle." Peals of "ewww" and "that's gross" carry through the first-floor classroom.

Welcome to Peabody High's Life Skills class, where MacLarty harnesses a teaching method called Universal Design for Learning. It's an idea gaining acceptance in special education classrooms like Peabody's. Universal Design taps technology to help teachers and students adapt materials to their varied needs and skills. The idea sounds simple enough, but until computers and the appropriate software were developed, students had to rely on mass-produced materials and textbooks.

"There are so many new resources," said retired special education teacher Sandra Ring. "You don't have to read to understand concepts."

Ring, who helped introduce UDL at Peabody High, said the Life Skills classroom is a model for the state. "It's about a whole high school change," Ring said. "It's here, my dream. Technology, that's the key."


Here's what I love about the effective use of technology in the classroom: it can stop schools from being (in the words of educational theorist John Goodlad) "sorting mechanisms"...places where a few students are picked out and held up to everyone else as "good and worthy." Places, for many, then, of shame. Places where the individual very often just doesn't measure up. That is not what education should be about. Certainly not taxpayer-funded, public education. How dysfunctional would that be? To be legally required to pay into a system that labels almost everyone (including you and your family) as somehow 'defective'?

I laughed when I read about the student that uses character cut-outs to help him act out the plot points of Macbeth...Ben does that. With James watching his every dramatic nuance: Every night, when I read to the boys before bedtime, Ben gets out his collection of 'pelagic friends' (yup, his words...) and physically acts out with his toys whatever I am reading.

How brilliant is my child? That he came up with this idea, his own personal comprehension aid, all on his own?

Follow the Bouncing Blog

		Sunday, 06 May 07 - 01:53 AM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

 I know.  I have a bit of a commitment problem.

But I am now posting here because I can figure out how to manipulate the template on Blogger.  And I can't quite here on Terapad.

The really sad part?  I had to name this blogger blog A Spectrum of Possibilities.  Because just plain 'spectrum of possibilities' had already been taken.

By me.

But I can't remember my password and login.

So I just went ahead and made a new blog.

This is probably the cyber equivalent of littering.  I apologize to future generations in advance.

Vee Hef Our Vayz...

		Saturday, 21 April 07 - 03:55 PM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

Quoted from a recent email from an attorney associated with the AHA listserv: 

"I have a case on Long Island (Northport-East Northport CSD) where the District launched a Child Protective Services complaint against the parents because the parents refused to consent for their child to be screened by BOCES for a therapeutic program.  (THE KID HAS NO PSYCH DIAGNOSIS.)  They just wanted to send this dyslexic, Tourette Syndrome kid out of the district because he requires a bit more work than most.  So they reported the parents to CPS with this as one of the allegations, trying to force consent by this means rather than getting it overridden by an IHO, as it would never fly in an impartial hearing.   There are a number of other IDEA issues that the District, in collusion with CPS, is trying to push in the family court ignoring all of the procedural protections of the IDEA.

...what they attempted to do is use it [the court case] to force the parents into consenting to the change of placement, and most families, faced with the expense of a trial on something like this, likely would buckle in order to extricate themselves from the family court.  I suspect that this is a common tactic of this firm or SD to dump these kids into the BOCES programs because they do not want to provide for them appropriately in the mainstream setting or want to make the kid miserable at 14, 15 and 16 so that he will drop out."

BOCES are theoretically a fantastic idea.  Children with exceptional needs are put together in county cooperative schools that all of the individual school districts then pay into.  Individual districts then do not have to re-invent the wheel when they are faced with the issue of educating these exceptional children: the training, the personnel, the programs, are all already in place.  However, the fact is: BOCES have become dumping grounds for all of the kids that nobody knows what to do with.  The ED (emotionally disabled) kids.  Earlier this year, when I broached the possibility of placing Ben in a BOCES program here in my county that is supposedly designed for Asperger's and PDD kids, his teachers all blanched and said that BOCES would be totally inappropriate for Ben--essentially, he's too nice a kid--he'd be eaten alive.

From the Archives: Mirror Neurons

		Thursday, 19 April 07 - 01:35 AM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

This is a post I wrote for the old Spectrum of Possiblities blog.  While I'm working my way through end-of-semester graduate-school hell, I thought I would re-post.  After savoring every juicy bit, if you're so inclined, you might want to visit Melissa Wiley's ClubMom blog to read about her thoughts on Waldorf education.

When we were still living up in Saratoga Springs, I went to a lecture one night at the local Waldorf school.  The Waldorf methodology is rooted in allowing the child to emerge on his/her personal timeline and works at connecting the child to his environment through meaningful, hands-on activities.  Pure academics are down-played in the early years and children are not “pressured” to read until they are comfortable doing so.

There was a lot that I liked about Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophic ideas...sadly, they came with a prohibitive price tag.  Still, the school offered speakers on a regular basis and these lectures were open to the community at large.

The topic that evening in question dealt with why parents needed to be careful with just what media they allowed in their children’s lives.  The speaker towed the Waldorf line--that is: no televisions, no computers before high school.  Very luddite.  The speaker went on to explain why this was important:

He believed that all sentient beings generated an invisible force-field, an envelope, an extension, an aura...and that whatever we watched on television or played via a video game was re-enacted by that aura around our body. 

Essentially, we were, we became, WE DID what we watched.

Which, of course, sounded completely insane to me.  However, being someone (probably unhealthfully) capable of holding two opposing ideas in my head simultaneously...I also felt there was some kernel of truth to what he was telling us--  that children were, on some level, shaped and affected by the things they watched and the ways they learned to play...

It wouldn’t be until many years later, when I began my master’s, that I first heard about mirror neurons.  That nutty guy!  I’d immediately thought.   He was right!  It’s just that the reaction he described took place not in some invisible aura enveloping our bodies and radioing back to the brain...but in the brain, itself!



From November's Scientific American’s cover story, researchers from the University of Parma, Italy, working with macaque monkeys explain:

Subsets of neurons in human and monkey brains respond when an individual performs certain actions and also when the subject observes others performing the same movements.

These mirror neurons provide a direct internal experience, and therefore understanding, of another person’s act, intention, or emotion.

Mirror neurons may also underlie the ability to imitate another’s action, and thereby learn, making the mirror mechanism a bridge between individual brains for communication and connection on multiple levels.

For decades, now, scientists have been moving away from Bettelheim’s “refrigerator mom” theory of autism and closer to a realization that physiological neural differences are at the heart of autism and pervasive developmental disorders.   Research done at the University of California, San Diego, however, was the first to indicate (through EEG’s and “mu wave” analysis) a deficit in a specific area of the brain of autistic children. 

The EEG showed that the child had an observable mu wave that was suppressed when he made a simple, voluntary movement, just as in normal children.  But when the child watched someone else perform the action, the suppression did not occur.  We concluded that the child’s motor command system was intact but his mirror neuron system was deficient.

The article also asks “Can the mirrors be repaired?” and has some suggestions for possible uses for their research.

 Pediatricians could do simple EEG tests in their office to measure “mu     wave” production.  Atypical wave production would merit parent interviews, ensure earlier diagnosis and access to vital early infant/child interventions.

Children with autism could use “mu wave” production as a form of biofeedback.  If their mirror neurons are “dormant” instead of “lost” this kind of supplementary intervention could help autistic children deal with some of their secondary issues--anxiety, eye focus, emotional regulation.

Finally, the researchers at UCSD put forth a theory on why children with “sudden regression” forms of autism have these faulty mirror neurons. 

Investigators have found that nearly one third of children with autism have had temporal lobe epilepsy in infancy, and the proportion may be higher given that many epileptic seizures go undetected.  These seizures could eventually scramble the connections between the visual cortex and the amygdala, indiscriminately enhancing some links and diminishing others. 

...And, like autism, the risk of temporal lobe epilepsy in infancy appears to be influenced by genes and environmental factors.  Some genes for example, could make a child more susceptible to viral infections, which could, in turn, predispose the child to seizures.

(At it’s source, researchers may someday realize that autism is, in fact, a complex autoimmune disorder involving vulnerability in a number of systems.  But, hey...that’s just my personal theory...)

So Excited!

		Tuesday, 17 April 07 - 01:08 AM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

 

Photo credit: Ben--yes, my plants are leggy.  That's why we're spending $400 on produce this growing season...

Just filled out my check and application for Garden of Eve--a CSA (community supported agricultural thingie).  (Technical term.  Go with it.)

Between the CSA, Who Killed the Electric Car  (borrowed today from the library--told Ben: "You're gonna hate this and love this at the same time"...he is so hooked!) and the homeschooling...

Oh! I am SO raising the next generation of political activists!  Putty in my hands...

I'm going to get these sensorially-defensive children eating vegetables or break the bank tryin!

Don't Panic

		Friday, 23 March 07 - 02:14 PM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

Don't Panic has been one of my favorite phrases ever since I first read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1983.  It is a phrase that is deeply comforting while also reminding me of the third worst poem ever penned: "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" which, in turn, reminds me happily of the first time I ever laughed so hard that I simultaneously cried and brought up bile...

...Oddly enough, this is another memory that I find deeply comforting.

Anyway...right.  Don't Panic.

That is what dear friend MeInUpstate told me when I decided oh, so suddenly to begin homeschooling.  It is good advice and I've taken it to heart.  I realize that I can add the bells and whistles on piecemeal over time and that what I want to focus on with my children initially are a few simple goals:

• I want the act of learning to be a desirable and intrinsically-motivated activity for my children so that they can indeed become "life long learners".
• I want my children to enjoy reading.  Ideally, they learn to enjoy reading as much as or more than watching television or playing on the computer.
  
• I want my children to be effective oral and written communicators.
• I want my children to discover and pursue creative outlets that they find personally meaningful.
• I want my children to grow into independent, flexible thinkers able to handle novel tasks, challenges and opportunities.

See, in framing a curriculum for my boys, I decided to start from a perspective of terminal goals, NOT subject matter.  The curriculum then becomes the vehicle by which my goals are transmitted and achieved, not an end-all goal unto itself.  This also allows me to personalize content and play to my children's strengths--ideas that have been empirically proven to keep learning disabled children in school longer.

The first thing that I asked my children to do as homeschoolers was to decorate and personalize their writing journals.  I ask them to write in their journals every day.  I think it is a good way for them to synthesize what they have just learned, listened to or experienced.  Ben is happy to write a page or more about every topic I suggest but James is less enthusiastic.  That's okay, though.  I encourage him to write a couple of sentences and then draw a picture.  Synthesis is still taking place while the idea of writing retains its positive connotation and is developed bit by bit. 

Ultimately, I am going to ask my children to periodically choose one entry from their journals and work it up into a more formal written piece where rules for sentence construction, punctuation and grammer can be discussed and reinforced.  For now, though, I want the idea of writing to be pleasurable, personally relevant and intrinsically motivating.

Another activity that we have been doing daily is read alouds.  Usually together as a threesome.  We take turns reading fiction and non-fiction books.  I ask them to rephrase as we read, question them for comprehension periodically, and choose spelling words directly from our read-aloud books that are subsequently written in their work notebooks, alphabetized and used in sentences.  We read until I sense interest waning and then break for lunch.

So far, we have read two great library books together: You Wouldn't Want to be a Viking Explorer (Voyages You'd Rather Not Make) and True Stories About Abraham Lincoln.  The first piggybacks on Shackleton's Stowaway--which I've been reading to the boys before bed for the last month--by further discussing the idea of exploration.  Both books also lend themselves to extemporaneous discussions of geography, stoicism, personal grace...and penguin poop.  The second is a book that I think that I read and enjoyed myself as a kid: it personalizes President Lincoln while providing building block content for the boys to hook later lessons of the Civil War onto.  The book is broken into twenty short vignettes about Lincoln's life--each illustrated and many taking place during his childhood or formative years.

In other subject areas, both boys have issues with really understanding and manipulating math concepts--though, once the groundwork is laid, James tends to pick up ideas and run with them with more rapidity and facility than his older brother.  I decided that we needed to start at square one and hammer home basic math facts before we went on to learn and discuss new ideas.  Neither boy knows his math facts cold.  We are starting right at the beginning: addition--and will work through subtraction and multiplication before I even begin to incorporate concepts into their math work.

This plan does a number of things:

• Gives me breathing time to research the most effective way to introduce and teach math concepts;
• Provides time for me to work on other things--like the above research;
• Gives the boys an opportunity to team-build;
• Gives the boys the basic building blocks they will require so that the new concepts are built upon a sturdy base.

The rest of our day is spent working on art projects (right now: our pinewood derby cars for cub scouts) and enjoying personal reading time and independent technology time (Ben is creating a web page using Apple's iLife program while James is learning typing with a Sponge Bob typing game).

Throw in a field trip or three each week and we have a full curriculum almost instantly!

Looking Back on My Choice

		Saturday, 17 March 07 - 11:54 AM (GMT -05:00) By Andrea S. Stolz in General

 

 

Spectrum of Possibilities launches

		Monday, 08 January 07 - 09:09 PM (GMT -05:00) in General

Spectrum of Possibilities, powered by Terapad.com (http://www.terapad.com/) was launched today featuring blog, forums, image gallery, online shop, event calendar and more.

Spectrum of Possibilities can be accessed at http://spectrumofpossibilities.terapad.com/.

... More items are available in my News Archive