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Widely recognized for its innovation and accessibility through real-life stories, the new edition of Exceptional Lives helps prepare readers to become effective special educators using four themes: universal design for learning, inclusion, collaboration, and multicultural responsiveness.
Real Kids, Real Families, Real Issues:Every student in each chapter's opening vignette is a real person. Within each chapter as well as, in the My Voice and Making a Difference boxes, real people's stories are integrated to provide additional insight into the exceptional lives of students with disabilities, their families, their teachers, and other important professionals who impact these students' lives.
Strategies and Tips for Special Education and General Education Teachers:Into Practice shows practical, step-by-step strategies and examples that will help pre-service general and special education teachers implement instruction in their classrooms.
Inclusion Tips provide helpful advice and strategies for inclusion in regard to specific disability issues.
Technology Tips highlight a technology teachers can use in the classroom (or one that supports classroom instruction) to help meet the educational needs of students with disabilities. (New!)
Collaboration Tips describe collaborative processes and strategies that can help teachers achieve a. particular-and appropriate goal for students with the specific disability featured in the chapter. (New!)
Including All Students:Planning Universally Designed Learning sections in each chapter address how teachers can augment, alter, or adapt curriculum, instruction, and evaluation to assure all students' progress in the general curriculum. (New!)
Multicultural Considerations features in each chapter provide meaningful information and prepare teachers to consider the broad cultural backgrounds of their students. (New!)
Inclusive Classrooms: Video Cases on CD-ROM Activity and Learning Guide comes packaged with every copy of the text. With over an hour of video footage, this new CD-ROM provides immediate access to living classroom examples of teaching and learning strategies for inclusion. These video clips, grouped by topic and classroom, give the preservice teacher a good picture of what inclusion looks like in a preschool, an elementary school, a middle school, and a secondary school. (New!)
Our Vision
Consider two different lives, those of the children of three of the authors. Jay Turnbull is 35; that means he was one of the very first students to benefit from the federal special education law (enacted in 1975, when he was 8 years old). In those days, special education was in its infancy; the education he received was good enough—nothing great except occasionally and then largely because of a few exceptionally gifted teachers.
Nolan Smith is two. That means he is one of the many students who is now benefitting from a well-developed special education system that came into his life at the very beginning—not, as in Jay's case, when he was entering his ninth year of life. Unlike Jay, Nolan will benefit from new teaching techniques (universally designed learning), new models (inclusion and access to the general curriculum), new procedures (collaboration), and new understandings (about them and their peers from multicultural backgrounds). That is exactly how it should be: The new ways should replace the old if they provide more benefits. So much for looking back. Now, let's look forward.
Our vision defies specification. It is general, nothing more. One part of it is that what educators now regard as new will persist if it benefits students—all students, not just those with disabilities. Another part is that educators will continue to develop better ways to raise America's children. Yet another is that our country will finally face the realities of poverty and diversity and commit resources—not money alone, but also imagination and courage—to the students and families who are traditionally un- and under-served.
To the degree that this book makes it possible for educators to leave no child and family and teacher behind, fine. But there must be more. We educators must find better ways to educate children. And we must find the common ground and the new words to make it self-evident that we have not done enough for those who are, by one measure or another, "exceptional."
Only when "un" and "under" are purged from "served" and replaced with "well and rightly" will America's schools fulfill their promise: full citizenship for all students. That is what Jay sought and eventually received; that is what Nolan can almost take for granted, at least for now; and that is the birthright of all students and the obligation of all educators.
Our Book's Organization
Chapters 1 through 3 lay the foundation for the rest of our book. They tell a bit about history, quite a lot about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the law that Congress passed in 1975 and that it amended in 1997, and a great deal about today's schools. Most of all, they introduce you to our primary message: All teachers can educate students with disabilities, especially in the general curriculum, by using the principles of universal design, inclusion, collaboration, and multicultural responsiveness. We build on this foundation by describing in Chapters 4 through 16 how to educate students in special education—those who have disabilities (Chapters 4 though 6 and 8 through 16 are about student; various kinds of disabilities) and those who have unusual gifts and talents (Chapter 7). When we write about the students with various kinds of exceptionalities, we use a "categorical" approach: Each chapter describes a different "category" or type of student—for example, Chapter 4 describes those with learning disabilities and Chapter 5 describes those with emotional or behavioral disorders.
Chapter Format
Chapters 4 through 16 have the same "flavor" and format. Their similar flavor comes from the four themes that we weave throughout each chapter: universal design, inclusion, collaboration, and multicultural responsiveness. Their similar format comes from the way we present our information. Each chapter follows this order:
Special Chapter Features
Real Students, Real Educators Real Families, Real Issues
This is not a book of fiction. There are no imagined characters here. Every student, every teacher, every parent, every friend is real. To tell their stories serves a powerful didactic purpose: to describe, in their own words and through these snapshots of their lives, how special education benefits each and every one of them. These students, educators, family members, and friends show you what can happen—how exceptional lives can be made all the more exceptional—when you approach them on the basis of principles and state-of-the-art teaching techniques.
Strategies and Tips for Special Education Teachers
The majority of students with disabilities can progress in the general education curriculum if educators will design programs and classrooms for individualized instruction; provide supplementary supports and services; collaborate with families, other professionals, and community agencies; and respond to the multicultural backgrounds of today's students. So, we offer several guides for general and special educators.
Including All Students
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