Steps To Equity For Students With Disabilities

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Steps to equity for students with disabilities

By Sarah Brandt and Amy Szarkowski

Categories: Learning communities, Learning designs, Reaching all students

October 2023

Designing professional learning that meets the diverse needs of special education professionals is exciting, challenging, and critically important. Special educators bring a wide range of job responsibilities and skills to the task of addressing their students’ needs. At the Children’s Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf in Massachusetts, staff include teachers, teaching assistants, American Sign Language (ASL)/English interpreters, and related service providers such as speech-language, occupational, and physical therapists. Collectively, these professionals support deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing children from ages 3 to 22 with a range of communication and developmental challenges. We use the term “deaf” to include all deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals, while “Deaf” is used in reference to those who identify with Deaf culture, participate in the Deaf community, and

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References

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Kusters, A., De Meulder, M., Friedner, M., & Emery, S. (2015). On “diversity” and “inclusion”: Exploring paradigms for achieving Sign Language Peoples’ rights. MMG Working Paper. hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0025-BE62-E

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McLeskey, J., Barringer, M-D., Billingsley, B., Brownell, M., Jackson, D., Kennedy, M., Lewis, T., Maheady, L., Rodriguez, J., Scheeler, M.C., Winn, J., & Ziegler, D. (2017). High-leverage practices in special education. Council for Exceptional Children & CEEDAR Center.

Sarah Brandt

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Sarah Brandt ([email protected]) is an associate of The Institute at the Children’s Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Amy Szarkowski

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Amy Szarkowski ([email protected]) is director of The Institute at the Children’s Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf in Beverly, Massachusetts.