As many of my readers know, I have been a special education teacher for twenty-six years. For several of those years I have also been an independent special education consultant. I grew up with an aunt that had intellectual disability. I have a grandson on the autism spectrum. I have...
Continue Reading »

Lately, I have found myself thinking about the future of special education. I'm always reading about special education, talking with parents, discussing with school personnel, so the various issues are never far from my mind. A couple of weeks ago, I read an article written by a special education professor...
Continue Reading »

The idea of this series is to help parents by answering their questions through short videos.

If you have questions you would like answered, please submit them in the comments below or email them to me at Dawn@DawnGibson.Consulting

I haven't met many parents that look forward to IEP meetings. More...
Continue Reading »

My entire adult life has been devoted to those individuals with special needs, twenty-six of those years, professionally. I have worked with students whose diagnoses span a vast array of medical terms. Some of my students had medical names for their diagnosis that when written out, were as long as...
Continue Reading »

This past week I read an article about a special education teacher that ended up quitting due to the the ridiculous and inappropriate testing that was being required of her students. As I read through the story, and the subsequent comments on the story, I found myself shaking my head...
Continue Reading »

The idea of this series is to help parents by answering their questions in a short video (3-6 minutes).

If you have questions you would like answered, please submit them in the comments below or email them to me atDawn@DawnGibson.Consulting

So many times, I hear parents say things like...
Continue Reading »

Welcome to my first video blog, and my first video in a series I'm calling "SpecEd Answers"!

The idea of this series is to help parents by answering their questions in a short video (3-6 minutes).

Please submit questions in the comments below or email them to me at Dawn@DawnGibson.Consulting

...
Continue Reading »

Her name was Carrie. She had an engaging lopsided smile, beautiful blue eyes and white-blond bobbed hair. She wore braces on her legs, and had a limp but those things didn't stop her from moving around at high speeds. I couldn't help but fall for her charms. She was only...
Continue Reading »

Hollywood would have us believe that those individuals with autism are savants (think of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man) or are completely in their own world and can't be reached. Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) share certain characteristics, but each diagnosis is also unique, unique being the key word. Within autism...
Continue Reading »

This week I read an article by Tim Walker, entitled The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland. I found the article both interesting and intriguing. Evidently, in Finland, they call kindergarten "pre-school" and the children in these classes are five and six year olds. Finland believes that young children should...
Continue Reading »

Special education has been a driving force, for most of my life. Maybe I should say, helping and encouraging individuals with special needs, and their families has been my driving force. It is what I do, and contributes to who I am as a person. As a veteran teacher, I...
Continue Reading »

I mentioned in my previous blog post, that something has happened in the last thirty years, that has caused a huge uptick in children being diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum. Even with better, more comprehensive diagnoses, the numbers show a climb at an unusually fast rate. Something is...
Continue Reading »

Are you one of the families touched by autism? If not, do you know someone who is? Autism is a spectrum disorder that is characterized by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as:

• Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts;
• Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior...
  Continue Reading »

I will be writing a new blog series on autism. To give some background, I thought I'd begin this series with some posts I wrote several years ago. I wrote the first post in 2007, and the second post in 2013. In the past two and a half years since...
Continue Reading »

For a parent of a child with a diagnosed disability, the issue of transportation to and from school should always be addressed in the child's Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act ( IDEA) 

"transportation includes travel to and from school, and between schools; travel...
Continue Reading »

All lives matter. 

We hear this on a regular basis on TV, on the internet, people chanting, signs being held.... but do we believe it? Do all lives really matter? I read an article today about a law passed last year in the state of Pennsylvania, stating that parents are...
Continue Reading »

This is my friend, Keith.  I met him about 5 or 6 years ago when when my wife, Dawn, started working with him for "home instruction".

As a baby, Keith had some life threatening medical issues that resulted in some physical and cognitive challenges.  At about 18 years old, before...
Continue Reading »

The series that I’ve blogged on for the past several days has been a stroll down memory lane for me. I have had many, many students over the years and more stories than I can possibly tell in just a few short days. Even now, I continue to add new...
Continue Reading »

The year is 1997. I’m still teaching in the same county, just a different school…one closer to my house. This would be the school I would teach in for the next ten years. I liked this school. I met many wonderful teachers and a lot of interesting students while there.

...
Continue Reading »

In 1995 I started teaching in a new school system. I was placed in an inner city classroom that consisted of nine streetwise boys…all of whom had some sort of emotional/behavioral type of disturbance. I admit at that time I was naive’. I had no idea what lay ahead...
Continue Reading »

The time was 1992. I was twenty-four years old and a new bride. After marrying I moved and started teaching in a large suburban elementary school. By 1994 I had a classroom of Danny, Brittany, Josh, Lori Beth and Lilly. My little class was a hoot! We were a motley...
Continue Reading »

As a mom, of course my own children have changed me. I am definitely a different person because they are here. I love my kids all the time, and most of the time I like them too…especially  now, during the teen years, but that is a story for another day...
Continue Reading »