Before continuing, we should let you know that we have been labeled radical inclusionists. That label makes us proud even though those who label us do so disparagingly. We believe so strongly that students with and without disabilities should be educated together that in 2007, we started a new high school where exactly that occurs. We strongly support inclusion and believe that the regular classroom is the least restrictive environment. Providing students what they need to be successful is the right thing to do.
But simply placing students who struggle in general education classes without support dooms them to fail. Congress knew that back in 1975, and many educators are still learning that lesson today. Many learning environments are not conducive to the success of students who struggle with learning or physical disabilities, which is where curriculum and technology support come into play. Some students also need support with behavior, personal care, health, and so on. Some students simply struggle with one topic during an entire academic year’s worth of topics. The fact is, the law requires that school systems provide support so that students can be successful in the general classroom. Educators have to design appropriate supports and services before recommending that a student be considered for an alternative environment.
Of course, our collective understanding of how to support students who struggle has changed considerably. Over the past several decades, there have been breakthroughs for developing accommodations and modifications. This book contains relevant, current information about the techniques that general and special educators can use to support students’ learning needs. It’s full of tried and true approaches, as well as new technologies, for supporting students in the general classroom.
Importantly, when done well, the positive effects of accommodations and supports for struggling students spill over and impact other students. We have seen countless students better understand a complex concept after seeing the modified version of the learning target. We also have seen teachers change their lessons based on the accommodations that were intended for students. Sometimes, the accommodations and modifications are better than the original curriculum and everyone learns more—but that’s not the main goal of providing curricular, personal, or technological support. The real intention is curriculum accessibility for all students, and that depends on educators having sufficient knowledge to design and redesign learning tasks that all students can access.
It is important that the accommodations and modifications ensure that the tasks remain challenging but not out of reach. That’s a delicate balance that Yazmin Pineda Zapata and Rebecca Brooks tackle with skill. They provide a wide range of both imagined and real-life examples and ideas that educators can apply to ensure that students receiving support are accountable for their learning and that the support team maintains high expectations and rigor. This book contains the tools that educators need to make learning unstoppable for all students.
Introduction
An educator’s task is not only to make curriculum engaging but to ensure that all learners can access that curriculum. All teachers want to design beautiful lessons packed with insightful material and multifaceted activities, but that is not enough if the assessment shows that multiple students have not mastered the concepts. Reteaching a lesson is a reactive solution; this book helps teachers proactively ensure education equity. But what is equity in education? It is not the same as equality, which means providing the same instruction and support for everyone. Equal divvying of resources may result in a fair education for all students, but “fair is not always equal” according to authors Richard L. Curwin and Allen N. Mendler (1988, p. 31).
Providing an equitable education means focusing on meeting each student’s individual needs, considering the whole student and the multitude of contexts in which his or her needs change. To do so, educators must recognize and alter the existing structures and practices within classrooms—how they provide support and teach content, for example—thereby adapting learning to meet those needs. Education research further highlights the need for all educators to embrace the idea of all students having access to the general education curriculum, and that approach requires equity (Crockett, 2011; Shepherd & Hasazi, 2008). What does adapting learning entail? The following section explains.
About Adapting Learning
Adaptations include any support, change, or alteration that allows students to access any part of their school day. They differentiate instruction and come in a variety of forms: curriculum changes, support that staff or peers provide, technology devices, or environment changes. Two education approaches fall under the adaptations umbrella. Accommodations supply students with the tools and strategies they need to access curriculum: content, standards, instructional level, and performance criteria, while lessons remain unchanged. In contrast, modifications change the curriculum and objectives and adjust the standards (Fisher & Frey, 2015). Accommodations and modifications are both differentiation.
Accommodations can take the form of environmental changes (such as dimming lights) or activity changes (such as oral versus written directions). Modifications take the form of, for example, changing, “Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact)” (RL. 5.3) to “Identify and describe one character, setting or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (for example, what the character looks like)” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [NGA & CCSSO], 2010). This book focuses on accommodations as well as modifications, offering real-world examples set in the classroom and the teacher’s lounge.
The terms accommodation and modification are often used together or interchangeably. This book will purposefully use them in accordance with the definitions we’ve given, even though one can debate whether a specific change or support is an accommodation versus a modification. Systems thinking, the basis for Unstoppable Learning that we explain in chapter 1 (page 11), compels educators to focus not on terminology, but on the big picture: Are all students getting what they need to succeed?
Adapting Unstoppable Learning helps educators give students what they need by espousing the principles in Douglas Fisher’s and Nancy Frey’s (2015) Unstoppable Learning and then bundling them with the so-called triangle of support and universal design for learning.
About This Book’s Underpinnings
Important concepts support the wide scope of learning adaptations and equitable education. Those concepts include systems thinking (a tenet of unstoppable learning), the triangle of support, and universal design for learning. The following subsections explain each concept and how the triangle of support and universal design for learning lead back to and invariably depend on systems thinking.
Systems Thinking
Unstoppable Learning comprises seven elements that Fisher and Frey (2015) consider essential: (1) planning, (2) launching, (3) consolidating, (4) assessing, (5) adapting, (6) managing, and (7) leading. This book, Adapting Unstoppable Learning, focuses on the fifth element. Unstoppable Learning requires that educators infuse each of these elements with systems thinking. Fisher and Frey (2015) explain the concept best: “Systems thinking is the ability to see the big picture, observe how the elements within a system influence one another, identify emerging patterns, and act on them in ways that fortify the structures within” (p. 2). Four principles gird the effective systems