Christopher Kliewer
Instantly when I first started reading this article, the first thing I thought out was a charter school in Orlando Florida that I visited in January. The school was called the UCP of Central Florida. They are a school which is 90% privately funded with around 500 students in ages birth through grade 5. Like the classroom Isaac was a part of, in Shoshone School, their main goal was creating community environment in the classrooms and integrating high functioning students with those who could be classified as "behind" for their age group. The classrooms were about the same class size as described in the article, with a mean around 15, and focused on all of the students expressing their individual talents and everyone contributing to the class in their own way. Each of the students was taught in a way best suited to them, with heavy involvement from members of the community, teacher assistants, therapy (physical, speech, literacy), principals and volunteers.
It was of particular interest to me when Shayne said that she maintained a focus on individual goals for each of the children, and not on linear development, or progression along with state standards, or theories set up by academics. This seems to be of particular importance in going along with many of the themes we have been discussing in class; that often times the way a student may appear on paper, or when compared to other statistics of children is not an accurate representation of that child's abilities, talents, importance to the community or overall ability.
This position if further expressed under the section on "A Belief in One's Ability to Think" where there is a quote "Schools have traditionally taken a narrow position when defining and judging student intellect". This is something I think is true across all education systems and in relation to all students. As we can see from this article, there are various special talents all students possess, even and especially ones who on paper may appear as having a disability. The students with disabilities that I had the privilege of working with for three years while I was in high school all had special talents of their own. I worked with one student who had the ability to memorize anything he saw or read, draw impeccably and compute and mathematic equation instantaneously in his mind. Many of the other students I worked with were gifted musically, others loved to dance, and most all of them were amazing at brightening someone else's day, working hard, making others smile and were almost always in a good mood. They were always excited to learn something new, and always had a positive outlook. I think that looking at our future students the way that Shayne looked at all of her students would make our future students better members of the community, both those who are high functioning and those who may be classified as disabled. The way she looks at her students is a great one, and will allow them in the future to be able to be better members of the community, recognize people for who they are rather than what society values their abilities as.
The link I am posting is a link to the website for the school that I visited in Florida. https://www.ucpcfl.org/
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