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Parallel Reading Intervention

By matthew glavach, ph.d., introduction.

Difficulty in learning to read has prolonged consequences.  Students with poor reading skills are locked into underachievement patterns that persist and become greater each year.  In middle school and high school, poor reading skills are barriers to academic success.  The resulting embarrassment and repeated failure take an emotional toll. Students feel alienated and demoralized and are at risk of failing and dropping out of school. Even when students remain in school, poor reading skills take a toll on students and their teachers.

Reading researcher and “ Adolescent Struggling Readers: Removing the Barriers to Success” author Matthew Glavach, Ph.D., found that when struggling readers’ focus is on multisyllable words there are many advantages, even when the words are above their tested reading levels. He published a study on his high school struggling readers which showed that when focusing on multisyllable words organized by suffixes and consistent endings, words such as information, education, communication, and cooperation, struggling readers made exceptional reading progress and most succeeded in content-area classes (science, history, biology, and English) because the words were from their textbooks and taught in a brain efficient way.

This issue of NASET’s Practical Teacher reviews the author’s reading strategy, which he calls parallel reading intervention, and gives examples and research support.  Content-area teachers use the strategy based on words derived from their own content-area textbooks. United States History teachers can use the words presented in the article and add words from their own textbooks.

NASET Members may access this Practical Teacher by Logging in (see Login area to the right). Visitors can access a sample issue by Clicking Here

Publications

• Utilizing the Token Economy in a Special Education Classroom
• What Happens When Children Who Do Not Respond to or Struggle Greatly with Phonics, More of the Same?
• Combining Phonics and Whole Language for Reading Instruction
• Utilizing the Math Routine, “Would You Rather,” to Support Meaningful Classroom Interaction for ALL Students
• Teaching Self-Advocacy Skills to Students with Autism and Other Disabilities
• How Rhyming and Rappin’ Can Improve Reading and Writing: Improving Poetic Intelligence
• U.S. Department of Education Releases New Resource on Supporting Child and Student Social, Emotional, Behavioral and Mental Health during COVID-19 Era
• How Spelling Can Help Reading Learning Common Core Words Quickly and Easily
• Special Advice for Special Educators
• An Alignment of Interactive Notebooks with the Principles of Universal Design
• Comparing and Contrasting Research-to-Teaching Practices: A Critical Analysis of Highly Restrictive Special Education Placements for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities
• Parental Involvement within Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families: Misconceptions, Barriers, and Implications
• The Effects of Parent Therapy for Disruptive Behaviors: A Review of the Literature
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• Intervention for Struggling Writers in Elementary School: A Review of the Literature
• Fire Safety: How to Teach An Essential Life Skill
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• Hospitality in an Inclusive Classroom
• UDL and Art Education for Students with Disabilities and Physical Impairments
• Truly Experiencing Teaching and Learning for the First Time: Snails are Introduced to a Community of Learners Patricia Mason, Ed.D.
• Disproportionate Representation of English Language Learners (ELLs) in Special Education Programs
• 1+1= iPad Math Apps for Teachers
• Using Music to Teach Reading to Kindergarten Students
• Creating a Classroom for Diverse Learners
• The Challenges of Special Education for Parents and Students: A Literature Review By Reshma Mulchan
• Transitioning From School to the Workplace for Students with Disabilities By: Dr. Faye J. Jones
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• Educational Services for Immigrant Children and Those Recently Arrived to the United States
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• Inquiry - Based Learning: Special Education Applications By Jillian F. Swanson
• Intensifying Intervention By Peter Dragula, M.Ed., Doctoral Candidate Capella University
• Special Education Research: Where to Start?
• Intellectual Disabilities in Your Classroom: 9 Tips for Teachers
• Common Core State Standards - Overview
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• The Five Secrets to Being a Special Education Teacher and Still Loving Your Job
• Bridging the Great Divide: Best Practice Ideas for the Resource/Inclusion Teacher
• Enjoying Favorite Books with Struggling Readers: Part 2
• Trauma Informed Teaching in Special Education By: Joshua A. Del Viscovo, M.S., B.C.S.E.
• Enjoying Favorite Books with Struggling Readers: Part I
• A Proper Fraction Museum
• A Review of Financial Literacy Programs for K-12 Students with Intellectual Disabilities: Utilizing the Principles of Universal Design for Learning
• Winnowing the Internet: Websites for Teachers of Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities
• Students Who Have Difficulty Learning to Read with Phonics
• Positive Communication Strategies for Collaborating with Parents of Students with Disabilities
• Five Aspects of Teacher influence on Student Behavior
• Teaching Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities (EBD)
• A Primer on Behavior Management
• Is There Only One Way to Teach Reading? Learning to Read in a Different Way
• Anxiety Disorders by Robin Naope Student at Chaminade University Hawaii
• Schedule A Hiring Authority: Tips for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilties Interested in Starting a Career with the Federal Government
• Trusting Information Resources
• College Planning for the Child with Special Needs: A Parent and Teacher Collaboration
• Latin and Greek Word Root Study to Accelerate Spelling, Vocabulary, and Reading Proficiency for All Students
• Dignity, Function, & Choice: Ethical and Practical Considerations on Best Practices for Education Learners with Developmental Delays
• Peer Tutoring: A Strategy to Help Students with Learning Disabilities
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• The Fourth Grade Slump
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• Games, Contests & Puzzles: Entertaining Ideas for Educating Students
• Using Pen Pal Writing to Improve Writing Skills and Classroom Behavior
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• Math Problem-Solving: Combining Cognitive & Metacognitive Strategies in a 7-Step Process
• Bullies: Turning Around Negative Behaviors
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How ELA and Special Ed Collaboration Can Produce Great Student Writing

July 25, 2021

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Listen to the interview with Sarah Riggs Johnson:

Sponsored by Listenwise and Scholastic Scope

One September morning in a writing workshop class, Jack, a 5th grader, was telling me about a funny “small moment” he witnessed on an airplane. Apparently, two young 20-somethings sitting in front of him had started up an initial conversation and by the end of the flight, they were kissing. 

“And I mean—a lot of kissing! It was sooo awkward!” he squealed. 

Where most 5th graders were planning their narrative writing about the time they broke their arm/wrist/ankle or their game-winning shot/hit/goal, I thought Jack’s idea was so refreshing. After his detailed description of eavesdropping, I felt certain his piece would be funny and weird-in-a-good-way—a joy to read. I left him to write and went to help other students. When I returned, Jack’s writing teacher (my friend and colleague) stood beside his desk with a hand on her chin, looking perplexed. Jack had sat for 45 minutes with only this written on his page:

On tim on a plaen…

Jack’s accommodation plan said he had dyslexia and graphomotor difficulties, which was one reason I was in his writing workshop that morning: He was one of many students I had the privilege of working with as a learning specialist. Sometimes we would meet in a small group outside of class, and other times I would work with him in his regular 5th grade class. As a learning specialist, my role was to help Jack’s English/Language Arts (ELA) teacher figure out how to help him write. Her role was to help me figure out what skills to focus on with Jack during my intervention time with him. Over years of doing this work, I discovered some essential elements to improving students’ writing through this kind of collaborative practice between regular classroom writing teachers and learning specialists. 

If you’re part of a similar partnership, you may find some of these helpful in your work as well.

Why Writing is Especially Challenging for Students with Learning Differences

Writing is an incredibly complex task. It involves the instant integration of several components—handwriting and letter formation (and later typing), spacing and formatting on the page, spelling, grammar, sentence formation, adding punctuation—all while holding your ideas, and some sort of organizational scheme for those ideas, in your memory. It’s a difficult enough task for most students, who aren’t reading as much as they once did due to our instant access to visual media. But it’s particularly challenging for people with language-based learning disabilities, who often continue to struggle with writing even in adulthood. 

Students with learning differences often experience a more severe “cognitive bottleneck” first described by theorists who studied attention in the ‘50s and ‘60s . Some conventions of written language make it to the page while others…don’t quite make it. Did Jack know how to spell “one,” “time,” and “plane” in 5th grade? Yes, he did. He had years of multi-sensory phonics and reading intervention behind him. However, the other cognitive demands of the writing process caused his spelling to get caught in the bottleneck. 

Other students with learning differences also struggle with writing. Students with ADHD sometimes struggle to organize language, keep track of their ideas, or explain with enough detail. Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders often struggle to understand writing from the point of view of their readers. 

Helping these students become proficient writers takes the synergy of a skilled language arts teacher and a skilled learning specialist. And that synergy can be enhanced if certain elements are in place.

Essential Elements of Effective ELA-Specialist Collaboration

1. a common planning time .

The biggest impact a school leader can make in the quality of instruction for ALL learners is to give co-teachers common planning time. I was lucky to start my career as a special educator in a school where my division head handed me a blank schedule with two periods already filled in. It said, “Common planning time with the 5th and 6th-grade Humanities teams.” For 55 minutes once a week, three humanities teachers and myself gathered around the student work table in my office with coffee (lots of coffee), books, laptops, and a last-minute Post-It note agenda.

As a result of these meetings, reading and writing workshops were problem-solved, social studies lessons were well designed, student work was analyzed, student needs were met, and friendships and co-teaching relationships I will cherish forever were formed. The cast of characters changed over the years as teachers left and were hired, including myself, but the value stayed the same. More recently we’ve had to have these meetings as floating heads on a screen, but the value in sitting down together to talk about how we would teach has never wavered for me. 

2. An Equal Partnership 

Collaboration works best when the ELA teacher and the specialist work on equal playing fields. I like to think of it as a psychologist and a sociologist working together: One is focused more on how an individual is functioning; the other needs to be focused on the good of the group. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Sometimes our ideas will seem out of touch with each other’s roles, and that’s okay as long as we honor the value in each other. As a learning specialist, I am not an island in knowing what’s best for students, even students with learning differences. It works best when there is shared ownership; when we can see their growth as “our” shared goal! 

One practical way to accomplish this goal is to rotate groups. There were times when I would work with the most talented writers in the class, giving the ELA teacher more time with our struggling writers. My colleague and I would always have lots to talk about afterwards, and the kids did not feel the stigma of being the only ones asked to work with the specialist. 

Another way the specialist can reduce stigma is by taking part in some of the fun that happens with the class—help judge a competition, give feedback on a project, participate in a class celebration and connect with students other than the ones you are there to serve. Students will come to see you as just another one of their teachers, and as a resource for all. 

3. Reading Student Work Together 

Whenever possible, both teachers should analyze student drafts together to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of students’ writing. Doing this together will help you see different strengths and weaknesses in a piece, and the student will then learn to see these as well.

Sharing the writing load also means you can divide up written feedback on student drafts. By rotating which teacher gives feedback to which students, you give students the benefit of both sets of eyes and continue to establish an equal partnership with all students. 

4. Practicing ‘Less is More’

With a task as complex as writing, all students—but especially those with learning differences—can experience cognitive overload. So it works best to tackle one chunk, one scene, one paragraph at a time. 

When it comes to feedback, many students are overwhelmed by too many comments just as they used to be with too much red ink. I rely heavily on giving students genuine praise—for a descriptive adjective, a well-crafted phrase, an attempt to apply the lesson to their writing—and then I follow it up with one or two suggestions for revision. Psychologically, all students have to feel they have something to say; they have to feel positive about the effort they’re making, so very specific, authentic praise will earn you a lot of effort in return.

Another way to reduce the quantity of written feedback is to give some of it verbally, which allows for the levity and nuance that “Insert Comment” can’t achieve. In-person conferencing is ideal, but in the last 6 months, I’ve learned to record quick screencast videos explaining my feedback, highlighting sentences, and typing comments to illustrate different areas for improvement. 

5. Use of Models

ELA teachers tend to read widely! One of the most effective things we can do together is figure out some interesting examples to use with our students who are struggling—the perfect opening paragraph, the perfect fight scene, an example of suspense building, describing the setting, the expert’s quotation being explained. If we have these at the ready, we can pull them to discuss and analyze with students. I also always recommend saving exceptional work (de-identified, of course) to use as models for the next year. For remote learning, I always have models or visuals pulled up as separate tabs and ready to be screenshared as needed. 

6. Use of Word Lists 

I have an entire library of word lists where students can look for the perfect word or phrase. I always end up lending these to the writing classroom. A more specific word for walked , blue , big , or sad can make an emerging writer feel like a poet. This is especially effective when working on writing poetry and descriptive writing, but it can also be used for older students writing analytical pieces as they struggle with transitional language and tying their points together. Why not have a list of templates at their disposal, i.e., “According to…”, “This demonstrates why…” etc.)? 

The act of scanning the lists for just the right word or phrase improves the student’s ability to clarify meaning and see possibilities. The student with a learning difference is also sometimes not well-read and needs exposure to two things: (1) new ways to say things and (2) the nuanced difference in the meaning of certain words or expressions. I will often practice this act of list scanning with students… “Hmm, let’s try out some different words here and see if you can find one that makes you feel something… or seems like the perfect fit!”

7. Staying Together

Try not to remove a kid who struggles with writing from writing instruction. Students who struggle learn more than you think from their peers, even if their writing skill is not comparable. Instead of pulling students who struggle from the classroom during writing, work with the specialist to make the instruction more accessible and more enjoyable. Sometimes the specialist can arrange to physically or virtually be in the classroom working with students, and at other times he or she might “asynchronously” design a graphic organizer, outline, or checklist, or make a plan for integrating assistive technology like speech-to-text accessibility features or dictation apps for certain students. 

8. Letting ELA Work Guide Intervention

Specialists can reinforce mini-lessons, genres, and concepts taught by the ELA teacher in the writing lesson—and add a touch of language remediation. If my students are working on persuasive essays in writing class, every sentence I have them analyze for word study or work on reading fluency will be from a persuasive writing sample and as closely aligned with their personal interests as I can plan for that week. This builds confidence and familiarity with the writing genre in addition to the skills I am targeting. 

There is magic in teachers working together to reinforce the same knowledge and skills. I love it when a student I’m working with exclaims, “Wait a minute, we just talked about this in a writing workshop today!” Then, depending on the student, you can sarcastically feign shock “REALLY?” or just give them a knowing side-eye! We all need all the magic we can muster right now. 

9. Showing Progress Through Writing Samples

Progress towards the achievement of IEP or SMART-style goals can be made visible through a timeline sequence of writing samples. I once taught a student who wrote with no punctuation. Even when this student re-read to add periods, he could not distinguish where a sentence began and ended. It was difficult for him to hear the natural pauses in speech; complex grammar concepts such as subject and predicate or even “being verbs” were difficult for him to grasp. 

His teacher and I came up with a weekly routine that balanced getting his ideas on the page sans punctuation in writing class, and working on dictated sentences (from his own writing!) with me until his natural sense of pause and punctuation improved. We were able to demonstrate this progress by simply sequencing the drafts of his writing throughout the semester and showing him the changes over time. Working online, it is easy to annotate a student’s digital writing portfolio, pointing to their progress with certain skills. When you can show a student their own progress in this way, and have them reflect, it tends to increase their motivation tenfold. 

10. Prioritizing Revision and Editing 

Students with learning differences that impact writing often struggle with clarity and mechanics. Once students write to get their ideas on the page first, they can develop a multi-step process for what I call the R’s: re-read , revise , and sometimes I use the word revisit .  

Ideally, each student would have their own checklist for this process, and it would be generated with and not for the student. For example, I might advise them to start by revisiting their punctuation/ sentence boundaries. Next, they could revisit their spelling. (For a student who doesn’t recognize their own disordered spelling, this can be even more scaffolded by the teacher putting a number of misspellings on the line and asking the student to find them.) The list would include each of the aspects we discussed through our mini-lessons for that particular genre of writing. Through this process, the ELA teacher and the specialist may have different suggestions for revision and improvement, and that’ll only make the writing better! 

Another way to teach revision as a process is to have students re-visit their writing with each square of a single-point rubric , which can be especially valuable if generated by the class.  Revisiting writing with a rubric (all the R’s!) can be fun to do in peer-revision stations, where peers are assigned a specific aspect of the rubric to give the writer feedback on.  

Another tip: I often instruct students who struggle with sentence boundaries, to re-read their piece backward, from the last sentence to the first. This eliminates the memory of what they think they have said and lays bare the sentences as they were written. Students tend to go, “Oh yeah, this is definitely too long to be one sentence!”

11. Combatting Anxiety and Perfectionism

Some students struggle with writing because subconsciously, the fact that they cannot write on the level of the books that they love to read frustrates them (e.g., If I can’t sound like J.K. Rowling, I’m a failure, and so why even get started? ). For a student with this mindset, I work with the ELA teacher to come up with very specific models. (See #5). And always, always show them the timeline of their drafts to reinforce progress (See #9). I also borrow a favorite phrase from my colleague, the ELA teacher: “No matter what kind of a writer you are, when you think you’re done, you’ve just begun!”

As we know, writing is an endless, limitless, boundless creative task. Students who are uncomfortable with this type of endeavor have to be taught some strategies to wade into it and find some comfort with themselves, with feedback, and with change. 

These are the tenets of what helped Jack eventually write that narrative piece, one of the most original, giggle-inducing stories in his class. He needed the mini-lessons his ELA teacher taught about leads and dialogue, “juicy” details and setting the scene, creating a movie in the reader’s mind, etc. He also needed the language support, the remediation, the accommodation of some writing by dictation, and the editing and revision strategies taught by the specialist. He needed two writing teachers who were encouraging him to use and develop his comedic voice to write. 

In addition to being good for the diverse young humans we serve, this type of healthy collaboration between educators is a game-changer for teaching practice. I have always found it helps me bring the art and the science together; it’s creative and innovative and validating. It can make you feel like you are on fire in your teaching again, especially if you’ve been teaching alone for a long time. As with all things teaching and learning, it’s not always neat or easy, but it is ultimately pretty dang rewarding.

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What to Read Next

Categories: Instruction , Podcast , Working Together

Tags: English language arts , special education

I am presently taking a course, “Teaching Reluctant Writers,” through John’s Hopkins. This podcast reinforced, reminded, reinvigorated.

I agree that co-teachers should be given common planning time. People tend to forget that planning is essential for teachers. Otherwise, they could fall into a spot where they have nothing to teach or their students refuse to learn.

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Teaching the Writing Process to Students with Special Needs

• Deb Killion
• Categories : Inclusion strategies for mainstreamed classrooms
• Tags : Special ed information for teachers & parents

I am a lifelong writer. Writing always came easy to me. I brought grades up in college from a “C” to an “A” because of this gift. But like any talent, the same gift was not bestowed on everyone. I struggled with Math, especially Algebra when I was a student. Some people struggle with Writing and English in the same way I struggled with Math. Once I realized that, I became a better teacher.

This series is meant to be a guide and a step-by-step lesson series on how to teach writing skills required for the standardized tests, as well as other contexts.

Teaching Writing to Resource Students

Knowing your students and where their strong points are is essential to helping them flourish with the changing demands of today’s current education system. So, first, assess what skills your students have, including content-writing skills, grammatical ability, spelling, and more, and analyze what they need to work on. But, in order to effectively teach writing, we must start with the most obvious: Content-writing. We will also look at the various steps of writing, and model it in the way students with special needs learn best.

Step 1: The Pre-WritingStage

There are many components to good writing, which include content, grammar, style, tone, voice, and sentence structure. All of these are important but can be difficult to teach to students who struggled with Language Arts skills and writing structure. One of the first things you should teach is content . Content is the fabric that holds the piece together. The rest are just vehicles to good writing. Without good content, you do not have anything. So, starting with good content about a topic is the first step.

To get students to think about what to write about, here are 10 idea starters that may serve to spur their imaginations:

One fun thing I did last summer was….

If I could do anything for a job, it would be….

My favorite memory of Christmas at home was….

The best car for the money right now is….

My goals for the future are…..

Cats make better pets than dogs because….

__________ is the best place to go on vacation because…

What Makes a Nice Person is…..

The Grand Canyon is much more than just a big hole in the ground….

People should not smoke because…..

These 10 writing starter ideas include many of the most important skills tested on the Benchmark exams. They include the skills the standardized test creators expect them to know, including analysis, comparison, persuasive language, and evaluation. They also include the skill of research in some cases, such as defending why a certain place is the best place to go on vacation, or what the Grand Canyon is, besides a big hole in the ground. In addition, they require students to use their imaginations to come up with ideas on their own. These writing starter ideas are only meant to get a kid’s imagination going, and hopefully spur them on to their own ideas. They all require analytical thinking; some require comparison writing, and other skills they should learn to effectively communicate their own ideas.

Content is really about what they know. This requires some former knowledge, but this is also something teachers can teach. Brainstorming is the most essential element of writing at the pre-writing stage. During this stage, get students to think of everything about the topic they possibly can within 5 minutes. They should write everything that pops into their heads. The good writer has often said, “Don’t think. Write.” This is true in this initial stage while working on ideas for content. The revising and perfecting stage comes later.

So in this part, simply have students write everything they can think of, organize their notes, then “weed their garden,” so that their essay will not be too broad. Once they have decided on a topic and developed the ideas, they are ready to move on to step 2: The Writing Stage

• http://www.readingrockets.org/article/215/
• http://www.weac.org/Issues _Advocacy/Resource_Pages_On_Issues_one/Special_Education/speced_links.aspx
• http://specialeducatorswebpages.com/

This post is part of the series: The Five Step Writing Process for Students with Special Needs

The 5 steps to good writing include: 1) Pre-writing (Brainstorming), 2) Writing (Content), 3) Rewriting/Revising, 4) Editing/Proofreading, 5) Publishing. This series goes through each step, outlining some ideas to try for students who struggle.

• Teaching Writing to Students with Special Needs
• Teaching Students with Special Needs: The Writing Phase
• Rewriting and Revising: Teaching Students with Special Needs
• Proofreading & Publishing: The Final Stage in the Writing Process

Resources for Special Education Teachers

As a special education teacher, your focus should be on your students-- not the paperwork. our goal at spedhelper is to be your iep helper and make the paperwork both easier and more useful to you and students' families. the website has free resources for quickly writing high-quality ieps, from iep goals to assessment resources and iep tips, so you can get back to what really matters., find special education teaching tips, browse present level & assessment tools, see common core aligned goals.

IEP Goals for Multiplication & Division

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IEP Goals for Spelling

Find assessment resources for spelling, common core standards, and ideas for how to write strong, ccs-aligned spelling goals for kinder through 5th grade. the goals include ideas for assistive technology and resources students can use to excel at spelling..

IEP Goals for Reading

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A Guide to Special Education Terms

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The number of students in special education has increased steadily in the last four decades , with parents more readily seeking additional support and more students being diagnosed with conditions, like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder.

In the wake of the pandemic, though, districts struggle to hire and—more importantly—keep their special education teachers, who are often beleaguered by stressful working conditions and a lack of resources.

Even as the field shifts to address workforce shortages, with some states considering extra pay for special education and others eyeing how artificial intelligence could lessen the burden of increased workloads, students with disabilities make up roughly 13 percent of the school population, said Natasha Strassfeld, an assistant professor in the department of special education at the University of Texas at Austin.

These are key terms educators should know.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act , or IDEA , is a federal law that establishes the rights of students with disabilities and their families.

First passed in 1975 and most recently reauthorized in 2004, the act provides grant funding to states that agree to the federal government’s vision for educating students with disabilities, said Strassfeld.

Students must be identified, evaluated, and deemed as IDEA eligible for the state to use federal money to educate that child. There are 13 categories under which a student could be eligible, including physical and intellectual disabilities.

There are about seven million students served under IDEA, said Strassfeld.

An Individualized Education Program , or IEP , is a legally binding contract between a school district and a family with a child with a disability. Under IDEA, students are afforded an IEP, said Dia Jackson, senior researcher for special education, equity, and tiered systems of support at the American Institutes of Research.

IEPs spell out what area a student has a disability in, how it impacts learning, and what the school will do to address those needs, such as providing speech or occupational therapy, more intensive instructional supports, and accommodations, including for standardized tests and other learning goals.

The number of IEPs is increasing in schools as conditions, like autism spectrum disorder, or ADHD, are being diagnosed more readily.

All students with disabilities are protected under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which requires schools to make “reasonable accommodation” for students with disabilities.

Educators don’t have to make specially designed instruction plans under a 504, but students can get certain accommodations, like elevator passes if a student is in a wheelchair, Jackson said.

“It’s a slightly different focus, but both play out in schools,” Jackson said.

Individualized family services plans , or IFSPs, are developed for children up to age 3 who need help with communication, social-emotional skills, and physical needs, Strassfeld said.

Like an IEP, the plan is made in collaboration with a parent or guardian, along with professionals such as a child care provider, religious leaders, or doctors. The document outlines a plan for families to help seek services—such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, medical services, and more—but is focused more on the family’s goals rather than strictly educational goals, Strassfeld said.

“While they’re focusing on pre-education goals, primarily at that age, we’re thinking about that child as being a part of a component of a family,” she said.

The right to a Free Appropriate Public Education , or FAPE , means that for every IDEA-eligible student, services must be provided at no cost to the student or their family, must be appropriate for the needs of the child, and have to be education oriented, Strassfeld said.

With FAPE, there is also the concept of least restrictive environment, or LRE, Jackson said. Students should be included to the fullest extent possible in mainstream classrooms and be challenged but appropriately supported, alongside their general education peers.

That’s not without its challenges, however, Strassfeld said.

“IDEA essentially is premised on the philosophical notion that it is that easy. It’s a real challenge for school districts,” she said, adding that as parents and advocates examine special education through disability justice and disability studies lenses, there are more critiques of the model.

Jackson said that she’s heard criticism along these lines: When students with disabilities aren’t prepared for a general education environment, or when general education teachers don’t have training on special education.

Response to intervention , or RTI , came as an amendment to IDEA in 2004 to help earlier identify students who are struggling before they begin failing, Jackson said, and begin giving them additional support through a tiered process. Generally, all students receive “tier I” instruction on grade-level standards. Then, students who need additional help get more intensive supports. That could look like a teacher working one-on-one, or in small groups, helping target specific areas to improve learning.

Intervention is an evidence-based program meant to address a specific learning or social-emotional need. It can be done in a general education classroom, and looks like regular teaching, Jackson said, but it uses particular materials and involves collecting data on progress.

The term RTI has evolved into multitiered system of supports , or MTSS , which is also a preventative framework, but goes beyond academics to consider the infrastructure districts need to implement MTSS, Jackson said.

“The shift to MTSS is meant to be more inclusive of the infrastructure as well as inclusive of social-emotional learning as well as academics,” she said.

A functional behavior assessment , or FBA , is a way for educators to collect data on student behavior, and what is triggering certain unwanted behavior, Jackson said.

For instance, she said, if a teacher has a student who has autism and, when they get upset, they throw a chair, an FBA could be conducted.

Once that analysis is collected, a behavior intervention plan , or BIP , is developed, describing what the behavior is, how often it happens, and what will be done to address it.

FBAs and BIPs are not without concerns, however, as students with disabilities—especially students of color—are more likely to face exclusionary discipline, such as suspension and expulsion.

“A lot of times, it is a subjective judgment call if a student is exhibiting ‘appropriate behavior’ or not,” Jackson said. “There’s a lot of potential bias that goes into discipline of students and behavior management.”

It’s one example of disproportionality , where an ethnic or racial group is over- or under-represented in certain areas. For instance, Jackson said, students of color with disabilities are over-represented in discipline, on being identified as having a disability, and being placed in more restrictive environments.

Restraint and seclusion are practices used in public schools as a response to student behavior that limits their movement and aims to deescalate them, by either physically limiting their movement (restraint) or isolating them from others (seclusion), according to previous EdWeek reporting .

The practice of physically restraining students with disabilities or placing them in isolation has been heavily scrutinized, but is still used in some states.

It should only be used in extreme cases when a student is at risk to harm themselves or others, Jackson said, but never as a behavior management technique, or as punishment. Students have been harmed, or even killed, as a result of restraints , Jackson said. Students of color are over-represented in the population who are restrained and isolated, Jackson added.

Even still, there are educators who don’t want to see the practices completely banned, Jackson said.

“Teachers have been hurt by students or they’ve been hurt in the midst of a restraint so they still want to have the option available,” she said. “It’s an issue of not having training in another alternative, so they feel like: ‘This is the only way I can handle this particular student, or type of student, because I don’t know anything else.’”

Strassfeld said that there’s been more focus on the practice alongside excessive force in law enforcement.

“There’s been discussion that disability advocates have had about criminalization of behaviors that a person has no control over, and this type of force seems to deny the humanity of people who perhaps are exhibiting behaviors they are not able to control,” she said.

Education Issues, Explained

Vanessa Solis, Associate Design Director contributed to this article.

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The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

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Special education teachers fill out mountains of paperwork, customize lessons for students with a wide range of learning differences, and attend hours of bureaucratic meetings.

It’s easy to see why it would be tempting to outsource parts of that job to a robot.

While there may never be a special educator version of “Star Wars”’ protocol droid C-3PO, generative artificial tools—including ChatGPT and others developed with the large language models created by its founder, Open AI—can help special education teachers perform parts of their job more efficiently, allowing them to spend more time with their students, experts and educators say.

But those shortcuts come with plenty of cautions, they add.

Teachers need to review artificial intelligence’s suggestions carefully to ensure that they are right for specific students. Student data—including diagnoses of learning differences or cognitive disorders—need to be kept private.

Even special educators who have embraced the technology urge to proceed with care.

“I’m concerned about how AI is being presented right now to educators, that it’s this magical tool,” said Julie Tarasi, who teaches special education at Lakeview Middle School in the Park Hill school district near Kansas City, Mo. She recently completed a course in AI sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education. “And I don’t think that the AI literacy aspect of it is necessarily being [shared] to the magnitude that it should be with teachers.”

Park Hill is cautiously experimenting with AI’s potential as a paperwork partner for educators and an assistive technology for some students in special education.

The district is on the vanguard. Only about 1 in 6 principals and district leaders—16 percent—said their schools or districts were piloting AI tools or using them in a limited manner with students in special education, according to a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey conducted in March and April.

AI tools may work best for teachers who already have a deep understanding of what works for students in special education, and of the tech itself, said Amanda Morin, a member of the advisory board for the learner-variability project at Digital Promise, a nonprofit organization that works on equity and technology issues in schools.

“If you feel really confident in your special education knowledge and experience and you have explored AI [in depth], I think those two can combine in a way that can really accelerate the way you serve students,” Morin said.

But “if you are a novice at either, it’s not going to serve your students well because you don’t know what you don’t know yet,” she added. “You may not even know if the tool is giving you a good answer.”

Here are some of the areas where Park Hill educators and other school and district leaders see AI’s promise for special education—and what caveats to look out for:

Promise: Reducing the paperwork burden.

Some special education teachers spend as many as eight hours a week writing student-behavior plans, progress reports, and other documentation.

“Inevitably, we’re gonna get stuck, we’re gonna struggle to word things,” Tarasi said. AI can be great for busting through writer’s block or finding a clearer, more objective way to describe a student’s behavior, she said.

What’s more, tools such as Magic School—an AI platform created for K-12 education—can help special education teachers craft the student learning goals that must be included in an individualized education program, or IEP.

“I can say ‘I need a reading goal to teach vowels and consonants to a student,’ and it will generate a goal,” said Tara Bachmann, Park Hill’s assistive-technology facilitator. “You can put the criteria you want in, but it makes it measurable, then my teachers can go in and insert the specifics about the student” without involving AI, Bachmann said.

These workarounds can cut the process of writing an IEP by up to 30 minutes, Bachmann said—giving teachers more time with students.

AI can also come to the rescue when a teacher needs to craft a polite, professional email to a parent after a stress-inducing encounter with their child.

Some Park Hill special education teachers use “Goblin,” a free tool aimed at helping neurodivergent people organize tasks, to take the “spice” out of those messages, Tarasi said.

A teacher could write “the most emotionally charged email. Then you hit a button called ‘formalize.’ And it makes it like incredibly professional,” Bachmann said. “Our teachers like it because they have a way to release the emotion but still communicate the message to the families.”

Caveat: Don’t share personally identifiable student information. Don’t blindly embrace AI’s suggestions.

Teachers must be extremely careful about privacy issues when using AI tools to write documents—from IEPs to emails—that contain sensitive student information, Tarasi said.

“If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard outside of the school, you should not be putting it into any sort of AI,” Tarasi said. “There’s no sense of guaranteed privacy.”

Tarasi advises her colleagues to “absolutely not put in names” when using generative AI to craft documents, she said. While including students’ approximate grade level may be OK in certain circumstances, inputting their exact age or mentioning a unique diagnosis is a no-no.

To be sure, if the information teachers put into AI is too vague, educators might not get accurate suggestions for their reports. That requires a balance.

“You need to be specific without being, without being pinpoint,” Tarasi said.

Caveat: AI works best for teachers who already understand special education

Another caution: Although AI tools can help teachers craft a report or customize a general education lesson for students in special education, teachers need to already have a deep understanding of their students to know whether to adopt its recommendations.

Relying solely on AI tools for lesson planning or writing reports “takes the individualized out of individualized education,” Morin said. “Because what [the technology] is doing is spitting out things that come up a lot” as opposed to carefully considering what’s best for a specific student, like a good teacher can.

Educators can tweak their prompts—the questions they ask AI—to get better, more specific advice, she added.

“A seasoned special educator would be able to say ‘So I have a student with ADHD, and they’re fidgety’ and get more individualized recommendations,” Morin said.

Promise: Making lessons more accessible.

Ensuring students in special education master the same course content as their peers can require teachers to spend hours simplifying the language of a text to an appropriate reading level.

Generative AI tools can accomplish that same task—often called “leveling a text"—in just minutes, said Josh Clark, the leader of the Landmark School , a private school in Massachusetts serving children with dyslexia and other language-based learning differences.

“If you have a class of 30 kids in 9th grade, and they’re all reading about photosynthesis, then for one particular child, you can customize [the] reading level without calling them out and without anybody else knowing and without you, the teacher, spending hours,” Clark said. “I think that’s a super powerful way of allowing kids to access information they may not be able to otherwise.”

Similarly, in Park Hill, Bachmann has used Canva—a design tool with a version specifically geared toward K-12 schools and therefore age-appropriate for many students—to help a student with cerebral palsy create the same kind of black-and-white art his classmates were making.

Kristen Ponce, the district’s speech and language pathologist, has used Canva to provide visuals for students in special education as they work to be more specific in their communication.

Case-in-point: One of Ponce’s students loves to learn about animals, but he has a very clear idea of what he’s looking for, she said. If the student just says “bear,” Canva will pull up a picture of, for instance, a brown grizzly. But the student may have been thinking of a polar bear.

That gives Ponce the opportunity to tell him, “We need to use more words to explain what you’re trying to say here,” she said. “We were able to move from ‘bear’ to ‘white bear on ice.’”

Caveat: It’s not always appropriate to use AI as an accessibility tool.

Not every AI tool can be used with every student. For instance, there are age restrictions for tools like ChatGPT, which isn’t for children under 13 or those under 18 without parent permission, Bachmann said. (ChatGPT does not independently verify a user’s age.)

“I caution my staff about introducing it to children who are too young and remembering that and that we try to focus on what therapists and teachers can do collectively to make life easier for [students],” she said.

“Accessibility is great,” she said. But when a teacher is thinking about “unleashing a child freely on AI, there is caution to it.”

Promise: Using AI tools to help students in special education communicate.

Park Hill is just beginning to use AI tools to help students in special education express their ideas.

One recent example: A student with a traumatic brain injury that affected her language abilities made thank you cards for several of her teachers using Canva.

“She was able to generate personal messages to people like the school nurses,” Bachmann said. “To her physical therapist who has taken her to all kinds of events outside in the community. She said, ‘You are my favorite therapist.’ She got very personal.”

There may be similar opportunities for AI to help students in special education write more effectively.

Some students with learning and thinking differences have trouble organizing their thoughts or getting their point across.

“When we ask a child to write, we’re actually asking them to do a whole lot of tasks at once,” Clark said. Aspects of writing that might seem relatively simple to a traditional learner—word retrieval, grammar, punctuation, spelling—can be a real roadblock for some students in special education, he said.

“It’s a huge distraction,” Clark said. The student may “have great ideas, but they have difficulty coming through.”

Caveat: Students may miss out on the critical-thinking skills writing builds.

Having students with language-processing differences use AI tools to better express themselves holds potential, but if it is not done carefully, students may miss developing key skills, said Digital Promise’s Morin.

AI “can be a really positive adaptive tool, but I think you have to be really structured about how you’re doing it,” she said.

ChatGPT or a similar tool may be able to help a student with dyslexia or a similar learning difference “create better writing, which I think is different than writing better,” Morin said.

Since it’s likely that students will be able to use those tools in the professional world, it makes sense that they begin using them in school, she said.

But the tools available now may not adequately explain the rationale behind the changes they make to a student’s work or help students express themselves more clearly in the future.

“The process is just as important as the outcome, especially with kids who learn differently, right?” Morin said. “Your process matters.”

Clark agreed on the need for moving cautiously. His own school is trying what he described as “isolated experiments” in using AI to help students with language-processing differences express themselves better.

The school is concentrating, for now, on older students preparing to enter college. Presumably, many will be able to use AI to complete some postsecondary assignments. “How do we make sure it’s an equal playing field?” Clark said.

A version of this article appeared in the May 22, 2024 edition of Education Week as The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

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Job Posting: Medical Waste Inspector

Department of Public Health

$4,145.00 - $7,926.00 per Month

Final Filing Date: 6/7/2024

Job Description and Duties

This position supports the California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) mission and strategic plan by advancing the health and well-being of California’s diverse people and communities by protecting the public’s health, promoting health and wellness, empowering the public health workforce, and enhancing services through agile operations.

The incumbent reports to the Senior Environmental Scientist (Supervisory) in the Environmental Management Branch, Emergency, Restoration, and Waste Management Section, Medical Waste Management Program.

The Environmental Scientist (ES) is an entry, intermediate working, and journey level of the series.

At Range A, the incumbent, under close supervision, performs a variety of the less difficult and responsible professional scientific office and field work. Work at this level is characterized by a reliance on detailed instructions and assistance from lead persons and supervisors in the application of proven techniques and methodologies to assigned work.

At Range B, the incumbent, under general supervision, performs a variety of responsible professional scientific office and field work. Work at this level is characterized by a reliance on proven techniques and methodologies.

At Range C, the incumbent, under direction, independently performs a variety of responsible professional scientific office and field work. Work at this level is characterized by independent development and use of techniques and methodologies. The incumbent may also be assigned lead responsibility for a specific project.

The attached duty statement indicates whether this position is eligible for telework. All employees who telework are required to be California residents in accordance with Government Code 14200, and may be required to report to a CDPH office, when needed. Candidates who reside outside of the state of California may be interviewed; however, the selected candidate must have a primary residency in the state of California prior to appointment (and continue to maintain California residency) as a condition of employment. Failure to meet this requirement may result in the job offer being rescinded.

Please let us know how you heard about our position by taking this brief survey:

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You will find additional information about the job in the Duty Statement .

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Position Details

Department information.

At the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), equity, diversity, and inclusion are at the core of our mission to advance the health and well-being of California’s diverse people and communities. We are genuinely and strongly committed to cultivating and preserving a culture of inclusion and connectedness where we can grow and learn together with a diverse team of employees. In recruiting for team members, we welcome the unique contributions that you can bring to us and the work we do.

The posted position is in the Environmental Management Branch (EMB).  EMB regulates the medical waste industry, pre-harvest commercial shellfish operations, and recreational health (public swimming pools, ocean beaches and organized camps); provides sanitary surveillance of state institutions; administers the Registered Environmental Health Specialist (REHS) program; oversees radiological cleanup at military base closure facilities, coordinates the State's Indoor Radon Program, the Medical Waste Management Program and the California Department of Public Health's Nuclear Emergency Response Program.

EMB office is located in Midtown Sacramento, with free, off-street parking and conveniently located next to a Gold Line Light Rail station.

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In order to be considered for this position, you must submit a copy of your college transcripts official or un-official and/or Degree for education verification.

For experience/education to qualify during the application screening process, and to ensure that minimum qualifications can be determined, applicants should include all employment history on the Employment Application (STD 678) and/or Resume, including detailed job descriptions,  hours worked per week , and  start/end dates (MM/DD/YYYY) .  Application packages without this information will experience delayed processing times and your eligibility for this position may be impacted.

A completed State application (STD. 678) and any other relevant documents (e.g. unofficial transcript, copy of degree, resume, etc.) should be submitted electronically via your CalCareers Account. Please reference  Job Control # 433652  and indicate the basis of your eligibility in the Examination(s) or Job Title(s) section. SROA and surplus candidates should submit a copy of their letter with their application. Please remove any confidential information (i.e. social security number, date of birth) from your documents prior to submission.

Complete Application Packages (including your Examination/Employment Application (STD 678) and applicable or required documents) must be submitted to apply for this Job Posting. Application Packages may be submitted electronically through your CalCareers Account at www.CalCareers.ca.gov. Submitting an electronic application through your CalCareers account is strongly recommended since electronic applications will be received/processed faster than other methods of filing. Please submit only one application.

If you are unable to submit your application electronically through your CalCareers account, please email  [email protected]  for assistance and a CDPH Human Resources Division staff member will contact you to assist with the online application process or,  a hard copy application package may be submitted through an alternative method as explained in the How to Apply section below. When submitting your application in hard copy, a completed copy of the Application Package listing must be included.

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The following items are required to be submitted with your application. Applicants who do not submit the required items timely may not be considered for this job:

• Current version of the State Examination/Employment Application STD Form 678 (when not applying electronically), or the Electronic State Employment Application through your Applicant Account at www.CalCareers.ca.gov. All Experience and Education relating to the Minimum Qualifications listed on the Classification Specification should be included to demonstrate how you meet the Minimum Qualifications for the position.
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• Experience in healthcare, environmental services, or health and safety

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Please direct requests for Reasonable Accommodations to the interview scheduler at the time the interview is being scheduled. You may direct any additional questions regarding Reasonable Accommodations or Equal Employment Opportunity for this position(s) to the Department's EEO Office.

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HISD principal who was forced out of dream job shares story

T he Houston ISD Board of Managers appears to have moved forward late Thursday with the termination of Herod Elementary School Principal Jessica Berry, who declined to resign in the district's recent removal of several campus leaders .

Berry said she was pulled into an approximately five-minute meeting May 8 with district employees who cited student growth in special education as their reason that she should resign.

After reviewing the resignation paperwork, Berry found that, if she signed, she would not be able to take any legal action against the district, would not be able to file any internal complaints or grievances against any district employee and would not be able to seek another job in the Houston Independent School District.

She declined to resign in writing May 10 and followed up with a formal letter May 14. She said the district did not respond as of Thursday afternoon.

Berry said her biggest concern is looking out for the 770 students at the Meyerland magnet school. The campus is already set to have about 32 new teachers or teacher assistants, out of a total 43 teachers, in the fall.

"They're not decisions that are being made in the best interest of kids," Berry said, noting that teachers were pulled into "conferences for the record" during Teacher Appreciation Week .

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District representatives declined to answer the Houston Chronicle's questions regarding closed session agenda items for Thursday's meeting and were unable to clarify the action the board took after midnight.

"We can't respond to any of these questions. All of these issues will be discussed in closed session as all employee actions and evaluative information are protected by state and/or federal privacy laws," HISD administration wrote prior to the meeting. "The Board will take necessary actions as part of their public meeting and that will be all the information that HISD can provide."

Berry said she has not seen anyone go to the board for termination without a formal meeting — a "conference for the record" — for which she has not received a notice.

Speculation on why she was asked to resign

Berry said she had two possibly performance-related run-ins with the district this school year. One was a memo notifying her that she missed two deadlines pertaining to the file review of a teacher, along with getting her direct supervisor to sign stating that he knew where State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness testing materials were stored. The other was for "expressing (her) concerns" about printing more than 50,000 pages of special education students' Individualized Education Programs.

Those documents typically range from 25 to 75 pages per student, which costs paper and ink, and contain protected, personal student information. She requested to print the summary pages, about three to 10 pages per student, and to electronically send the rest of the documents with password protection so that the information would remain private.

Her direct supervisor reiterated her concern in agreement with her in a meeting, she said. She also sent her supervisor a screenshot of board policy that said teachers had to have access to these documents, not that they had to be printed.

The special education department of the West Division of HISD sent her a screenshot of the district's operating procedures that said it was district policy to print the documents. But, she said, that rule was not accessible anywhere she could view, though it was required to be posted on the Texas Legal Framework, a platform pertaining to students needing special education. She said she was written up in April.

HISD BOND: 28 community members named on committee for multi-billion dollar bond

Parents called for her to stay

Parents  protested Wednesday morning in front of Herod Elementary School on behalf of their principal and other teachers targeted for removal. Parents also demanded transparency on why the district was seeking to remove some principals and staff. Community members are also signing a Change.org petition that asks for Berry — as well as positions including teachers, janitorial staff and  wraparound specialists that provide families in need with resources — to remain. The petition has received more than 600 signatures .

Robbie McDonough, father of a Herod fourth-grader, was one of the parents who protested for Berry to keep her job. He said Berry has been in her position for one year and has been working hard to get the school where it needs to be.

"We support her, and we don't want her to leave. Doesn't make sense. She's a talent in the district, and we're running her off," McDonough said. "That's just bad policy."

While Berry is worried that refusing to resign and speaking out will effectively end her career in public education, she said she has strong convictions to make a change.

"When all of this started two weeks ago, I've been sitting here thinking about how this has been everything I've worked for, and I've worked so hard to get to this point in my life, and I put so much time and effort into what I'm doing," Berry said.

Berry said school was hard for her when she was growing up. She has dyslexia and struggled to learn to read. But she has wanted to be a teacher since she was little, to everyone's surprise.

"And my response as a very young child was, 'Because I think we can do it better,'" she said.

"I want as many people to know that they need to speak up for their children," Berry said. "This group of kids has already been through so much with COVID and what is taking place in the world, and we cannot allow adult problems to stop a generation of Houston children from learning."

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Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Weathering the storm: a phenomonological study of k-12 special educator resilience and retention.

Kimberly M. Wisinski , Liberty University Follow

School of Education

Doctor of Philosophy in Education (PhD)

Lucinda Spaulding

special education teacher retention, special education teacher resilience, PPCT bioecological systems theory, special education teacher burnout, special education teacher coping skills, special education teacher attrition, internal factors, external factors, special education teacher stress, special education teacher shortages, administrator support, collegial support, special education teacher mental health, special education teacher professional purpose, belief system, personal artifact

Disciplines

Educational Leadership | Special Education and Teaching

Recommended Citation

Wisinski, Kimberly M., "Weathering the Storm: A Phenomonological Study of K-12 Special Educator Resilience and Retention" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects . 5649. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5649

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to interpret the lived experiences of K-12 special education teachers (N = 16) from large, suburban districts in Illinois who have persisted in their positions beyond four years. Understanding factors that contribute to the longevity of special education teachers is not only vital for enhancing the educational landscape for students with disabilities but also for informing district-level strategies aimed at fostering teacher retention. This study was guided by Bronfenbrenner's Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT) bioecological systems theory, which provided a framework for exploring the various systems that influence special education teacher retention. To achieve triangulation and enhance credibility in this study, a purposeful sequence of surveys/questionnaires, individual interviews, artifact sharing, and a writing prompt were used. Themes related to external supports with subthemes related to family support, collegial support, administrator support, and mental health support, as well as internal supports with subthemes related to a sense of purpose, coping skills, and resilience were discovered. These interconnected themes highlight the comprehensive nature of special education teachers' lived experiences. The study provides valuable insights for policy and practice in special education, which can help reduce the negative impact of teacher attrition and improve outcomes for students with disabilities.

Since May 22, 2024

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Virginia Education, School Reports, Teachers Monthly School Reports, Nov. 1865–Apr. 1869, Part 5

About the project.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established on March 3, 1865. The duties of the Freedmen’s Bureau included supervision of all affairs relating to refugees, freedmen, and the custody of abandoned lands and property. These documents come from the Records of the Superintendent of Education for Virginia, Series 4: School Reports. 

Additional resources are available on the Freedmen's Bureau Instructions Page . Please help us transcribe these records to learn more about the lives of formerly enslaved men and women in Virginia during the Reconstruction Era.

Monthly school reports of teachers, November 1865 and January 1866–June 1871, are arranged chronologically and were prepared on forms devised in the Office of the Superintendent of Education. The forms contain statistical data furnished by individual teachers concerning the number of pupils enrolled; attendance; subjects taught in day, night, and Sabbath schools; and the amount of tuition paid by students. Some forms also contain more lengthy narrative remarks by teachers. Some of the reports apparently pertain to non–Bureau schools. Filmed directly after the school reports is a bound register containing the names of teachers to whom forms and envelopes were sent, May 1869–June 1870; the names are arranged alphabetically by name of county.

About Project Difficulty

Level 1 - beginner.

Content: all typed Language: English Format: letters, diaries, flyers, pamphlets, and one-page documents Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Content: mostly typed, handwritten in print, or otherwise very clearly written/readable Language: English Format: memorabilia, advertisements, image captions, telegrams, diaries, letters, notes Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 3 - INTERMEDIATE

Content: typed and handwritten materials in cursive or print Language: English Format: newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, letters/diaries/notes that may include annotations or margin notes Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: experience reading cursive writing may be useful

Content: handwritten materials, primarily in cursive or somewhat difficult to read (predominantly from the 19th and 20th centuries) , audio recordings that are relatively easy to hear/decipher, and scientific materials Language: English and/or other languages that use Roman script but may require the use of diacritics (French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc.) Format: audio recordings, letters, diaries, notes and other written materials, projects with templated fields and special instructions Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: some knowledge of non-English Roman-character/script languages and diacritics may be useful, as well as experience reading cursive handwriting. A general knowledge or familiarity with scientific terminology.

Level 5 - ADVANCED

Content: handwritten materials in cursive (from the 19th century or earlier) or in a non-Roman script language, audio recordings that are difficult to hear or are not in English, specialty materials/projects such as numismatics projects and the Project Phaedra notebooks Language: foreign languages that use non-Roman characters (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Greek/Cyrillic, Native American and Indigenous languages, etc.) and English Format: audio recordings, columned data/tables, manuscripts, letters, diaries, notes, currency sheets, coins Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: knowledge of a specific language and access to a keyboard with the characters in that language may be required for certain projects. Experience reading cursive handwriting and familiarity with 19th century (or prior) handwriting and conventions/abbreviations may be useful, as well as knowledge of scientific terminology, astrophysics data, or linguistics.

Contributing members

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