We often think of spring as a time of renewal. Trees are budding, animals come out of hibernation, and people shed a few layers of clothing to step outside for some extra daylight. Rather than in spring, autumn is the time when parents, teachers, and students have the opportunity to make a fresh start. The new school year is upon us. We can get energized and organized. We can map it out and decide how best to navigate it. September holds a lot of promise. Thus, this article w

Can sustained silent reading help children with reading disabilities? Generally, yes. But overemphasizing it can shortchange them. Many schools involve struggling readers in some form of sustained silent reading. In such programs, all students, including struggling readers, read silently for some 15 to 45 minutes daily. As they read silently, so does the teacher. The teacher models silent reading, showing that she values it and enjoys it. If done right, sustained reading is i

Data and technology support all that I do in my daily work as a school administrator (and it has for quite some time now). With increased accountability, the ongoing need for technology in schools is tantamount to our success (both teachers and students). In my early days of teaching, I had to fight to get technology into the hands of my special education students—some believing that it couldn’t possibly help ‘those students’, and as technology was new to classrooms in those

Behavioral problems are correlated with academic difficulties (Todd, Horner, Sugai, & Colvin, 1999). Additionally, children with anti-social behaviors often experience a high co-occurrence with academic and social deficits. For children with learning disabilities (LD), all three of these areas, behavioral, academic, and social, present challenges. Although learning disabilities may be the cause for students to engage in maladaptive behaviors, often disruptive behaviors can be

The multiple benefits of positive mother-child relationships have been identified through research. These benefits include increased academic achievement (Pianta & Harbers, 1996) and safeguards from the effects of an impoverished environment (NICHD ECCRN, 2002). Research that comes from an ecological-contextual perspective has extended investigations of the positive benefits children experience when engaged in high quality relationships from the home environment to school set