“Everybody’s life looks better when you’re standing outside it, looking in, but that’s never how it really is. We all got good things and bad things…” –Torey Hayden, Special education teacher and author Homework Club exuded all the trappings of success. So it appeared on the surface. Fifteen students finished their assigned work before going […]
Category Archives: Special Education
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The realization of the power of story began in my childhood. I lived in the rural areas of Iowa and Wisconsin where I attended one room school houses. The sparse collection of books on the tiny wooden shelf included a series with an orange cover called “Childhoods of Famous People.” I read every volume from […]
The students in my class for behavior disordered boys usually burst into the room with energy enough to light a city. One morning, the six of them dragged their feet along the linoleum. Their heads hung from drooping shoulders. Bags worth of packing hung below drooping eyes. This was a sign that the day was […]
Teaching With Words By Cleo Lampos Narrative nonfiction is a writing style that makes true events read like a novel. Is it any wonder that when Torey Hayden submitted her manuscript for One Child that the publisher snatched it up and put her under contract? Using narrative nonfiction, Torey gives the reader glimpses into the […]
CHILDREN OF SILENCE By Cleo Lampos Thomas struggled to take a breath in the spring air. As the other children ran around him, playing, pushing, screaming, he tried to inhale enough oxygen to walk to the stoop of his home. The oldest of twelve children, Thomas did more sitting and daydreaming than he did […]
Ever read a book that changed the way you viewed lif? The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton was that book when I was a college student in 1967. I was ready to start student teaching in a school set in a culturally deprived neighborhood. The prospect of assuming responsibility for 42 fourth grade students squeezed into […]
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“He’s twenty years old, and my wife still tucks him in at night, offering a little prayer, making sure that a comforting weighted blanket covers him, and always getting his biggest smile for her effort.” -Timothy Fountain, Raising a Child with Autism At age twenty-five, it should have been easy. But it wasn’t. When the nurse […]
“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Isaiah 9:2 Snowflakes drifted in the sky. A cold wind from the north whistled against the bricks of our classroom. My six behavior-disordered fifth grade boys and I enjoyed […]
The moon glistened in the London night sky, breaking into moon beams through the smoke from the chimneys of the crowded tenements of the poorEast Endsection. Very little light reached the old donkey shed which housed a “ragged school”, named for the state of dress of the penniless boys who attended. Their teacher, Thomas Barnardo […]
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The dreaded book report. The bane of every high school student’s life. But it does not have to be so difficult with just a bit of structure and guidance. Book Report Insights will open three historical fiction novels to the hearts and minds of teen readers. With an overview of the book, a highlight […]
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