Angelman Today January / February edition 2014 | Page 7

I spent the first year primarily
focusing on her first full
language AAC system known
as PODD with the help of
others in our community. In
other aspects to her education
I was still stuck in that
common special education
mentality which required
Rylee to prove she was
learning instead of presuming
it up front. I needed to see
those check marks that I was
taught were so important. I
explicitly taught her
lowercase letter sounds
through a modified version of
Discrete Trial Training.
While she was good at it, this
approach was not empowering
her as a learner. It was
forcing her to prove her
competence and constantly
perform what I wanted her to
perform.
I have since been introduced
to a whole new perspective
that aligns perfectly with my
teaching philosophy.
I want to empower Rylee to
be a thinker, a doer, and an
active participant in her own
life and education. Since
homeschooling her and
pulling her out of public
schools, I have watched the
most beautiful transformation
in Rylee going from this
passive, compliant,
extrinsically motivated
product of special education
to someone whom is actively
seeking new information and
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being intrinsically motivated to
learn. I feel like she is seeing
herself as a learner for the first
time in her life because I shifted
my focus on the messages I was
sending to her.
I scrapped all behavioral
approaches and replaced them
with appropriate tools to bridge the
gap from what her biology limits
her from doing and what she needs
to be doing. I removed all
demands on her performance and
began providing authentic
experiences for her to
learn and explore with these new
tools.

The educators in charge of
teaching our children only
know what they have been
taught through their own
education which primarily
focuses on those common
behavioral approaches (I know
because I’m currently
obtaining my Masters in
Special Education).
The only way we can change
the face of special education
and the way our children are
taught is to lead by example.

I am not writing this to encourage
anyone to pull their children out of
public schools and start
homeschooling. It is my goal in
writing this to show that there are
other perspectives to teaching our
children and empowering them as
individuals.
January / February 2014