Author Archives: Joel Edwards

IEP Specialized Learning: Supporting Students With Individualized Educational Needs

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Every student learns differently, and some children need additional support to make meaningful progress in school. IEP specialized learning can help provide a more individualized educational approach by identifying a student’s specific needs, setting measurable goals, and outlining the services or accommodations that may help them succeed.

Understanding an IEP

An Individualized Education Program, commonly known as an IEP, is a written plan developed for eligible students who require special education services.

The plan typically describes the student’s current academic performance, areas of need, educational goals, accommodations, services, and how progress will be measured.

Focus on Individual Needs

One of the main benefits of an IEP is that it is designed around the individual student rather than using the same approach for everyone.

Some students may need additional reading support, while others may require help with mathematics, communication, organization, behavior, or social skills.

The goal is to identify where support is needed and create strategies that respond to those specific challenges.

Set Clear Educational Goals

IEPs generally include measurable goals that provide direction for teachers, specialists, and families.

Goals may focus on academic subjects, communication, motor skills, classroom behavior, or other areas affecting learning.

Clear goals also make it easier to evaluate whether the current approach is working.

Provide Appropriate Accommodations

Accommodations can help students access classroom material without changing the core learning objective.

Examples may include additional time on assignments, reduced-distraction testing environments, assistive technology, alternative formats for instructional materials, or changes in how information is presented.

The specific accommodations should reflect the student’s documented needs.

Coordinate With Teachers and Specialists

Supporting a student may involve several professionals, including classroom teachers, special education teachers, speech-language specialists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, and other support staff.

Communication between these professionals can help ensure that strategies are applied consistently across different classes and learning environments.

Involve Parents and Caregivers

Families play an important role in the IEP process because they can provide information about the student’s strengths, challenges, routines, and progress outside school.

Regular communication between families and educators can also make it easier to identify concerns early and adjust strategies when necessary.

Monitor Progress Regularly

An IEP should not simply be created and then ignored until the next school year.

Student progress should be reviewed regularly to determine whether goals are being met. If a student is not progressing as expected, the educational team may need to adjust instruction, services, or accommodations.

Build on Student Strengths

Specialized education should not focus only on difficulties. Recognizing a student’s strengths, interests, and preferred ways of learning can make instruction more engaging.

A student who struggles with written assignments, for example, may demonstrate strong verbal reasoning or creative problem-solving skills that can be incorporated into learning activities.

Encourage Independence

The long-term goal of individualized support is often to help students become more confident and independent learners.

As students develop new skills, some supports may be adjusted so they can take greater responsibility for organization, communication, problem-solving, and academic work.

Create a Supportive Learning Environment

Students often perform better when they feel understood and supported. Clear expectations, predictable routines, appropriate accommodations, and positive communication can help reduce frustration and improve participation.

A supportive environment also encourages students to ask for help when they need it.

Review the Plan as Needs Change

A student’s educational needs may change over time. Skills can improve, new challenges may appear, and academic expectations become more complex as students advance through school.

Regular IEP reviews help ensure that goals and services remain appropriate rather than continuing with strategies that may no longer be effective.

Supporting Meaningful Educational Progress

Individualized education can give students access to the tools, instruction, and support they need to participate more fully in school. The most effective plans combine clear goals, collaboration, regular progress monitoring, and flexibility as the student develops.

By focusing on individual strengths and needs, schools and families can create a learning environment that supports both academic progress and greater independence.

Grandfathers

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“I have all these memories, I don’t know what for
I have them and I can’t help it”
~ Sun Kil Moon, “Like the River”

“George: That’s not your grandfather.
Paul: It is, you know.
George: But I’ve seen your grandfather. He lives in your house.
Paul: Oh, that’s my other grandfather, but he’s my grandfather, as well.
John: How do you reckon that one out?
Paul: Well, everyone’s entitled to two, aren’t they?”

~ The Beatles, “A Hard Day’s Night”

My friends will sometimes talk about their grandfathers as if they are gods. They’ll share stories of love and fun and good times. And I am always jealous.

I can barely remember either of my grandfathers. They both died when I was young and they both were sick for most of my life. I had Grandpa Ball (my mother’s father), simply called Grandpa, and Grandpa Edwards (my father’s father), always known as Gramps in our household. Whenever I hear stories told of these two men, I always feel a pride in the fact that I am related to them by blood. But I can barely remember them. And this breaks my heart.

As I’ve said, both men were sick for most of my life. I don’t think I ever saw Grandpa walk. The only time I ever saw Gramps walk was when he would walk from his chair to the kitchen every night to pour himself a bowl of cereal.

I remember my Gramps chair. I remember thinking it was a sin for anyone other than him to be sitting in it. I sat in it after he died, and immediately got up. I vaguely remember sitting on his lap when I was young, the smell of medicine and the touch of calloused hands.

I remember when I first heard Gramps life story. It was the life sung by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. It was the life of a working class hero. I remember hearing stories of a strong faith in God. I remember a quiet old man with a raspy voice. I remember a man who loved his family. The nativity story on Christmas morning. Grocery shopping on a hot summer’s day.

I remember the day Gramps died. And that’s the most vivid memory of all. Leaving school early. Arriving too late. Leaning on my father’s chest. Lifeless body on the bed. The bed I used to sleep in. Children crying in the backyard. Emotionless. Confused.

I cried at his funeral. All I have left are stories and vague memories.

Memories of Grandpa are even fewer. I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t sick. I remember a stupid knock knock joke I would tell him, and he would laugh every time. “Knock knock. Who’s there? Tommy. Tommy who? Tommy ache.” And he would laugh and laugh. I know that he loved me. I know I loved him. I remember my grandparents’ home up north in Roscommon. It was like a second home to me. He was sick every time we went.

I cried at his funeral. All I have left are stupid jokes and sickness.

I never said goodbye to either of them. I can barely even remember their voices.

It’s 4:30 in the morning right now and I am crying. I couldn’t sleep because the memory of these two men wouldn’t leave my mind. I barely knew them, yet I love them more than anybody that ever lived.

Sometimes I wonder why God would choose to taunt me with friends who tell me stories of their loving grandfathers. Sometimes I think God is the cruelest person in existence.

But then memories of these men come and haunt me. And I know that, though they are gone, they have made me a better person just by being there. And I know God wants me to celebrate what I had… what I have.

Maybe someday I’ll have children. I will tell them the memories I have of my grandfathers. I will tell my children they come from the two greatest men who ever lived.

Maybe someday I’ll have grandchildren and I will be a grandfather myself. And maybe my grandchildren will look up to me as a great man. Maybe someday they will want to be like me. That would be the greatest honor. And that is all I want.

Favorite music of ’09, and the DECADE

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Hooray for decades! Hooray for music! Hooray for lists!

Three lists, in fact: favorite albums of the decade, favorite albums of the year, and favorite songs of the year.

Here we go!

10 favorite albums of the decade

1. Arcade Fire – Funeral

2. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born

3. Radiohead – Kid A

4. Sufjan Stevens – Michigan

5. Bob Dylan – Love And Theft

6. Beck – Sea Change

7. David Crowder*Band – A Collision

8. Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha

9. Jars Of Clay – Good Monsters

10. U2 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind

10 favorite albums of the year (2009)

1. The Avett Brothers – I And Love And You

2. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)

3. St. Vincent – Actor

4. Elvis Perkins In Dearland – Self-titled

5. Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything To Nothing

6. Passion Pit – Manners

7. U2 – No Line On The Horizon

8. Sufjan Stevens – The BQE

9. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

10. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Favorite songs of the year (2009) (in alphabetical order, by artist)

Alela Diane – Lady Divine

Andrew Bird – Souverian

Animal Collective – Bluish

The Avett Brothers – Laundry Room

Bob Dylan – I Feel A Change Comin’ On

David Crowder*Band – God Almighty, None Compares

The Dead Weather – Bone House

Derek Webb – American Flag Umbrella

Elvis Perkins In Dearland – Chains, Chains, Chains

Fiction Family – Look For Me Baby

Jars Of Clay – Scenic Route

Joe Henry – Death To The Storm

Joshua James – Pitchfork

Major Lazer – Anything Goes

Manchester Orchestra – The River

Passion Pit – Sleepyhead

St. Vincent – Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood

Sufjan Stevens – Movement I: In The Countenance Of Kings

Switchfoot – Always

U2 – Cedars Of Lebanon

Wilco – Bull Black Nova

These songs are all on iTunes, so have fun!

Dostoevsky on Capital Punishment

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The following dialogue takes place in Book 1, Chapter 2 of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot between Prince Myshkin (the titular character) and a servant of the Epanchin family. Keep in mind that Dostoevsky himself was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted only moments before his execution. The excerpt is lengthy, but worth it. Prince Myshkin starts:

“Yes. I saw it [an execution] in France, at Lyons. Dr. Schneider took me with him.”

“Do they hang them?”

“No, in France they always cut off their heads.”

“Do they scream?”

“How could they? It’s done in an instant. They make the man lie down and then a great knife is brought down by a heavy, powerful machine, called the guillotine. . . . The head falls off before one has time to wink. The preparations are horrible. When they read the sentence, get the man ready, bind him, lead him to the scaffold – that’s what’s awful! Crowds assemble, even women, though they don’t like women to look on. . . .”

“It’s not a thing for them!”

“Of course not, of course not! Such a horrible thing! . . . The criminal was an intelligent, middle-aged man, strong and courageous, called Legros. But I assure you, though you may not believe me, when he mounted the scaffold he was weeping and was as white as paper. Isn’t it incredible? Isn’t it awful? Who cries for fear? I’d no idea that a grown man, not a child, a man who never cried, a man of forty-five, could cry for fear! What must be passing in the soul at such a moment; to what anguish it must be brought! It’s an outrage on the soul, that’s what it is! It is written ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ so because he has killed, are we to kill him? No, that’s impossible. It’s a month since I saw that, but I seem to see it before my eyes still. I’ve dreamt of it half a dozen times.”

Myshkin was quite moved as he spoke, a faint color came into his pale face, though his voice was still gentle. The footman followed him with sympathetic interest, so that he seemed sorry for him to stop. He, too, was perhaps a man of imagination and strainings after thought.

“It’s a good thing at least that there is not much pain,” he observed, “when the head falls off.”

“Do you know,” Myshkin answered warmly, “you’ve just made that observation and every one says the same, and the guillotine was invented with that object. But the idea occured to me at the time that perhaps it made it worse. That will seem to you an absurd and wild idea, but if one has some imagination, one may suppose even that. Think! if there were torture, for instance, there would be suffering and wounds, bodily agony, and so all that would distract the mind from spiritual suffering, so that one would only be tortured by wounds till one died. But the chief and worst pain may not be in the bodily suffering but in one’s knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then in half a minute, and then now, at the very moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man and that that’s bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it’s CERTAIN. When you lay your head down under the knife and hear the knife slide over your head, that quarter of a second is the most terrible of all. You know this is not only my fancy, many people have said the same. I believe that so thoroughly that I’ll tell you what I think. To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood, or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute. There have been instances when a man has still hoped for escape, running or begging for mercy after his throat was cut. But in the other case all that last hope, which makes dying ten times as easy, is taken away FOR CERTAIN. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible. You may lead a soldier out and set him facing the cannon in battle and fire at him and he’ll still hope; but read a sentence of certain death over the same soldier, and he will go out of his mind or burst into tears. Who can tell whether human nature is able to bear this without madness? Why this hideous, useless, unnecessary outrage? Perhaps there is some man who has been sentenced to death, been exposed to this torture and has been told ‘you can go, you are pardoned.’ Perhaps such a man could tell us. It was of this torture and of this agony that Christ spoke, too. No, you can’t treat a man like that!”

Discuss.