Education Commons^™

Re-Seeing The Mighty: Critically Examining One Film's Representations Of Disability In The English Classroom, Joellen Maples, Katrina Arndt, Julia M. White

Education Faculty/Staff Publications

Films portraying characters with disabilities are often shown in the English classroom. Films such as "Of Mice and Men," "Simon Birch," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "The Glass Menagerie," "Moby Dick," "Gattaca," and "A Beautiful Mind" often show simplistic and stereotypical representations of characters and their disabilities. Although students are frequently encouraged to think critically about a film's structure, themes, or symbolic elements, the authors argue that they should also learn to examine critically the representations of disability in these films. If stereotypical representations of characters with disabilities are not identified and challenged, another generation of …

Restoring Hope, Marie Cianca

Education Faculty/Staff Publications

In 2003, Dr. Freddie Thomas Middle School in Rochester, New York, was in serious trouble. In 2000, it had been labeled a "school under registration review" by the New York State Education Department and was under a directive to make significant progress or face serious consequences. Three years later in 2003, only 3% of eighth-grade students were meeting state standards in mathematics and only 9% in English language arts. The school climate was no better. There was little sense of order, and 911 calls were an everyday occurrence. The middle school had opened in 1995 with much fanfare. It was …

Making Inclusive Schooling Part Of Our Daily Journey, Marie Cianca, Beth Mascitti-Miller

Education Faculty/Staff Publications

Introduction by: Jackie Czamanske, Regional Field Facilitator, NYSED S³TAIR Project

As a School Improvement Specialist, I’ve facilitated numerous discussions over the years on how a school district may address the various challenges it faces. During these conversations, teams often voice their fears on how including students with disabilities may negatively affect a school's overall performance. The Rochester City School District’s World of Inquiry School provides a solid illustration on how high expectations and inclusion can lock arms in a large urban environment to achieve a performance-enhanced setting for all students. “Are We There Yet?” gives building administrators and …

“I’M So Excited About This!” A Shared Administrative Vision For Inclusive Practice, Katrina Arndt, Laura Whitcomb

Education Faculty/Staff Publications

Introduction by: John J. O’Kane, Assistant Professor, Teacher Education, Roberts Wesleyan College

Those of us who have long sought to promote meaningful program innovations and structural changes to advance the more normalized teaching model, often referred to as “inclusion,” fully understand the critical need for administrative support of the process. “I’m So Excited About This” clearly and succinctly describes the significant contributions of Hilton Central School District’s leadership at both district and building levels in advancing an inclusive continuum of services as the approach to integrating special and general education. This strategy is based on three key and fundamental beliefs: …

A Principal’S Lessons Learned: Implications For School Leadership, Mary E. Haggerty, Susan Schultz

Education Faculty/Staff Publications

Introduction by: Ann Monroe-Baillargeon, Ph.D. Alfred University

Mary Haggerty and Susan Schultz in “A Principal’s Lessons Learned” provide for us professional insights from their interactions with parents of students with special needs. It is a powerful statement to lead off our monograph, Duets and Dialogue: Voices on Inclusive Practices in Our Schools, with a focus on the relationship between school administrators and parents. All too often, our focus on parents comes at the end of a long list of other priorities, curriculum, instructional practices, student needs, etc. It is exciting to see that a focus on parents and the importance …

A Commitment To Change: One District’S Journey Toward Inclusion, Susan Hildenbrand, Harold Leve

Education Faculty/Staff Publications

Introduction by: Ellen Contopidis, PhD Associate Professor, Nazareth College

As a teacher educator preparing future inclusive educators, I often find myself responding to my students’ experiences with inclusion as “bad examples of a good idea.” The common element of these bad examples is that they are often the description of a place, a classroom, a service, a teacher or a child. Never do these bad examples reflect a philosophy or a culture within a system. Dr. Harold Leve’s leadership of transforming his school to an inclusive instructional environment is founded in a strong vision of social justice. The tools of …

Matching Functions And Graphs At Multiple Levels Of Bloom’S Revised Taxonomy, Kris H. Green

Mathematical and Computing Sciences Faculty/Staff Publications

This paper illustrates the power of Bloom's revised taxonomy for teaching, learning and assessing [3] in aligning our curriculum expectations and our assessment tools in multivariable calculus. The particular assessment tool considered involves a common matching problem to evaluate students' abilities to think about functions from graphical and formulaic representations. Through this analysis we gain additional understanding of why students may have difficulty in performing well on certain activities.

If Mowat And Davis Are Correct, Then Teaching Is Hard: A Response To Elizabeth Mowat & Brent Davis, Kris H. Green, Bernard P. Ricca

Mathematical and Computing Sciences Faculty/Staff Publications

In lieu of an abstract, below is the article's first paragraph.

Mowat & Davis (this issue) present a model of learning mathematics that relies heavily on ideas from network (or graph) theory. The important questions (to us, at least) concern the dynamics of the nodes and links. Answers – even tentative ones such as we present here – to these questions lead to a second set of questions concerning the implications of these answers to teachers and researchers.