Ramapo: A Special Program

We are often reluctant to write about a program that is very small, or hasn't been around very long. But we are making an exception for a unique program for young people 18 and up who are struggling to take the next step to college or the workplace.

The Staff Assistant Program at Ramapo for Children is only a couple of years old, although Ramapo for Children  was founded in 1922. We have long listed Ramapo as a summer camp resource on our website. The mission of the larger organization is "to serve children with a wide range of emotional, behavioral and learning disabilities in a dynamic and stimulating outdoor environment ... with adventure-based, experiential learning programs that promote positive character values, build social and learning competencies, and enhance self-esteem." During the summer, the camp program has several sessions of one, two, and three week programs. During much of the school year the camp is used by a variety of schools, public and private, for retreats that teach skill building and leadership skills to students of all ability levels.


The Staff Assistant Program operates from March through November on a rolling admissions basis. Young people and their families need to make a minimum 12 week commitment. The Staff Assistants function as assistants to counselors and other employees of Ramapo, all the time being mentored on a one-to-one basis by a skilled professional staff that really "gets it". The Staff Assistants are paid a weekly stipend (which comes out of the fees paid by their families; the only drawback to this program is that it is expensive, with annualized costs similar to attendance at a top college). They learn the nuts and bolts of managing their lives, working on everything that has tripped them up in their past endeavors -- time management, social interactions, budgeting, working skills -- yet they also have the chance to work with youngsters whose needs generally exceed their own. When the summer program is not in session, the Staff Assistants have more time to work on additional skills -- taking a course at the local community college, learning to drive, working at a part-time job in town, or participating in a community based organization, such as community theater. 


This all sounds pretty basic, but for young people who have graduated from high school and haven't been able to succeed in college or in the workplace choices can be very limited. And a place where these young adults can work with extraordinary staff and learn to help themselves by helping others can be a key step to their future success. 

Experiential Learning

A walk along Boston's Freedom Trail recently reminded us of the importance of learning by experience. This is something that can benefit young people -- and their parents -- in a number of ways. Walking through Independence Hall in Philadelphia on a hot summer's day can help a history student imagine what the Founding Fathers must have felt like when the heat of their debates was matched by the heat of their meeting place.

Have you ever visited a science museum where they helped children extract their own DNA from a cheek swab, using a test tube and chemicals? As the DNA comes together to form a distinctive form within the tube, the concept of this individual building block becomes very real. Looking inside an early space capsule at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. gives a real sense of how the first astronauts must have felt in their tiny home in space.

But it's not just museums and historical sites that allow young people to enjoy experiential learning. Travel to any new place -- or a deeper exploration of a familiar location -- can bring ideas to life. Even a trip to a supermarket, equipped with a list and a budget, can give children experiences in fields ranging from mathematics to nutrition to reading.

As we leave behind the often oppressive heat of this past summer,  perhaps your family can still find the time for short trips, or more local experiences, that can bring learning to life in very practical ways. 

Walking to School

Researchers at the State University of Buffalo in New York recently released the results of a study confirming what parents have always suspected -- that walking to school is good for kids. James Roemmich, MD, PhD and his research team looked at 40 children in good health who were not presently walking to school on a regular basis. They had half of their subjects walk on a treadmill for just under a mile, carrying a backpack that was about 10% of their body weight. The other subjects sat in a chair. Both groups looked at screens that showed a pleasant view of sites one would see while walking to school.

As reported in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the short term results were clear; cardiac stress was less in those students who walked, as compared to those who sat, measured by blood pressure, perceived stress, and heart and pulse reactivity.

What is less certain is how long the stress reduction will last during the school day and what the long term effects into adulthood will be for students who regularly walk to school. But in the meantime, while researchers follow up on these preliminary results, parents might do well to forgo the car pool where walking to school is practical. And, as with many things, you can always tell your child, "It's for your own good..."

Photo credit: flickr.com

Nature's Benefits

Summer is a time we can particularly appreciate getting out of our usual routines to enjoy the pleasures of the countryside, or the beach, or nearby parks. But there is more to these beautiful places than what meets our grateful eyes. Researchers have long documented the benefits the natural world can bring to our moods and our capacity for attention.

An article in a recent issue of the Observer, the magazine of the Association for Psychological Science, looks at the impact of the work of Stephen Kaplan and colleagues at  the University of Michigan. The article is well worth reading in its entirety. Kaplan first reported his findings over 20 years ago, noting that exposure to  natural settings had a substantial positive impact upon the brain's ability to focus -- the aspect of attention that researchers call voluntary attention. This restoration of voluntary attention in individuals who are fatigued is similar to the kind of improvement seen from sleep but can be obtained by simply taking a walk in a park or sitting in a garden.

Another benefit of exposure to the natural world is improvement in mood. Frances Kuo and William Sullivan , who were researchers at the University of Illinois, took Kaplan's findings and hypothesized that if people were less fatigued after spending time in natural settings, and if fatigue contributed to moodiness and aggression, than those who had exposure to nature might be tend to be less aggressive. They studied residents of urban housing developments who looked out on either greenery or barren urban settings and determined that those who were exposed to greenery demonstrated less aggression and impulsivity.

There is less clear evidence on the benefits of virtual nature -- viewing videos or watching television shows featuring natural settings. But it certainly seems clear that taking a trip to the beach, the mountains, or even a walk in a nearby park in the middle of a busy work day, can have important positive benefits for us all. 

The Importance of Sleep

Researchers have long known that sufficient, regular sleep really does make a difference for everyone, especially children and teens. Two new studies emphasize the importance of sleep in the lives of young people.

A study released last month at a conference sponsored by the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, looked at 8000 four year olds and found that the most significant predictor of language and early math development was a regular relatively early bedtime (prior to 9 p.m.). The lead researcher of the study, Dr. Erika Gaylor, noted that, "Getting parents to set bedtime routines can be an important way to make a significant impact on children's emergent literacy and language skills.”


Another study presented at the same conference looked at teens of driving age, and was prompted by the concerns of a sleep researcher whose own daughter needed to get up at 6 am each day for a school day that began shortly after 7 am. Dr. Robert Vorona, associate professor of internal medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, looked at Motor Vehicle Bureau data for two adjacent counties in Virginia and found that the county where the high schools opened at 8:40 am instead of 7:20 am had a 40% lower rate of auto accidents among students. This supports earlier studies in other areas and is linked to what scientists have long known -- that sleep needs of young people change at puberty and that growing teens need around 9 hours of sleep at the same time as their daily rhythms shift and they find it difficult to fall asleep much before 11 pm. This means that going to sleep earlier to offset an early start to their school day is not much help.

Schools need to re-think early start times for high school students. Their students' lives may depend upon it.

Photo credit: sdminor81 at Flickr.com

When Do You Take on Your School Distrct?

Parents often ask what they should do if they don't get what they want from their child's school. Do they fight? Do they accept what the school is offering? How can they decide what is the right thing to do?

The excellent website Wrightslaw deals with this topic in a recent issue of their newsletter, looking at what issues parents need to consider when they are trying to decide whether to "Settle or Fight?"

The answer to the question is different in every circumstance, but there are some basic principles that families should consider when faced with this issue. The first is to understand what they can expect their child's school to do for them. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) only applies to students who have been diagnosed with specific disabilities and that require special education services because of such disabilities. So, even if your child has a disability, the school may decline to classify him or her as eligible for services under the IDEA (although he or she may be covered under another law known as 504) if your child is doing well in school. The standards for this determination are shifting and some states are more difficult to deal with than others.

Even once a child is classified as eligible under the IDEA, you may not be satisfied with the services set out in your child's IEP. Here it is important to remember that the standard of education the school must provide your child is not optimal but appropriate, sufficient to permit your child to advance from grade to grade. As parents, we all want the best for our children but, unfortunately, schools are not required to provide everything we think our child should receive.

We encourage parents to think about whether their child's IEP is not adequate, or is not being properly implemented. If the IEP on its face is a good one, sometimes going back to the head of the IEP team and pointing out the school's failure to do what it promised can help get things on track. But if the offer of services is substantially short of what you believe your child requires, that may be a situation where you need to appeal to a Hearing Officer or State Review Officer (depending upon your state) to seek additional services or a different placement for your child.

Then there is the unpredictability and expense of litigation. Appealing to a Hearing Officer requires compliance with specific rules and is somewhat like a trial. We always suggest that parents use an attorney or an advocate if they are going to do this. One resource for finding an attorney or advocate is the website of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, COPAA. Parents who have decided to fight for what their child requires have helped carve out important new rights for children who struggle. There is much to consider when parents are deciding what to do and often a skilled attorney or advocate can help lay out the potential costs and benefits.

Talking Seriously to Young Children

A Dutch researcher has  looked at the kind of language skills that young children need to be successful in their classrooms. Lotte Henrich's April, 2010 doctoral thesis at the University of Amsterdam, entitled   Academic language in early childhood interactions. A longitudinal study of 3- to 6-year-old Dutch monolingual children, looks at the kinds of language used in classroom settings and compares it to the language demands that young children encounter in their lives outside school.

What Henrich calls "academic language" is the language used by teachers as early as preschool to provide instructions and convey information. It is more complex than casual language, with more difficult words, conjunctions, and clauses. Proficiency in this kind of language enables children to understand instructions from their teachers and to show that they have understood what is being taught in class.

Looking at 25 Dutch families (a part of a larger study with 150 children) over a period of three years , Henrich determined that acquisiton of academic language can be strongly influenced by the way that parents communicate with their children. Those children whose parents engaged them in serious conversations and who included them in interesting discussions demonstrated increased facility with academic language. Other influences included the extent to which parents read to their children and told them stories. We've often heard that reading to our children is important, but this new research indicates that talking to them in a serious way, and including them in the back-and-forth of conversations, can build language skills that will help them in the classroom.

Benefits of Music Training

Some of the interesting findings from the Learning and the Brain Conference held earlier this month in Washington, D.C., included a look at  how music training improves skills in children with language based learning differences.

Bharath Chandrasekaren and Nina Kraus of Northwestern University presented research that looked at a number of studies that documented that children with a variety of language based learning disorders have difficulties with noise exclusion -- the ability to exclude extraneous noises while processing language. Whether this common problem is a symptom or a cause of underlying language issues, such children face additional difficulties when they are trying to process language in a noisy classroom or similar environment.

The presenters then looked at the documented findings that musicians have demonstrated a number of skills that enable them to have strong speech perception even in noisy environments. For example, musicians can hear their own instrument even in the midst of an orchestra playing. There are also social benefits to being able to pick up on conversation and cues in the context of a busy playground or event. Although the study authors stress that more research is needed, they propose that students who struggle with noise exclusion ability may improve when given musical training, since "musical experience benefits all the underlying skills necessary for successful learning in background noise."

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/ / CC BY 2.0

A Tale of Two Colleges

We had the chance this past weekend to visit two Washington D.C. universities that take different approaches to working with students with learning disabilities. The kind of differences we encountered should be considered by students and families planning for college, no matter where they choose to apply.


George Washington University is a vibrant urban campus in the city of Washington. We had the chance to meet with the Director of Disability Support Services and to discuss the process for getting support and the kinds of supports offered to students. The Director was welcoming and her office clearly took its responsibilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act seriously. Students with documented disabilities of any kind could receive accommodations and physical modifications to give them equal access to the classes, dorms, and other university services. But, there was no special support program offered for students with learning issues. Like any student, a student with learning challenges could use the school tutoring services, but no proactive supports were in place to help these students. It's a fine school, but we wish it did more to support students who learn differently.

We found a different story at American University, located at the edge of Washington, in a more suburban setting. There, we spoke to both the Disability Support Services staff and the Coordinator of the Learning Services Program run by the Academic Support Center. We were impressed by both staffs and the supports they offer. American offers the required supports under the Americans with Disabilities Act through the Disability Support office but also has a staff member whose role is to help students with assistive technology -- special tools and programs that will enable them to access the curriculum despite their disabilities.

Students who have disabilities relating to learning can enroll in a freshman year program at American that offers extensive learning supports. This program requires a separate application and a separate fee, but enables students who learn differently to get started on their college education with a safety net of supports that can continue less intensively throughout their years at American. We think this kind of support can make a real difference in helping students with learning challenges achieve academic success.

Learning a Language

Students who struggle with reading and writing often find learning a foreign language to be an extraordinary challenge. Secondary schools are aware of this issue and will sometimes make exceptions to the foreign language requirement for some students who receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

In New York City, for example, students are required to take a two credit (two semester) sequence in a foreign language to graduate from high school, but a student "identified as having a disability which adversely affects the ability to learn a language may be excused from this requirement if such student’s IEP indicates that such requirement is not appropriate. Such a student need not have sequence in a second language but must meet the 44 credit graduation requirement."

This sounds like it would be a great thing for students who struggle even with English, but families should be aware that it can have a down side, and should consider the impact of opting out of foreign language courses before seeking to add such an exemption to a student's IEP. The problem is that many colleges require that their applicants have several semesters of a foreign language in high school. Furthermore, whether or not a college requires that a student has a foreign language to be admitted, many colleges require that students take a certain number of foreign language credits as part of their degree requirements. Students who demonstrate mastery of a language, usually with an advanced placement test , may place out of a college language requirement.

So, what should parents and students do? First, start by considering whether it is really necessary for a high school student to be excused from taking a foreign language. Could the student manage to get through a course with some extra support? What about American Sign Language? This is taught in a growing number of high schools and the process for learning ASL is very different from French or Latin. It may be a good choice for some students. Next, think ahead about what colleges may be of interest to your child. We know it is early, but you can get a sense of requirements for entry and for graduation. Some colleges that have language requirements for entry or graduation will permit students to fill these requirements with courses on the culture of a particular country.

There is no one answer to the language dilemma. What is important is to be aware of your options and to consider what is best for each individual student.  

Paying for Student Performance

This past week's Time Magazine reports on the work of Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr.and his colleagues at the Harvard Education Innovation Laboratory in looking at how monetary incentives can improve the performance of school children. An extensive controlled study involving students in four cities used different payment methods and different areas of academic competence to examine whether students would respond positively to payments for performance. One subgroup involved New York City elementary and middle school students, who were paid for higher scores on standardized tests. The results showed no real change in test scores or any other parameters. Chicago ninth graders who received payment for better grades did improve their grades a bit, but did no better on standardized tests.

Where improvement was seen was where students were rewarded for small actions that were within their control and which were not complicated for them to implement. These included Washington students who received payments for improving attendence and behavior, who showed changes in both of these areas, as well as improved reading skills. The greatest improvements were seen in Dallas students who substantially improved their reading comprehension scores when they were paid to read books and take a quiz showing they understood what they read.

One possible reason for these different results is that the tasks where payments were correlated with improvement were very specific. Those that were broader -- better grades, or better test scores -- may have been too hard for students to figure out how to achieve. Think about it. Even a motivated student might have trouble figuring out just what he has to do to get better test scores.

There are many issues to study further, and Dr. Fryer indicated that he intends to do so. But in schools where most students struggle, any information that helps adults understand what motivates students to do better is an important addition to the formula for improvement.

photo credit: borman818

The Four Sons - A Holiday Lesson

We've never been big fans of labels, although we recognize they are the key to receiving services under the IDEA and other laws. Still, they can be unfair to children and they are often insufficiently descriptive of what is really going on with any individual. We recently encountered a discussion of how labeling can be detrimental in a very unexpected context. Robert Dobrusin, a rabbi in Ann Arbor, Michigan, writes about how labels have unfairly limited the characters encountered in the traditional telling of the Passover story. The story of the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt, a familiar part of the Old Testament, is told in a ritualized form as part of the Passover celebration. One key part of this ritual telling is the story of four sons, one wise, one wicked, one simple, and one who cannot even ask a question. Every year, at the Passover meal, families read about these same sons, and tell the story of the exodus to answer these children's questions.

Rabbi Doursin notes, "I am troubled by the fact that we don't let them change. Throughout history they will always be wise or rebellious or simple or unquestioning... How can we set them in stone the way we do? There is one simple reason. They don't change because they each have been given a name: wise, rebellious, simple, unquestioning...How much wiser it would have been [if these children had been described] as the one who asked a wise question, the one who asked a rebellious question, the one who asked a simple question, the one who did not ask at all?"

He goes on to explain that when we label individuals we can be too quick to jump to conclusions about their actions. Only when we eschew labels and keep open the possibility of change can we then open the door for individuals to move beyond the roles their labels describe to growth and change. Whatever our beliefs, and whatever holidays and traditions we celebrate, it is excellent advice. Indeed, there is strong evidence that labeling or defining children by their limitations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they tend not to see past their label to the possibility of their own change and growth.

VESID

New York parents of students receiving special education services may be familiar with VESID, which stands for Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities. VESID has long served a dual function in New York. It is an adult service agency, which deals with individuals over the age of 18 with a documented disability, and coordinates programs and activities to help them find productive work and lead independent lives. As part of this adult mandate, which is the same as agencies in every state established under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (the same law that provides "504 Plans" for students of all ages), VESID counselors may start working with students while they are still in high school, to plan for post high school transition to college or the workplace.

VESID also has an additional function; it is the arm of the New York State Education Department that operates the special education system in New York State. As the VESID website notes, it is presently responsible for the following functions:

• To oversee the implementation of federal and State laws and policy for students with disabilities;

• To provide general supervision and monitoring of all public and private schools serving New York State preschool and school-age students with disabilities;

• To establish a broad network of technical assistance centers and providers to work directly with parents and school districts to provide current information and high quality professional development and technical assistance to improve results for students with disabilities;

• To ensure a system of due process, including special education mediation and impartial hearings; and

• To meet with stakeholders through the Commissioner's Advisory Panel for Special Education Services.

There has been discontent in some circles with how VESID performs this part of its role, which has also been affected by budget and related staffing issues that have impacted its ability to do its job. We have learned that there is now a proposal before the New York State Regents (who supervise all educational matters in the State) that "would include combining all P-12 education issues, including special education, under a new Regents P-12 Committee"which would replace VESID.

Adoption of this proposal can have a real impact in the way the special education services are overseen in New York. We will continue to follow this matter to let parents know of any changes to the special education system

Forty Winks -- The Impact of Naps on Learning

A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego and reported by the media relations department at the University of California at Berkley gives a big boost to nappers everywhere. The study was conducted by Matthew Walker, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley who, together with his colleagues, looked at the impact of a 90 minute nap on 39 healthy young adults.

The study subjects, who were divided into two groups, were given a learning task that was intended to subject the hippocampus (the part of the brain that stores facts) to a large amount of information. The two groups performed similarly on the learning task. Mid-afternoon of that same day, one group took a nap for an hour and a half and the other group stayed awake. Finally, in early evening, both groups were given more information to learn.

The results were clear. The group that had been given the chance to nap not only did better than the non-napping group, but also improved their own capacity to learn. "It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you are not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder," Walker said in the U.C. Berkley report.


Next up for Walker and his team is an examination of whether the diminished amount of sleep that older individuals get compared to younger people is a factor in the difficulty some older individuals have in learning new information.

So, next time you feel badly for sacking out in the afternoon -- or next time you criticize someone for taking a nap while you are hard at work -- take a step back and think about a nap as a chance to clear your brain to allow it to better process new information. Maybe countries with afternoon siestas have a point!

Photo credit: mikecpeck via Flickr

How Learning Interventions Can Change the Brain

For much of the last decade, scientists using functional magnetic resonance imaging have demonstrated that areas of the brain associated with reading can show increased activity in individuals who have been exposed to effective reading interventions. Shaywitz and others have explained their findings in such accessible books as Overcoming Dyslexia, which includes examples of brain images of individuals before and after reading interventions.


A fascinating study by Thomas Keller and Marcel Adam Just of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging that appears in the December 10, 2009 issue of the journal Neuron takes this kind of neuroimaging a step further, using the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) process to look not just at discrete areas of the brain but at the crucial connections between such areas. This "white area" of the brain contains the pathways that make higher order thinking possible. As the authors note, "Although the basic computing power of the brain surely lies in individual neurons, it is only in their collective action, made possible by white matter connectivity, that enables the multi-centered large-scale brain networks that characterize thought."

The study involved three groups of eight to ten year olds. 35 poor readers received reading interventions. 12 poor readers did not receive any reading instruction beyond regular classroom lessons. And 25 good readers also received no specific interventions. The study demonstrated clear increases in connective matter only in the students receiving the interventions. The study authors raised the question of whether the increase in brain connections or the improvement in phonological decoding ability came first -- but suggest that it is also possible that such changes develop interactively, "as one might expect in a dynamic system such as the brain".

This is one more in a series of exciting scientific windows into the complexities of learning and the brain. By keeping abreast of the latest imaging techniques and what they can tell us about learning, we can better focus remediations and strategies to help all kinds of learners expand their skills.

Why a Blog?

Welcome to our new blog.

We have always been a largely volunteer organization. Our Director, Susan Yellin, also works outside the nonprofit world and, as part of her other jobs as a writer and attorney, has been blogging about issues related to learning, transition from high school, and special education for the last eight months. We believe that many of these blogs would be of interest to the readers of our website. So, we have decided to provide the best of these blogs to our Center for Learning Differences readers, along with other original material which will only be posted here.

We hope that you find all of our posts to be informative, thought provoking, and helpful as you work with your child, student, or patient who learns differently. Let us know what you think!