by Elaine Hall and Diane Isaacs
Co-Authors of Seven Keys to Unlock Autism: Making Miracles in the Classroom

It’s that time of year. Like Dr. Seuss’ busy inhabitants of “Whoville,” you are running around, needing to recover on Monday from the holiday weekend festivities and stampedes.  At school, schedules change for holiday performances and parties. Tensions may be high, and you are thoroughly exhausted ready for your well-deserved break.

Holidays can be stressful times for everyone, especially for teachers working with students who have autism and other special needs.    Here are some simple tools to help you and your students find calm within the chaos and even share the joy of the holiday season!

Key 1 – Stay centered
No matter what’s happening, the only constant is YOU.  Yes, you can be the calm within the ‘snow blizzard’ of activity.  Before you walk into your classroom take a minute to breathe, center yourself, and calm your energy.

Key 2 – Acceptance
No doubt this is a frenzied time. The more we can accept the crowded malls, the disrupted schedules, AND your student’s dysregulated behaviors as just part of this festive season the calmer we can all be. We can just “go with it,” no matter what happens.

Key 3 – Tune into sensory stimulus
Your students with autism are often challenged with highly sensitive neurological systems. Everyday sensory processing can be overwhelming. Think how even more challenging this can be with bright lights, blaring music, and loud, jolly people wearing red suits. Student meltdown? Take a moment to see the world from his perspective.

Ready for the “auditorium experience?” Holiday assemblies can be daunting. Acknowledging and voicing for your student, “It is very loud in here, isn’t it?” can have a disarming effect.  Shall we take a break?” helps him feel more in control, further reducing anxiety.

Key 4 – Follow your students’ interests
What holidays do your students celebrate – traditional activities? What gifts do they desire? Take time during the school day to connect to each student’s individual needs.

Key 5 – Include their interests
Find times for your students to share their interests with each other. Are there songs they enjoy singing? Encourage them to share their experiences with classmates. Let students be the “givers.” What can they give each other that can’t be wrapped – like a kind word or hug?

Key 6  – Rehearse for Life
Use social stories to prepare students for winter break by discussing with parents possible vacation plans; play-act them out with students. Help parents come up with ideas for winter break activities that they can plan with their kids.

Key 7 – Celebrate!
Most of all, “CELEBRATE.” Take a minute to see how far you and your students have come in your journey since the first day of school. As we near the winter solstice and the days grow shorter, let yourself be the “light” at the center of calm within the blizzard. Celebrate yourself, your students, and this glorious time of gratitude.

Best wishes for a joyous and stress-freer holiday season!

Elaine Hall and Diane Isaacs Co-Authors: Seven Keys to Unlock Autism: Making Miracles in the Classroom.

Elaine Hall (“CoachE”) is the founder of The Miracle Project. When traditional therapies failed to help her autistic son, she sought out creative people – actors, writers, and teachers – to work with him. The methods Elaine developed to reach kids with autism resulted in The Miracle Project  profiled in the Emmy Award HBO Documentary, AUTISM: The Musical. Elaine has received awards from Autism Speaks, Holly Robinson Peete, and has spoken at The United Nations. She is a keynote speaker and leads workshops throughout North America. Elaine is the author of Now I See the Moon and Co-author with Diane Isaacs of Seven Keys to Unlock Autism: Making Miracles in the Classroom.

Diane Isaacs, a successful film producer, is the former president of Green Moon Productions, which she co-founded with Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith and now co-founder of The Miracle Project. Diane experienced The Seven Keys to Unlock Autism methods first hand when her son, Wyatt participated in The Miracle Project classes and was profiled in AUTISM: The Musical.  Diane produced The Miracle Project benefit album, Fly  with artists including Stephen Stills, Jack Black and Chaka Khan. She is committed to expanding The Miracle Project nationally and internationally.

Photo by: kfjmiller

• The Algebra Teacher’s Guide to Reteaching Essential Concepts and Skills: 150 Mini-Lessons for Correcting Common Mistakes by Judith A. Muschla, Gary Robert Muschla, and Erin Muschla (2011) — 9780470872826
• Reading Success for All Students: Using Formative Assessment to Guide Instruction and Intervention by Thomas G. Gunning (2011) — 9780470942222
• Mentoring Teachers: Navigating the Real-World Tensions by Ann Lieberman, Susan Hanson, and  Janet Gless (2011) — 9780470874127

• Don’t Forget to Write for the Secondary Grades: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (Ages 11 and Up) by 826 National, edited by Jennifer Traig — 9781118024324
• Don’t Forget to Write for the Elementary Grades: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (Ages 5 to 12) by 826 National, edited by Jennifer Traig — 9781118024317
• What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media by Scott McLeod and Chris Lehmann — 9781118022245
• Seven Keys to Unlock Autism: Making Miracles in the Classroom by Elaine Hall and Diane Isaacs — 9780470644096
• Social Skills Success for Students with Autism / Asperger’s: Helping Adolescents on the Spectrum to Fit In by Fred Frankel and Jeffrey J. Wood — 9780470952382

By Milton Chen

As first appeared in Education Week, October 19, 2011. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Much has been said in the past week about Steve Jobs’ monumental talents as a visionary, designer, and marketer and his relentless drive that led Apple to become the world’s most valuable technology company. With his passing, however, we have lost more than an Edison or Einstein of our time. We have lost someone who made us, as the Apple motto says, “think different” about what and how students learn.

I was an early convert to Apple in 1978, working at the research department at Sesame Workshop in Manhattan. In conducting audience research for a new PBS children’s science series, “3-2-1 Contact,” we designed a “program analyzer” using hand-held units that downloaded data to an Apple II. While viewing test segments, young viewers registered their interest on the unit’s keypad. The system replaced a laborious paper-and-pencil method, instantly graphing, for instance, boys’ vs. girls’ preferences and enabling us to report findings in days rather than weeks. Occasionally, we would take the cover off the Apple II and marvel at its motherboard, silently thanking it for helping us do our jobs faster and better.

After I got married and had a child, we became a MacFamily, starting with the Macintosh 512k; then the PowerBook; PowerMac; our daughter’s iMac with its translucent, lime-green cover; and eventually our MacBooks and iPhones that we use today. Our old Macs still live on in our garage, our own little computer museum of memories that we can’t bear to recycle.

Beginning in the 1980s, among educators of all stripes, Apple came to represent our aspirations for children’s learning: cool, fun, a little irreverent, and even beautiful. We viewed the famous 1984 Macintosh ad as an assault on an authoritarian system of schooling, those gray prisoners seen as faceless students marching to the tyranny of lockstep teaching. We, too, wanted to throw that iconic sledgehammer into the system and liberate the learning experience for our students.

When I joined the George Lucas Educational Foundation in 1998, our team embarked on making short monthly documentaries on innovative schools implementing project-based learning, technology, and partnerships to expand learning beyond the four walls of the classroom. It was uncanny how often their teachers were Apple users. (We used to joke that Apple wasn’t paying us enough to showcase their technologies. In fact, they weren’t paying us anything.) Our film on Maine’s middle school laptop program in 2002 showed students acting like scientists, going out on boats to collect water samples, attaching digital microscopes to their laptops to examine microorganisms. At San Fernando High School in Los Angeles, in the social studies classes of Marco Torres, an Apple Distinguished Educator, or ADE, students became young filmmakers expressing the power of teenage voices on topics from neighborhood gun violence to sweatshops on the other side of the world.

Two years ago, I met two other ADEs, technology directors Kathy Shirley of Escondido, Calif., and Joe Morelock of Canby, Ore., who had developed a remarkable solution to the 4th grade reading crisis. By attaching a microphone, they turned the iPod Touch into an audio-recording device, enabling students to record and hear themselves reading. Their iTunes archive changed the private act of reading failure into a public cycle of improvement involving students, teachers, and parents. Shirley and Morelock call it “the missing mirror” in language learning. In an Escondido classroom of English-language learners that I visited, the 3rd graders were reading and writing above grade level and busily using apps to “bump” photos between their iPods and play a game of geometric tessellations. Apparently, they hadn’t been told that math wasn’t done during reading period and that photos weren’t part of the curriculum.

“Beginning in the 1980s, among educators of all stripes, Apple came to represent our aspirations for children’s learning: cool, fun, a little irreverent, and even beautiful.”

Forty years earlier, Steve Jobs was channeling his own inner learner, deciding to drop out of Reed College, collect Coke bottles for spending money, and take courses out of sheer interest. In a course on calligraphy, he learned about the beauty of fonts and typography and, years later, made sure that Apple users could personalize their text far beyond a one-type-fits-all Courier. He believed in a passion-based approach to learning as the best way to compose a life. As he described in his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. … This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Steve Jobs was a distinctly California product, a son of Silicon Valley whose early contacts with Xerox PARC and Bill Hewlett are now legendary. Now, around the world, hundreds of millions of children are armed with immensely more powerful computers than he had as a teenager. Halfway across the globe, South Korea and Australia have recently announced ambitious national programs to provide every student with a digital device. In the war for global competitiveness, their leaders understand that these are the new education “weapons of mass instruction.” The next Steve Jobs might be more likely to come from Seoul or Sydney than Silicon Valley.

But the place that produced him still has the advantages of an entrepreneurial culture and history. The most fitting tribute to him would be to ensure that the children of his own community and state have a chance to follow in his footsteps and create the next wave of, in Steve’s trademark phrase, “insanely great” products and companies. But among the 265,000 students in California’s Santa Clara County, Apple’s home, there are still many Estebans and Stephanies waiting for their first laptops. Unlocking their drive and creativity and enabling them to learn based on their own passions is the best hope for paying forward the legacy of Steve Jobs to California, our nation, and the world.

Milton Chen is senior fellow at the George Lucas Educational Foundation (edutopia.org) in the San Francisco Bay Area and the author of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools (Jossey-Bass, 2010).

Want to write a super scary ghost story with your students? Here’s a free lesson plan by Lisa Brown and Adele Griffin. The lesson is scarily perfect for all ages. Ghost stories make great writing exercises, because they’re even better when they’re short. Their creepy otherworldliness counteracts the boredom of everyday life. That’s why people want to believe in ghosts. It makes life more exciting. It’s also incredibly freeing.

The lesson can be found in one of our spookily new books with 826 National, Don’t Forget to Write. Each of the Don’t Forget to Write books contain 50 writing lesson plans created by dedicated 826 volunteers, acclaimed authors, and educators, including Dave Eggers, Jon Scieszka, and Sarah Vowell, among others.

Now, look below . . . if you dare.

Lisa Brown is an illustrator, syndicated cartoonist, and picture book writer. She coauthored and illustrated Picture the Dead, a Civil War ghost story for young adults, with award-winning author Adele Griffin. She lives in a spooky old house in San Francisco.

 Adele Griffin has written a number of books for young adults, including Where I Want to Be, Amandine, The Other Shepards, the Witch Twins and Vampire Island series, Picture the Dead with best selling illustrator Lisa Brown, and the “Generation Facebook” novel The Julian Game. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

How to Write Ghost Story

Guest post by Lisa Nielsen and Willyn Webb

Cell phones are the fastest, easiest, and most cost-effective digital tool available for today’s learners. You don’t have to wait for them to turn on. Everyone knows how to use them. They don’t require an onsite technician to use them. They’re always with you and almost everybody has access to one, making it easy to communicate, connect, and learn. Students love using their cell phones and while some adults view them as the enemy, others have learned to embrace these devices, realizing what a powerful learning tool they are.

Here are some tools you can use to get started in using cell phones for learning at school, in environments where they are allowed, or away from school.

1) Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere provides a terrific way to capture the thoughts and ideas of every student. Simply set up a multiple choice or free response poll, give students the code, and have them text in their answers like they do on shows like American Idol.

• Read more about using Poll Everywhere for learning here.

2) Flickr
Flickr is a great way to quickly and easily create slideshows. This is fun to do with a new class. In an instant you can create a class slideshow by asking everyone to take their picture and place their name in the subject and something they want the class to know about them in the body, then email it to Flickr. You could also have students use Flickr to turn their writing into a slideshow picture book.

• Read more about using Flickr for learning here and here.

3) iPadio
Use iPadio to make a quick and simple podcast right from your phone. No fancy equipment required.  You could have students turn their reports, projects, or poetry into oral presentations to be shared with a global audience, right from their phone.

• Read more about using iPadio for learning here.

4) Twitter
You can Tweet right from your phone and set up the updates to feed directly into your website, wiki, or blog. Some teachers do this to showcase what is taking place in their classrooms or libraries.  Here’s an example http://www.martavalle.org/library-media-center.  Some principals do this to celebrate student success and update the school on topics of importance. It instantly shows up on their website. Here’s an example http://www.kurthahnschool.org.

• Read more about using Twitter for learning here.

5) Cha Cha
If you don’t know something, just text the question to Cha Cha at 242 242 and get a live person sharing an answer. This is a great resource for students who need to work on homework while on the go.  Note: Cha Cha is funded by advertising. Use your discretion in using this tool.

• Read more about using Cha Cha for learning here.

For more ideas about effective ways to use cell phones for learning, including research-based strategies, lessons, and more order Teaching Generation Text.

Lisa Nielsen, and Willyn Webb are experts in the use of cell phones in education. Nielsen works with schools  in New York City to innovate learning with technology.  Best known for her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator, she also writes for Tech & Learning, ISTE Connects, Leading & Learning, Ed Reformer, The Huffington Post and MindShift.  Willyn Webb is a teacher, administrator , educator, and licensed professional counselor in Colorado . She has   four published books, is a mother of three girls and has developed an innovative alternative high school.  Nielsen and Webb speak to audiences around the globe and teach classes for educators interested in using cell phones for learning.

Common Core is a non-profit organization formed in 2007 to advocate for a content-rich liberal arts education in America’s K-12 schools. To improve education in America, they promote programs, policies, and initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels that provide students with challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences. The organization’s trustees include Antonia Cortese, Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers; Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Chief Academic and Accountability Auditor of the Detroit Public Schools; and Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University and former U.S. assistant secretary of education. The Executive Director of Common Core, Lynne Munson, has written on education issues for numerous national publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Education Week, and Inside Higher Education. She has appeared on CNN, FoxNews, CNBC, C-SPAN, and NPR and speaks to scholarly and public audiences.

Written by teachers, for teachers, the Common Core Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts are a new curriculum tool designed to help teachers write content-rich lesson plans based on the Common Core State Standards. In use already by teachers and curriculum directors nationwide, the Maps organize each school year into thematic units that identify key standards, student objectives, recommended texts, sample activities, and more.  Each unit also contains a sample lesson plan showing how to meet specific standards using selected texts.  The Maps address all of the standards in the CCSS and include grade-by-grade checklists showing which standards are covered in which unit.   For more information, see “How to Use the Common Core Curriculum Maps” below and learn more about the Common Core State Standards for your grade level.

Common Core – How to Use

Common Core – Grade 2 Unit 2

Common Core – Grade 8 Unit 4

Common Core – Grade 10 Unit 3

Now, are you a fan of Teach Like a Champion on Facebook?

“Like” it there today and be part of the rich conversations, the great new videos of champion teachers, the updates from Doug Lemov, the latest from Uncommon Schools, and more.

What’s the most exciting thing on the Teach Like a Champion Facebook page right now? This sweepstakes:

Call for Video (with a little sweepstakes thrown in). We want to see you teach! Some participants will receive a copy of either the NEW Teach Like a Champion Field Guide or the ENHANCED eBook of Teach Like a Champion. Click on the **Video Submission** tab for details!

Please don’t be shy! Follow these 5 simple steps:

Step 1. Take two minutes in the morning to look in the mirror. Groom if needed.

Step 2. Have ready whatever device you use to record your favorite moments.

Step 3. Enlist a colleague—call in a favor or bribe with a latte.

Step 4. Try a technique with your students. 49 to choose from! A technique you’ve mastered, or much more fun: capture your first attempt! No judgments here.

Step 5. Upload your video—on any video-sharing site out there. Let Doug know where to find it.

Best of luck from your friends at Jossey-Bass!

Jerome J. Schulz, author of Nowhere to Hide: Why Kids with ADHD and LD Hate School and What We Can Do About It, answers a few of parents’ most common questions about how to help their kids do better in school.

Q: My child is really well-behaved at school, but he does a real “Jekyll and Hyde” when we sit down to do homework. As school gets harder, this problem is getting worse. What can I do?

A: Ask your son’s teacher to “prime the pump” by giving the kids the opportunity to do the first two homework problems together before going home. This way, your son will have his homework page all set up and when he pulls it out, he’ll have the first two done correctly. This will serve as a “competence anchor,” and should increase the likelihood that his brain is saying “I can” rather than “I can’t.”

Q: Our 10-yr old daughter can write for hours about a topic she’s interested in. But when her teacher asks her to write on a particular subject or if the assignment is structured in any way, she shuts down.We can’t just let her write these open-ended stories forever…any suggestions?

A:  Journals or “sagas” can just flow, because there are no required stops and starts or changes in topic. Structured writing requires a special kind of mental organization. Some kids can’t think in “outline” form, and they get stressed when asked to condense a huge topic or to put their thoughts in a particular order. Here’s an idea that has built a bridge to required writing for many kids: line up 4-6 photographs of an experience your daughter has had (like a field trip, or vacation), and have her write about these in sequence. (It’s even better if she was the photographer!) She’ll be familiar with the scene and the order in which the events happened, both of which reduce task-related anxiety. Teachers can do the same kind of activity by printing out slides or pictures that your little girl can put into order (and maybe do this with a classmate, for fun), and then write a short essay about what she has just thought about. If your daughter balks at writing, let her dictate the story to you while you type it. Then she can cut and paste images and personalize the piece. The key here is to create a mental image of the event and the sequence, to make it more familiar and put some boundaries on the material.

Q: My son Aiden ( age 8 ) talks and talks and talks and talks! It used to be cute–we’ve even got a YouTube video of it! But in school, it’s a real turn-off to other kids (and, we imagine, to his teacher as well).  We don’t want to keep telling him he has to “let other people talk,” or keep saying “Now, be a good listener, Aiden.” What can we do to get him to be more aware of his communication style and take better charge of it?

A: Kids who talk non-stop often need more “training” when they’re not in these social situations. The training should be fun. Some ideas: Give Aiden a tape recorder and hand him an object, or show him a picture. Tell him he “has to” talk for 1 minute, but then has to stop. Then play back what he has said on tape, and reinforce the story he has told, but more important, his ability to stop when he’s supposed to. After practicing this several times, try it without the tape recorder, asking him to “find his own stop button,” and turn himself off when he thinks he’s talked for a minute. You time him. If he overruns the clock, say “stop.” If he “beats the clock,” all the better. He’s showing self-control– which is the name of this game. Then switch roles, and let Aiden time you!

You can also play a “build-a-story” game in which each of you (or later, more family members) tell a piece of a story that the next person must build upon. Set a time limit (ring a bell, or knock on the table) when 30 seconds is up. The rule is “you can finish the sentence you just started, but you have to stop and turn the story over to the next story-teller.” This can be hilariously funny and lots of fun. Remember, when there’s humor, the brain works in more positive, helpful ways. If the teacher or the speech/language therapist at school is made aware of this kind of practice, they can use the same verbal strategies in school, including some of the same verbal cues that encourage awareness of others and self-control, such as, “Time to hit the ‘pause’ button, Aiden.”

Q: We’ve had our daughter tested several times. She has some significant challenges, to be sure, but the reports always sound so negative. Our little girl also has some outstanding strengths that don’t show up in the testing situation. So when teachers and others read the report, they get a very skewed view of her abilities, and they tend to focus on her weaknesses. Do you have any advice for us?

A: Make a portfolio that shows your daughter’s accomplishments and talents. This can be a scrapbook with pictures, arranged year-by-year to show changes and growth, or it can be a more current display of her skills. Photos that show your daughter engaged with other kids in a fun activity, acting in a play, playing music, or even playing quietly or reading in cozy corner, can help to convey her many or emerging skills. If you’re tech-savvy, you can create a personal website for your child. She can even be involved at making or editing her own website and videos. For example, she could be interviewed about “how I learn best,” or “I can be more successful when my teachers…”  This is not like a Grandma’s “brag book,” but rather a way to show teachers and other professionals what she’s like at her best. This “personal PR” helps keep their expectations high but reasonable, and it encourages them to create opportunities for her to demonstrate her skills and talents and also to work on strengthening her weaker areas. And those reports with a negative tone? Give the psychologist your daughter’s “I CAN DO THIS” scrapbook or her web address before they start the testing! I can assure you that this will put more balance into the report.

JEROME J. SCHULTZ, PH.D. has practiced clinical neuropsychology for 30 years and is currently on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. A former middle school teacher, Schultz specializes in the neuropsychological assessment and treatment of youth with learning disabilities and ADHD. In addition to his clinical work and teaching, Schultz is an active presenter at national and international conferences such as CHADD and LDA, and consults to schools and organizations on educating children with special needs. A contributor to numerous web sites (FamilyEducation.com, LDOnline.org, and InsideADHD.org), Schultz serves on several boards, including Learning Disabilities Association of America. For more, go to www.jeromeschultz.com.