One of the classes for this term's cohort is about students with special needs. Trends in special education today are moving away from self contained classrooms for students with special needs and embracing "inclusive" programs in which students with disabilities or other exceptionalities are incorporated into a general education classroom if at all possible. Obviously this means that more general ed teachers need to be able to work effectively with students who have special needs. That's what this class is about.
Part of learning to work with special needs students is understanding their special need, for more and more teachers today this means understanding autism and other ASD's (autism spectrum disorders). To that end, we have been reading Songs of the Gorilla Nation by Dawn Prince-Hughes. It is fantastic. Both as an insight into how a person with autism experiences the world and simply as good literature. I highly recommend it.
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