Two years ago, my twin son’s preschool teacher gave them an assessment to identify common consumer products or stores like: Kroger, McDonald’s, and Walt Disney.
They both failed miserably. We were new to town and were used to shopping at the Commissary at our previous duty station. My kids, at barely 3-years-old, had not yet experience the magic of the golden arches or Mickey Mouse on repeat. I was offended by the vulgar consumerism in this assessment; not to mention the fact that my son with Down syndrome couldn’t yet verbalize his own name…how was he going to say “Kroger.”
Read Related Post Here: Promoting Inclusion Through Universal Design for Learning
So much about this assessment was wrong, but the essential idea behind it is important to understand. “Cultural Literacy,” coined by educator E.D. Hirsch, means having a familiarity with information that is common knowledge. His ideas became the basis of the common core standards. The problem is too many students with Down syndrome are not accessing the general education curriculum, and are therefore missing huge chunks of information that most Americans know and understand without explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNh7p1HI3k
Special Educator, Janet Romo, says students with Down syndrome’s lack of cultural literacy only leads to unemployment, exclusion, and isolation. “My Master’s in Special Education really didn’t prepare me to teach students with intellectual disabilities. The textbooks will tell you these students need a lot of repetition, but often schools are just teaching life skills on repeat. I searched for modified lesson plans aligned to the general education curriculum, but there was nothing available. When my own daughter with Down syndrome reached middle school I realized there was no way for her to access the curriculum in a general education Social Studies class,” Janet explains.
So, Janet began creating her own. She now has a business and private Facebook group called Austin & Lily: Intellectual Disabilities and Education, that features tips for teachers and entire units of study aligned to general education curriculum at various reading comprehension levels. “I went back for my doctorate and focused on inclusion of students with Down syndrome. I now teach at the university level, and realized there was a great need for lesson plans to specifically teach these students grade-level curriculum at their level,” Janet says.
Read Related Post Here: 5 Tips to Include Students with Down Syndrome in the General Education Classroom
“It takes me about 8 hours to develop one book as part of a unit of study. I’ve stayed away from the high order thinking. I lay it out on a more basic level. They need to have pictures representating what you’re teaching. The research shows the more realistic the image the better, because they’re looking at these images literally,” Janet explains. Austin & Lily now has units of study for Social Studies and Current Events at all grade levels. You can find them here.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the recent Endrew Supreme Court Case require school districts provide meaningful benefit to students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment and with the general curriculum. Janet says many students with Down syndrome are good readers, but often can’t comprehend what they’re reading. Offering a visualization of the content can help build cultural literacy.
“I’m an advocate of the more background knowledge a person has the less difficult it is to visualize. Students with intellectual disabilities need to be exposed to a lot of vocabulary, people, places, things. Background knowledge needs to be built up. If you’re going to read a book about the Arctic, a good teacher must build up background knowledge, like a powerpoint about what happens in the Arctic, images, and words used there. All this prepares the student for the book. We’re preparing them for life by building up these schemas to help them understand,” Janet describes.
Janet says she plans to move on to creating units for other subjects, and says it will be a never-ending venture. Her goal is to sell licenses of her material to school districts. She wants all students with Down syndrome to have a basic understanding of common topics like Shakespeare, American Government, Biology and Current Events.
As for my twin boys, after living in Ohio for three years, both give a shout out to Kroger when we drive by now. They’ve only been to McDonald’s once, but my son with Down syndrome has an affinity for Mickey Mouse. Although I disagree with the way their preschool assessment was done, I do agree with Janet. Cultural literacy is one way to better inclusion in society.
Thank you so much for writing this! The significance of learning general education content is something that is not understood completely by many people, and so the better we are able to all work together in this community to get the word out, the better. When students with an intellectual disability know a lot of the same “stuff” that typically developing peers know, it makes the whole world make so much more sense. When students are consistently taught new content on a regular basis, you can see, how over time, a significant amount of knowledge can be developed for an individual. I would like to see more special education programs using curriculum designed for these students so that they are able to develop to potential. Thank you for sharing Austin & Lily curriculum with everyone!
Agreed! I love this idea of cultural literacy for students with Down syndrome. It’s a game changer!