2020 is in full swing and if your calendar looks like mine it is FULL of annual IEP meetings and all the planning, prep and assessment that goes into them. This also means the number of appearances one word will make in the world of special education is on the uptick. It’s an important word, it’s a word that plays a big role in how we design programming, how we set goals, and how we track how we’ll spend our time and efforts over the years to come.
It’s also controversial.
I’m talking about the F word.
No, not that F word. A different one.
Functional. We hear it all the time, particularly when working with students who may be significantly impacted by their disabilities. We want our programming to be functional, for them to learn functional skills, for what we teach to make a meaningful difference in our students’ lives and to be generalized to environments outside of school. That all sounds good, right?
It does! But who gets to decide what’s functional and what’s not? It’s not an easy line to draw, and there are a lot of factors that go into it. How old is the student? What’s developmentally appropriate for a student of that age? What opportunities exist for a typically developing student of that age? What are the student’s current strengths and needs? What does the student’s family hope the student will achieve or see in the student’s future?
These questions don’t have easy answers, and oftentimes what we think as educators may not always align with feedback that we get from other sources, like families, administration, curriculum, the list goes on. Not to mention, what does your student think about all this? At the end of the day, programming is about the student, right?
With all that said, what do we do? How do we make sure what we’re teaching is benefiting our students in the long run?
The best, most functional programming is based on data and assessment, and careful consideration of many factors. Here are some big ones:
1. Consider what a typical student of a given age would be doing. I use this strategy All. The. Time. After all, we want our students to have as many opportunities as possible as compared to their typically developing peers. However, some skills are naturally more important at certain ages and stages than others. Having appropriate play skills on the playground is really important in elementary school, but you aren’t going to see that show up as a goal in high school. However, does your high school student have appropriate leisure skills? Can they engage in a leisure activity either alone or with a peer? That’s an important skill, not just for free time or recreation, but for employment as well- taking a break correctly is a skill! In this way, a similar skill area can be addressed differently, based on assessment, depending on the age of a student.
2. Consider required curriculum and standards. It’s not a popular opinion, especially as we move to higher grades and more esoteric standards, but consider for a moment how much of what you learned in high school you actually use to this day. If our only yardstick on what’s functional and what’s not is whether or not a concept, skill or subject will be used outside of school then by our own definition most of our own educations weren’t functional. However, we wouldn’t say that we didn’t have a right to learn those things, right? We have to be considerate of our students and their school experiences. Sometimes the most valuable thing about a given curriculum component or state standard is that it’s what other students are doing. It’s not the be all end all of functional programming, but it’s something to think about. Know what the end result for a student is and that will lend itself to smaller, incremental steps on how to get there.
3. Consider the student’s own goals. Especially for transition-aged students, incorporation of the student’s voice and goals for themselves, or what they want for their own future, is huge. HUGE. After all, nobody goes to school forever, and some students do need significantly more support than others to successfully transition out of high school and into the wide world beyond. Some students have very clear visions of what they want for their lives after high school and many don’t. This is true of typical learners as well- how many high school students are there who want to be football players or Instagram influencers? Even though a student may have a nebulous concept of life after high school now doesn’t mean it will always be that way or that nothing can be done to shape that into something else. Spend time getting to know your students and what they see in their futures; that’s valuable information.
4. Consider the input from the family. For most of our students the primary source of support is their family. In some cases, this may be for a lot longer than what other typical students may experience, up to and including lifelong support. Connecting with family members and gathering data from that quarter is valuable information to help design functional programming.
5. Consider creative options. Sometimes, we have to face the reality that what a student needs for the future may be out of sync with other things that HAVE to happen. Mandatory curriculum has to be taught, routines and procedures in the building have to be followed, and some stakeholders may have goals for a student that are just not realistic. In all of these situations, assessment and data are your friends! Assessment and data are how to describe how close (or not) a student is to any target, whether it be one the teacher picked or one the state picked. Assessment and data show that good faith efforts are being made, and sometimes, assessment and data can deliver hard news to people. At the end of the day, teachers are constantly trying to move their students forward and understand that what that looks like may be different for every student; being able to give the reason for a decision and back it up is what, ultimately, makes something functional.
How do you determine what’s functional for a student? How do you navigate disagreements on the team when it comes to functionality? Comment below!
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