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Parents fear special needs students being left behind by Alberta curriculum changes

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As Alberta Education continues its multi-year, $64-million curriculum overhaul, parents want the province to ensure special needs students aren’t being left behind. 

With limited resources and fewer teacher aides in regular classrooms, experts say addressing unique learning needs with open-ended assessment and better-trained teachers is the most cost-efficient way to ensure special needs kids thrive academically, but also learn the social skills they’ll need for the real world. 

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Desiree Staffeldt, the mother of two children diagnosed with learning disabilities, says her youngest son benefited greatly from a Universal Design for Learning program, only provided at St. Anthony, a unique Calgary Catholic school for special needs students.

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She says the delivery of curriculum has been tweaked to be completely student-focused, allowing kids to make choices about how they learn, whether it’s through visual or audio aids, or whether they need support dealing with distractions or an inability to focus.

“The programming is more flexible and student-centred,” says Staffeldt.

“It helps students to make choices or be more involved in the learning process by providing multiple ways to access content and express their learning.”

But a proposal to move St. Anthony students into a regular school while maintaining their own unique classroom has parents fearing it’s part of an overall effort to integrate more special needs kids into regular schooling.

Staffeldt says as the province looks to reshape curriculum, they need to consider more methods of presentation to all students, providing not just texts but also visual, digital or audio options for learning. Charts, graphs, photos and music are just a few examples.

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Students also need to be offered multiple means for expression, she added, such as showing their learning not just through written or verbal means, but also through physical action, performances, websites or artwork.

Updated ways to teach special needs kids, she added, could also include collaborative or group work, role-playing or games that connect classroom learning with the real world.

As well, kids like Staffeldt’s son with attention-deficit issues can use “fidgets” or toys like balls or string they can play with to keep their hands busy so they can better focus on their learning.

Alberta Education launched the curriculum overhaul to update parts of the learning program that haven’t been changed in more than 30 years. The province has said it will increase focus on the study of climate change, indigenous people, gender diversity and mental health. But parents have said the overhaul also needs to ensure the curriculum is delivered in a way that special needs students can understand it.

Mark Ramsankar, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, agreed the current revamp of the curriculum needs to ensure “teachers have the flexibility to deliver outcomes with modifications and flexibility.”

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He added that assessments could also be more open-ended, particularly for kids with unique needs.

“That way, teachers can delve deeper into areas where students are stronger and more engaged.

“It doesn’t mean diluting curriculum, it means reducing volume, reducing outcome.”

But Vanessa Sanderson, whose Grade 5 son has been diagnosed with a language processing learning disability, says teachers in the regular classroom also need more training support.

She says in the past her son often struggled with teachers who lacked the training or the resources to deal with his unique needs.

“There is so much technology out there that can help these kids but so many teachers don’t know how to use it.”

Sanderson says better curriculum delivery needs to ensure all special needs kids have access to computers that can assist with reading through unique programs such as talk and text.

“There’s so many. One lets students touch words they’re trying to read and a voice will read them out loud.”

Sydney Smith, Area 5 director for the Calgary Board of Education, says learning disabilities are complex and wide-ranging, and students with special needs are being helped in myriad ways within the system.

And while it is difficult to ensure each teacher has the same technological training as another, the goal of each school principal is to ensure enough training opportunities are provided to teachers outside of school hours.

Smith also acknowledged the growing number of technological supports to aid students with special needs, and opportunities to be assessed through oral as well as written forms.

“Students can write final exams by just telling their story, if they fall under a certain code.

“They can qualify to have a scribe that they tell their story to.”

eferguson@postmedia.com

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