Hot Topic in Education- Should we kick out students for disabilities?

The title is crazy right? Who would kick out a student because of a students disability? Many parents in Florida want to kick out a first grader because of her peanut allergy. The parents say because the school is requiring their students to go to extreme measures, such as "Lunches must be left outside of the room, Students must wash their hands before entering the room and after lunch." Shouldn't the students be washing their hands anyways? Why is that harming the students that don't have allergies? I used to teach in a pre-school (that was part of my high school) with students that had severe allergies and some religious dietary issues. Did we kick out the 3 and 4 year old children because of their religion or their allergies? NO. One of the news reports I heard made a great comment, "replace the word allergy with Autism, HIV, or anything, would we still be picketing to kick out a first grader because of her allergies?" This school is lucky that they are still allowed to bring peanuts to school, many schools have banned peanut butter all together just for safety. I think it's important for everyone to realize that every child has the right to an education. Why should we take away a child's right to education because she cannot eat a peanut.

Comics in School

I was so excited when I read what we had to look at this week in my CEP 416 class because it was almost exactly what we were doing in my TE class... When does that ever happen? My project that is due this week in my TE class is called "The New Literacy Project", where we had to pick a new literacy: Cultural Literacy, Emotional Literacy, Environmental Literacy, Numeracy, Social Literacy, Visual Literacy and Political Literacy. After picking a literacy we had to pick a new technology and showcase our new literacy and what it means using the technology! How cool right?! Even cooler when I got to create a comic strip about my New Literacy, Social Literacy using BitStrip for Schools! If you haven't already read my comic I wrote about Social Literacy, scroll up and see what you can do!

This is a great website, you can assign assignments, see you students work and grade it all online! Some down falls.. it's only free for a month, and then it gets kind of pricy... but doesn't everything in education? This is a great thing to use for a month, try it out and see if your students respond well and use it and then try to find funding for it! It's a great alternative to writing papers! I personally don't think that I would use this with students younger than 3rd grade because of the some of the level of detail  needed to manipulate the characters. However, this would be a great group project or alternative book reports! It's a great way to get students writing and thinking about their writing in a fun and creative way!

GET CREATIVE AND ENJOY LEARNING!!!
Go to BitStrip and have fun making your own comic!! :)