Category Archives: Learning Disabilities

Leaving Some Behind

The Wall Street Journal has an guest editorial today from a teacher of special education who says that Common Core Testing is leaving her students behind. Apparently they are required to be testing according to age and not according to reading level. Therefore, the tests do not show improvement or lack thereof, and serve only to demoralize, frustrate, and humiliate the children who are by definition having trouble if they are in her class.

I remember when parents of Learning Disabled students sued the State of Texas to be exempted from the TAKS test — and lost.

You know, from one point of view measurement is a good thing. But it has to be smart. Anybody remember valid and reliable?  Oh, sorry, that wasn’t in the curriculum until Introductory Sociology — and there is no more funding for that.

Come, Let’s Pray Bigger

reblogged from Hala Thompkins, Christian Education Director at Hope Chapel, Austin
Far Too Easily Pleased?

I have been reading all sorts of essays and blogs recently. As a result, they become jumbled in my head and I can’t quite remember whose thought was whose.

However, in something I read recently, the author quoted C.S. Lewis and this idea has stuck in my head ever since:

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and s-x and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. ”

-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p.26

I’ve thought about applying this as I pray. Am I far too easily pleased? As I pray for my friends who are battling hard things- do I actually believe that God can do even more than I am asking? Am I willing to ask even bigger than is safe? What does real faith look like?

I want to encourage all of us to not be too easily pleased with ordinary, average, okay things. I am asking God to increase my faith, stretch my obedience and glorify Himself by making me dissatisfied with mud pies.

Will you come with me?

Healing of Learning Disabilities – May

These are rebroadcast from the beginning of our broadcast ministry. The testimonies were the first topics when we went on the air and we ran them first on every channel we ever went on. The other three were a regrouping after 6 months, to be sure everyone knew what this ministry was about. Enjoy.

Helping Children with Learning Differences Dr. Swank, from Austin Texas, talks about her business — more than tutoring of children with dyslexia.

Escape from the Hell of Having a Messed Up Kid Recap of the aim of this ministry: helping others out of the hell of having a child with problems. Everyone thinks they are along.

What’s Up Discussion of the original mission of this broadcast

Testimony of “Miracles” from Innovative Education Great things from grandmother. When school doesn’t work — try something else! Ideas from everywhere, applied with faith, worked for us. The book about how to do it is : Learn at Home for Great Shalom, available at www.lulu.com.

Testimony of Miracle It really happened like this. That’s why they said, “Sharon, you must share this.” That is why this radio broadcast was born: to share. The book about what the Bible teaches about healing is : God Wants You Healed. Available at www.lulu.com.

CDC Caught Falsifying Data, Hiding Link between Autism and MMR Vaccine

“A researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has admitted that he and fellow researchers falsified data in order to hide the fact that the measle-mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine increases the rates of autism spectrum disorder in black children by 340 percent when administered before age 36 months.

News of the whistle blower broke on the Age of Autism website. The whistleblower was later identified as William Thompson, PhD., one of the authors of the 2004 De Stefano study, which is accused of hiding the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

The whistleblower helped Dr. Brian Hooker of the Focus Autism Foundation in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and led him to information on the data manipulation by the CDC. The results of Hooker’s study were published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Translational Neurodegeneration on Aug. 8.” Reprinted from the Bob Livingston Newsletter:

A great deal of discernment is required in these times. Firstly, ask what interest someone might have in pushing any particular idea on you. Are they going to make money out of insuring that you don’t research? Secondly, what is truly scientific? Not what is conventional, not what some professional or profession says. What is in peer reviewed, scientific journals is what we today consider scientific. It is true that there is some reticence, even in that crowd to accept new findings, but that is the bar to which someone unfamiliar with any particular discipline, must use. Thirdly, ask what risk you take going either way. Risking worldly reputation or life for Truth might be okay, but risking your child’s safety for being well thought of or popular might not be worth it.

While the connection between autism and vaccines has been controversial for many years, the contents of many peer reviewed scientific journals continued to point to a connection between toxicity and autism. Vaccines are one source of toxicity. Further, we had abundant anecdotal evidence that children developed severe symptoms immediately after undergoing injections. The response to researchers was persecution, obviously by big pharma, but most worryingly common everyday mothers and teachers piled on, persecuting researchers, and spouting conventional wisdom when they did not know what they were talking about.

Listen closely to people. Are they trying to help you? Serving you with superior information that they can cite? Because they are eggheads and loving? Or, by contrast, are the pressing their haughtiness upon you because they have some position, supported by your dollars, and very much need to keep that hierarchical arrangement going.

Be wise. Have discernment. Do your own research, where possible. When not possible, rely on professionals who do – not just on professionals who look the sharpest, are themselves hypnotized by the forces in their profession, which in turn are hypnotized and hypnotize based on filthy lucre.