Professional Writing in Special Education
Katie Tackett, Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Texas at Austin, wanted her students to develop professional writing skills specific to the needs of special education teachers. After teaching a semester of Field Experiences in Special Education, which carries the Writing Flag, she knew she wanted to implement some changes.
Professor Tackett attended the spring 2015 Faculty Writing Flag retreat and focused on how to shape the course so that it included writing that special education teachers actually do, instead of general written reflections. While useful for reflection, these writing assignments were not developing the skills she knew her students would need. Now, the course assignments focus on professional writing.
The conversations Professor Tackett had with other instructors in the Faculty Writing Flag retreat helped her rewrite the syllabus to include different writing types that special education teachers use on a regular basis. Lesson plans, emails, blog posts, and persuasive writing are all included.
One assignment is to write observations of children in a class. For this assignment, Field Experiences students learn how to write down observable behaviors without assuming emotions; describe students impartially; create a clear description of events with fewer adjectives; and stop using adverbs, such as never, unless they are empirically true. They have to consider writing for different audiences — for instance, as a parent, what would it feel like to read this about your child?
Special education has a distinct professional style, according to Professor Tackett. Teachers have to be able to correspond professionally with parents, lawyers, and other professionals. Teachers also need to be particularly careful about “status-marking errors” because they will be harshly judged, especially by parents, if they make grammatical errors. Professor Tackett considers this skill so important that she has her students take grammar quizzes to practice it.
Students also learn professional email etiquette. In their email introductions to other teachers she tells her students to only use ONE exclamation point: “This is not an email about a surprise cruise,” she says laughingly. (They are often so excited about classroom visits that drafts of introductory emails are filled with exclamation marks.) Students also learn about FERPA privacy standards and that public employee email correspondence can be requested through the Texas Public Information Act. This shifts their understanding of what email should be used for and how careful they need to be while using it.
Professor Tackett believes that special education teachers are also activists, and they need to be able to persuade people. Her students are extremely passionate and want to change the world for the better, but in order to do that they need to “validate their side and think about the other side’s concerns,” she says. It is not enough to tell an overworked, burnt-out teacher that they need to do something because it is the law. A special education advocate needs to convince that teacher why it is important to do something differently.
Professor Tackett teaches her students persuasion through writing and then later they can transfer those skills to oral arguments. For instance, one assignment is to write a persuasive essay on a topic they are passionate about. They are then asked to write another persuasive essay from the opposite perspective.
Students also practice writing blog posts that reflect on classroom visits, provide ideas on how to teach a concept in a different way, and describe a situation to parents. It is common now for teachers to communicate with parents and share information with other teachers through blogs. Many of Professor Tackett’s students already follow blogs of aspirational teachers.
Professor Tackett wants students to approach writing in a new way. Instead of thinking of it as a writing course, at the end they should be impressed with all of the professional communication skills they developed.
Dana Lauchner, a student who took the course, says Professor Tackett’s “course challenges future teachers to think critically and write effectively with purpose.” The writing assignments were “practical and something we could realistically see ourselves [doing] in our future career,” she says.
The Writing Flag workshop gave Professor Tackett the confidence, and permission, to teach differently. She felt like she finally had the permission to let go of the “10-page research report with APA references, and make it a professional writing course,” she says. She appreciated the dedicated time and space to work on a course with teachers in other departments. During the retreat, she was able to pause and think about what she wanted her students to ultimately learn.
The Skills and Experience Flags are a unique and innovative feature of all undergraduate degrees at The University of Texas at Austin. The Flags are designed to provide the enriched education that all students will need to become effective future leaders in our society and a constantly evolving workplace.
Interested in participating in a Faculty Writing Flag retreat? Follow the CSEF Twitter account to receive updates on the biannual retreat application deadline. Or, check out the CSEF faculty events and workshops page.
By Laura Robinson, Graduate Assistant for CSEF
