UDL: The curb cut's cognitive cousin

At a session at AASL—which was, ostensibly, about creating resiliency in students—the presenter said the following:

“There’s very little we can do that supports students at risk that doesn’t take away from other students.”

I was already, at that point, pretty annoyed by almost everything in the session (Someone else in the session had said that a good way to teach positive classroom behavior was to threaten students to hold them in for recess, and the presenter agreed that this was an excellent way to teach positive behavior, which almost made me lose my mind. Here’s a classroom management tip: if you, as an adult, would find such treatment insulting, chances are it’s not going to have the desired impact with students. How does that teach anything? How does it address the root of the problem? If a student is genuinely struggling in the classroom due to a hidden or undiagnosed learning disability—or for any number of other reasons—and that struggle is manifesting as misbehavior, how does holding a child in for recess address the issue? And if you hold the entire class for the misbehavior of one, you’re further ostracizing that child. It’s just awful, all around. /overly-long parenthetical rant) and had been trying to make my escape (it was sparsely attended and we kept having to talk to our neighbor, which made it a little awkward).

I’m almost glad, however, that I did stay to hear that, as sometimes I forget what an unfortunately pervasive attitude that is. So many teachers believe that you can’t help the at-risk students in your classroom without somehow taking away time/attention/focus/etc. from the other students in your classroom.

(When I mentioned my frustration with that session/presenter, another colleague pointed out that, yes, if you put an at-risk student in a class of 37 (a number based, sadly, on the reality of a friend of hers), it is going to take away from the amount of attention you’re able to give the other students. Which is likely true, but if you already have 37 students in a room you likely already have high needs students, and it’s also likely that there are many students not getting the attention that they need. There is only so much good pedagogy and instructional design can address.)

Anyway, this all is a perhaps overly-wordy way to introduce the Learning Commons session I presented at AASL (and since, apparently, this blog post is all about the parenthetical aside, I'm going to use this one to give a HUGE thank you to Buffy Hamilton for all her work creating an amazing learning space).

UDL in the Library

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Universal Design for Learning is built on the idea that the students in our schools vary widely in their abilities, and we need to design our curriculum in order to meet the needs of those learners. It is up to us to fit the curriculum to our students, not the students to fit themselves to our curriculum. Curricula that are designed from the outset to meet the needs of a variety of learners will meet the needs of far more students than one designed for the mythical "average" student.

I think of UDL as the curb cut's cognitive cousin. The curb cuts that are in all sidewalks were originally put there in order to make them accessible for people in wheelchairs, but those curb cuts are also useful for those of us pushing strollers or dragging wheeled suitcases. Sometimes--and I think this is especially true in the library--we don't know the individual learning profiles of our students. But if we design our curricula to meet the needs of a variety of learners from the outset, we don't need to worry about retrofitting to individuals.

I am, by no means, a UDL expert, and I don't think my library curriculum is perfect in that regard. But they are principles I strive to implement as I design instruction and select material.

Aimee Mullins, who I refer to in my slide deck, has an amazing TED talk about the views of dis/ability, and how much perspective matters:

Our perspective on students, and what they're able to accomplish, is what sets the tone in our libraries and in our classrooms and in our schools. By designing our schools to meet all learners where they are, we make them places of possibility.

Accessibility is about more than text-to-speech

I am, as I type this, on my way home from the School Library Journal Leadership Summit in Washington, DC. It was, hands down, one of the best professional development experiences I’ve ever had. I loved the intimacy and the intensity of the summit—it was a small group of people, and we were all in the same room, listening to the same speakers, and discussing the same ideas. It created an atmosphere very different from the large conferences I usually go to, where I’m running from session to session and always feel like I’m missing something—and have a harder time connecting with people who are focusing on similar ideas while at the conference and want to delve a little deeper.

The summit was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries and give me new ideas and focus. I’m coming home with a lot of ideas to reflect on and implement (and unless I get completely overwhelmed at work the next couple weeks—ha!—I plan to write some more about it).

The theme of the summit was “The New World of Reading” and e-books, unsurprisingly, came up a lot. Friday morning was devoted specifically to speakers who had started e-book projects in their schools, districts, counties, regions, etc., as well as e-book vendors talking about the issue from their perspective.

It was kind of reassuring to hear that even many people who have started using e-books in their schools are still not necessarily 100% sure of the best way to do so; I admire their willingness to explore and jump in and see what happens. It was also reassuring to hear from Chris Harris, who admonished us not to buy e-books for our schools; specifically, he told us to develop ways across districts and curriculums to collectively purchase and share e-resources. Which I agree with, as I don’t have the buying power or the clout to purchase what I want and need on my own, but as an independent school librarian it also means spending time figuring out a consortium (though I’ve already connected with another independent school librarian in CT, and we have some ideas).

One of my major hesitations around e-books (and it was an issue I brought up as often as I could) is full accessibility for students with learning disabilities. One of the questions I submitted to the vendor panel was if e-books were being designed and created with LD students/UDL* principles in mind, and whether they would be fully accessible. The answer from most vendors was that many (but not all) e-books had text-to-speech built in; there was much nodding and smiling from the audience in response.

Sigh.

Yes, text-to-speech is good, and an important accessibility feature, but text-to-speech alone does not make a book fully accessible to all learners. For example, in many platforms where I’ve seen text-to-speech built in, it’s one giant mp3 file, with no navigational ability. How often do you read a book or article (particularly for research purposes) starting with title and author and then read the whole thing straight through without skipping or skimming?

But beyond the quality of text-to-speech, it takes more to make a curricular resource truly universally designed. It also takes more than a built-in dictionary. Yes, those are good things, and I’m glad they’re becoming standard, but I really don’t want them to be the end of these developments. I see so much potential for making more resources more available to more learners that I will be frustrated if we fall short of what I believe is possible.

A truly UDL e-book is like art or porn; I may not know exactly how to define it, but I’ll know it when I see it. And I haven’t seen it yet. Maybe there is something out there that does what I want it to do, and I just haven’t discovered it; if so, I hope someone will point it out to me. Even something close, so I can go to a vendor (my goal is to get better at talking to vendors about what accessible e-resources should look like) with specific suggestions. And, as mentioned above, I know my school and the population I work with in general is too small to have a lot of clout, but if a vendor designs a truly UDL e-resource they will have my undying loyalty and a solemn promise to sing their praises at every opportunity.

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* For those of you unfamiliar with UDL: I like to think of Universal Design for Learning as the cognitive cousin of Universal Design in architecture. The most frequently used example of universal design in architecture is curb cuts; they make sidewalks for accessible for people using wheelchairs, but they also help people dragging suitcases on wheels, or pushing strollers. The burden is placed on the space to meet the needs of those who will use, not on those using the space to adapt themselves to it. Similarly, UDL is based on the idea that it is the curriculum that should adapt to the learners, not the other way around. For a much better, much more thorough explanation (plus UDL guidelines), I highly recommend udlcenter.org.