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August 15, 2003 - Image 68

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 2003-08-15

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

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Cover Story

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High Expectations

When Becky dropped

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Ann Arbor special education supervisor brings passion
to his roles as advocate, family man and Jewish leader.

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DIANA LIEBERMAN
StafieWriter

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eal Elyakin's educational phi-

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losophy is not radical nor
new — but he's not giving

up the fight.
If he had his way, more students with
non-standard learning styles or mild-to-
medium perceptual deficits would be
mainstreamed rather than tracked into
special education programs.
If he had his way, teachers would be
proficient in both their subject matter
and in the science of teaching. And if he
had his way, early educational stimula-
tion at a young age would enhance a
child's lifelong capacity for learning.
With these ideals in place, the enor-
mous industry that has grown up
around special education would be
superfluous.
That would be just fine with Elyakin
of Ann Arbor, special education supervi-
sor with the Washtenaw County
Intermediate School District.
When Elyakin talks about limiting
special education, he's not referring to
his students at High Point School in
Ann Arbor.
The district-wide school for severely
cognitively and multiply impaired young
people is run by the Washtenaw County
ISD (Intermediate School District), the
regional organization that coordinates
and delivers programs and services for
Ann Arbor and the surrounding com-
munities.
What he would like to abolish is the
obsessive labeling that casts far too many
students with diverse learning styles as
failures from their earliest days in school.
"If we look close enough, we all have
special needs," said the 48-year-old edu-
cator, gesturing toward his eyeglasses.
"Special education traditionally looks
at defects, defines people by what they
cannot do. Why not look at my
strengths instead of my weaknesses?"
Elyakin believes that a good educator
is highly trained in his or her content
area to teach all students.
"But, until and unless our culture —
our school districts, our families, our
universities — reaches a point at which
it looks at teaching as a scientific disci-
pline and gives teachers the training
both in their subject matter and in the

pedagogy to convey that subject matter
to the widest range of students, we are
stuck with labels," he said.

Eye For Innovation

Among Elyakin's responsibilities as spe-
cial education supervisor are program
planning and direction, staff and student
support, allocation of resources, commu-
nication with parents and family, cur-
riculum development and student
achievement.
He has direct responsibility for High
Point School, which serves about 70
young people up to 26 years of age, the
cut-off for receiving public education.
The teachers at High Point have
high expectations for their students, he
said. The expectations differ for each
student, just as the students differ
from each other.
Teaching is not magic, Elyakin said.
"We know how to do it. But, too
often, systems keep acting as they
always have.
"Why is it our educational system is
based on the ability to sit in a row of
desks? Why are we still doing that,
when evidence shows multiple ways of
learning?
One disservice from a special educa-
tion point of view is excluding and
removing children when we don't have to.
"I speak about special education
because that's my field. But we have
created too many parallel systems of
education."
Elyakin is optimistic about
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's
"Great Start" initiative, which chal-
lenges intermediate school districts
such as the Washtenaw ISD and
Oakland Schools to spearhead early
education programs for families in
their area.
The initiative focuses on education
from birth to age 5, asking ISDs to
teach parents how to read to their chil-
dren. In her February 2003 State of the
State address, Granholm said that, if
properly stimulated in their earliest
years, a child's lifelong capacity for learn-
ing "will be forever enhanced."
"If we started working with ages 0 to
5, there is no way we would have as
many problems as we have now,"
Elyakin said.
"The question is, do we have the

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