welcome to five more myths useful videos in about five minutes let's support the teaching and learning of all students I'm your host Shelley Moore today's episode was called let them eat cake [Music] hello my friends so today we're talking about support and for all of you who are in the special education field you know that support is tricky because there just never feels like there's enough but what if we could look at support differently so to understand how support has historically been provided to students in schools we have to understand where a special education came from you see special education evolved out of the medical model and so if you think about the medical field what has often happened is this there's an illness or something's wrong or you break your leg there's a problem and so what we do is we go to the doctor and they fix us it's great the medical support is provided but it relies on something being wrong or something needing to be fixed in the physiological world this might be accurate but we're learning more about education and realizing a few things first of all students need support even when nothing is wrong and second kids aren't broken so thinking about this knows trying to imagine well what would be the alternative and you know me if I need to understand something better I just try and think of a metaphor okay so let's imagine this let's pretend that the medical model is a fresh batch of cupcakes and the cupcakes represent supports so for example if you need reading support you go eat from the reading cupcake and if you need language support people the language cupcake there could be identity cupcakes numeracy cupcakes drama cupcakes I'm noticing a whole lot of sensory room cupcakes popping up in the medical model you don't get to eat from the cupcake unless you have evidence that you need it and how we have figured out who needs an education is by keeping track of kids who aren't successful in other words kids have to fail to eat from their cupcake so then there's some kids who have multiple needs and so then they have to eat from multiple cupcakes but then they're never in the classroom and then as their classrooms become more diverse and kids are negotiating more needs then more kids need access to cupcakes but the resources and fundings for the cupcakes are never increasing at the same rate as the demand and so we're always short on resources and when it ends up feeling like is a giant catch-22 we're trying to feed starving children with one by brownies they're delicious but they're so tiny okay and then there's this huge misunderstanding that inclusion means oh no problem let's just take away all the cupcakes and then kids have been just thrown into classrooms replacing any of that support just totally contaminating their inclusive efforts okay let's just all take even the medical field is evolving to a better system it's called prevention and wraparound support and we can do the same in education but to do this we have to advocate for support but we have to stop advocating for cupcakes instead we need to advocate for more batter because let me tell you there are better ways to use the batter let me introduce you to the layered support cake of love imagine this every classroom every school every district gets a cake the size of the cake depends on the needs of the community this is not an equality model it's an equity model but here's the best part you do not need to fail to receive supports because if you are in the community you get a slice of the cake automatically for every kid that's on an intervention list there are 25 who aren't and you can't tell me that all students are not going to benefit from supports designed to target language literacy numeracy self-regulation behavior trauma and all of the other needs that our kids are negotiating today it harms no one to support them my friends it is wraparound support for the whole community for the students and for the teacher we need to move away from this divide and conquer of the past let's come together by bringing support to the students based on the needs of a group they can be designed for individuals but they're available to all one might even say that this is you so okay so what does this look like for you I want you to go back to your school community look around at your support services are they cupcakes or are they layered cakes how could you start shifting some of these supports so that they become more Universal in their approach it's so much more supportive for classrooms teachers and students who will no longer have to wait for a crisis to finally get what they need just let them eat cake wasn't that just a delicious episode thanks for watching again go subscribe to our five more minutes YouTube channel and find us on social media we will see you soon [Music] [Music] [Music] you