EBD Blog

Happy anniversary

Four years ago today, I published the first entry on EBD Blog, so we’re starting our fifth spin around the blogosphere.

If you have your own sparkle (and yes, the contents of that glass are from Champagne), raise a glass. If you have recommendations for coverage for the next year, please pass ‘em along in the comments. Thanks!

I discovered that I had mistaken paths for some of the documents in the “Documents” section of EBD Blog, and I’ve corrected them. So, if you’re interested in the contents of the data base on placement literature, those PDFs can now be downloaded correctly. Sorry for the problems.

For those who are interested in the placements many students with EBD experience, I have published a resource that might be of value. About 15 years ago, a group of us (Jim Kauffman, Kerri Martin, Betty Hallenbeck, and I) were interested in why students with EBD were unusually likely to be placed in more restrictive settings. To aid in that understanding we systematically gathered and assembled a data base of literature on placements of students with EBD.

I’ve put a copy of PDFs of that database in the documents section. This is the first time it has been published. It’s actually pretty dull stuff, but it might help start someone down the path of re-examining that literature in a more thorough and up-to-date review. To find the document, please follow the link to “documents” in the menu under the banner.

I’m pleased to add a link to the Web Resources section of EBD Blog that points to the Web site for Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI). MDRI is devoted to ensuring that people with disabilities can participate in society, regardless of the country in which they live. Among other things, MDRI has influenced laws and governmental agencies to promote the human rights of individuals with disabilities.

MDRI documents conditions, publishes reports on human rights enforcement, and promotes international oversight of the rights of people with mental disabilities. Drawing on the skills and experience of attorneys, mental health professionals, human rights advocates, people with mental disabilities and their family members, MDRI trains and supports advocates seeking legal and service system reform and assists governments to develop laws and policies to promote community integration and human rights enforcement for people with mental disabilities. The organization is forging new alliances throughout the world to challenge the discrimination and abuse faced by people with mental disabilities, as well as working with locally based advocates to create new advocacy projects and to promote citizen participation and human rights for children and adults.

Individuals with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders should enjoy the same basic human rights as anyone else. From this perspective, it is easy to see why EBD Blog endorses the efforts of MDRI. To save readers the need to locate the link in the side bar, here’s a jump to MDRI’s home page.

It’s true. I must update the look of the blog. Changes in the underlying software that controls the general system (killer good WordPress) and the related software (as of this writing, I’m still using the wonderful K2 theme) that controls the look of the site (layout, colors, etc.) made some of my settings fail even worse than they were failing before I updated the software. I’m working on it, honest. Now that I have a little more air in my calendar, that’ll get easier.

As a search of EBD Blog would reveal, I don’t usually complete memes. Julie Lorenzen of Austism-Blog tagged me with one, though. I’m following through here.
Continue reading ‘Random sentences meme’

As some loyal readers (if there are any) know, today is Jim Kauffman’s birthday. Because he retired, I don’t see him as often as I once did. I miss the frequent chuckles over absurd events and the chances to talk seriously about topics that really matter.

Anyway, happy birthday, buddy!

It was 2 years ago when Mrs. Ris moved her blog to its current location. She’s had lots of good insights about teaching students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders on Mentor Matters, so I encourage readers to check the site.

This is national de-lurking week, a time when bloggers encourage their readers to participate in the aggregation of related content by commenting on entries at blogs. The idea was initially promoted by Sheryl over on PaperNapkin (who isn’t participating this year, because she’s taking a break), and I want to take this opportunity to encourage interaction right here on EBD Blog.

Yep, we’re live here at EBD Blog central. We’re on the air from

http://EBDBlog.com

and ready to roll. More to come…

EBD Blog, which has been housed on my U.Va.-issue server since its inception, will soon move to it’s formal location at http://EBDBlog.com. If you have a link or bookmark to it that has johnl.edschool in it, please update it.

I hope to take steps that will capture mistaken requests and reroute them to the correct location, but I am not expert enough to ensure that these steps will work. So a little human intervention is likely to be needed. Thanks.