Our Mission
What We Stand For
At The Special Educator, we believe in unlocking the potential of every student through innovative, engaging, and personalized learning. Using the P.I.K.E. Method, we focus on perspective, information, knowledge, and engagement to create meaningful educational experiences. Our mission is to empower students, support parents, and guide educators toward success in a flexible and inclusive environment.
Our Vision
The Driving Force
The driving force behind this became important while teaching in the public school system to students who were struggling in class. While teaching, I noticed that several students faced difficulties similar to those I experienced growing up and struggling through school. By modifying my teaching techniques, I quickly discovered that I could significantly improve students’ comprehension and in-class behavior. In many cases, overall class scores, student participation, and general morale increased substantially.
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Over time other educators wanted to know how I managed to get the positive results. At the time I had not thought about it, organized my thoughts, or frankly bothered to worry about it. After I had left teaching and only recently decided to retire a little early, I found that my methodology worked well outside of the classroom. So, I set out to think about how to put my methodology into words and use it to help others of all ages.
Our Story
About Me
I grew up in suburban Detroit and started off in the public school system but in the third grade had to be moved into a more challenging environment which just happened to be parochial and private schools. From what I recall, a school counselor had advised my parents that I was special in some way shape, or form and needed a more challenging environment in which to thrive. So, starting in fourth grade I attended a coeducational Lutheran grade school followed by an all-male Catholic prep school and then a private liberal arts university.
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As a student, my interests centered around anything science-oriented. Of course, with a strong foundation in religion. In addition to that I had a meaningful interest in economics, music, and art, particularly photography. Outside the classroom, my interests and natural ability centered around competitive swimming, downhill skiing, flying, horseback riding, SCUBA diving, and marksmanship with archery, firearms, and air guns to name a few. Thinking back, I was fortunate to have several mentors along the way who inspired and guided me.
Granted, I grew up in a somewhat affluent environment, attending very high-quality schools and summer camps while embracing a wide selection of activities and subjects. I was a sponge soaking up information and activities; anything I could get my hands on to satisfy my hunger for knowledge and experience. I can honestly say looking back that I was aware of being different from most of the other people around me, which led to excessive shyness and introversion for several years. I did not have help with those aspects of growing up and had to learn on my own how to navigate socially. Lord knows it wasn’t easy, but I did manage to overcome a fair amount of those social setbacks only to find myself an effective educator, instructor, consultant, and performing musician. Oddly enough, I found I had a natural talent for public speaking.
Now I seek to return at least some of what I learned, and experienced, to a public forum where others can learn, contribute, explore, and have a bit of fun in the process.
Explore. Engage. Excel.
Teaching Beyond Limits
During my graduate studies, it became clear to me that the strict adherence to what is called Common Core was not as effective as it was reported to be. From my point of view, as a student who struggled with learning, the Common Core methodology did not attend to the needs of both gifted students and struggling students. Instead, Common Core taught to a narrower selection of students oftentimes leaving the other two groups to fend for themselves, especially in larger classrooms. In addition, the standard practices all but required strict adherence to daily lesson plans. From my experience, the standard practices appeared to lack the flexibility and real-time responsiveness to changing classroom situations, which put teachers in a restricted situation and limited their ability to teach effectively.
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So, in my usual way, which is to work smarter and not harder for the sake of efficiency, I treated Common Core and its rigid lesson plans as guidelines rather than strict rules. This allowed me the flexibility to adapt my instruction to real-time changes in the classroom. I found the most significant hindrance to comprehension and educating in general, was the Common Core shortcoming of narrow instruction which limited both the students and the educators. I routinely observed other educators’ frustration with a lack of success in the classroom. Often, they were at a point to claim that some students were just not teachable. Knowing I had issues myself when I was young, I refused to accept this and set out to prove that struggling students could be helped. As you can imagine this didn’t sit well with many department heads and teachers with years of experience. My belief is that these educators had gotten so used to an inefficient and restrictive way of teaching that it just became a habit, and I understand why they became frustrated.
So, applying an outside-the-box approach to these issues, my methodology simply served to solve a problem that I had in the classroom environment regardless of what other educators believed or put into practice themselves. Interestingly, it is something that I have been doing in one form or another for decades, and it seems rather natural to me.
So now my early retirement allows me to commit to using the method to teach people about a variety of topics within the digital format that modern technology allows. All that said, please consider the Special Educator Episodes a fresh approach to learning about the world around us and ourselves.