A Brilliant Approach to Education: Seeing and Celebrating Students For Who They Are.
“Sit down, be quiet, keep your body still, take out this book, read these pages, talk with your partner, and be prepared to share!”
These are pretty common expectations one would hear in the traditional school setting. Teachers have a set curriculum that all students must access, interact with and “hopefully” be successful at. As a special education teacher, I tried to meet students where they were at, modify and provide accommodations as best I could with the resources I had available. However, “success” was not always achieved and more often than not a “fingers crossed” mentality was the go-to approach for intervention.
Hardest Part of Teaching in Public Education
I'm often asked, “What is the hardest part about being a special education teacher?" My answer is always–seeing what a student needs but not being able to make it happen due to the constraints of public education. It’s a sad reality but one that the majority of teachers (special or not), experience.
This reality is one that keeps you up at night. You dream of changing the system. Of tearing down the walls of public education and rebuilding anew with walls that adapt and change to the students who enter. With walls that empower teachers to alter the environment to meet the needs of their students. Or perhaps to have no walls at all and to reimagine how education can be delivered and achieved altogether. While I was not able to reconstruct the model, Mark and Margaret Fairbanks were, through their creation of Islands of Brilliance (IOB).
The Lens Shift
Walking through the virtual doors of Islands was like walking out of a room filled with smog and breathing fresh air for the first time in ten years. The smog had felt all the more thick because I knew I was breathing it but I thought that that air was the only option. Then I experienced Islands and learned how very wrong I was.
IOB has been able to achieve what I only dreamt of as a teacher in public education. They’ve seen the disparities, the inadequacies, and the obstacles. And instead of bowing down to these limits and continuing to try to fit students of all shapes into square holes, they have been able to utilize student creativity as an intervention and vehicle to genuine success.
I’m going to be honest, as much as I thought I was an advocate for the autistic community and as educated and aware as I thought I was, I was still a participant within that system and found myself trying to fit students into holes they really had no reason to be in, other than for the system’s goal of one size fits all. But at IOB you don’t need to do that. Students drive the experience, their interests and creativity are the agents which take them to success. At Islands, the definition of success looks different for each student, there is no ‘correct’ end point, and much of the student growth lies outside of their design skills. Students are thriving and developing in the often hidden or overlooked skills of self-confidence, communication, positive interactions with peers and supporting adults, improved self worth, and overall engagement with a task because they were able to tap into what makes them tick and interact with it in a constructive and supported way. Their interests and strengths are celebrated amidst this beautiful intersection of creativity and education.
Square Peg, Square Hole
Traditional schools can often feel like a conveyor belt of students, with the goal of getting them in and out as quickly (and with as little modification to the organization) as possible. With the ‘biggest bang for your buck’ being the underlying priority. While many students fall through the cracks of such a system, the neurodiverse suffer the most in my opinion. Their skills and strengths are often overlooked and their unique needs are often met with ignorance or intolerance. Outwardly they may appear to ‘fit the mold’ but inside they see the world differently, interact with the environment uniquely and learn in beautifully individual ways. All of these qualities should be celebrated and used as catalysts for learning. However most traditional schools miss the mark–but not Islands of Brilliance. Islands sees students for who they are and meets them where they’re at.
Rather than expect students to adapt to the environment, Islands creates the ideal environment. From the moment you are introduced to IOB, you can tell it’s unique. There is an innate flexibility and fluidness to the way IOB operates that resists the complacency of status quo and a one size fits all approach. That flexibility is what drives the student-staff relationship–never approaching two students the same and never expecting students to be anything other than who they are.
Unlike other organizations where participants must adhere to preset expectations, are told to follow certain procedures and often shamed when they do not conform, students at IOB are met with genuine interest and asked “where do you want to go?” If a student is a ‘square peg’, Islands creates an environment for square pegs.
You only need to witness one of their programs to see the impact that approach has on its community. To see these students thriving, smiling, communicating and celebrating their successes on a daily basis with their peers, leaves no doubt in my mind that Islands of Brilliance has unlocked a powerful model for supporting and growing ALL students.
