“You don’t know what you don’t know”.
This is a great phrase and one that drives me to keep learning. I am also one to go off on various tangents when I am learning. I get easily distracted if I am reading or watching a video by the part I don’t know about. I may stop reading and go and learn about that missing knowledge.
When it comes to SEND, you cannot research one area. Children don’t fit into these neat boxes, their needs are complicated and while some needs are very apparent, others can be hidden underneath.
As the host of the SENDcast, I am in a very fortunate position, I get to talk to and learn from a wide range of experts on a wide range of topics. I don’t choose the topics, the guests come along with what they want to talk about, based on the challenges they are seeing. Some topics I have personal experience with, other topics are brand new to me.
The topics I have experience of, I sometimes learn I only have limited experience and there is much more to learn. The topics that are new to me I often realised that what we are discussing have had an impact on my life or my children’s lives, yet I was completely unaware how important and how much impact the topic has.
One episode I found myself simply listening to my guests was ‘Desperately Seeking Certainty’ with Dr Jamie Galpin and Clare Ward. This podcast was all about how we all love certainty, we like to know what is happening and when. This podcast discussed this certainty, but also discussed why pupils with SEND can struggle more when they are uncertain.
Another episode that I had a real light bulb moment in was around Verbal Reasoning with Angharad Welch. In the podcast we discussed the blank levels of questioning. At the start of the episode I didn’t know what verbal reasoning was and halfway through as Angharad took me through the blank questions I had a light bulb moment and realised why my children struggled answering questions like “Why did you hit your sister?”, it was a higher level question which they were unable to answer, but when I asked a series of questions they provided all the answers I needed. I hadn’t realised I was asking simpler, lower-level questions.
We really don’t know what we don’t know. If your child has dyslexia, most of your research will be around dyslexia, but along with the difficulties around reading, writing, and spelling, how else does their dyslexia impact them? Do they mask their dyslexia? Are they anxious? Do they struggle to regulate?
The more we learn, the more we can support our children and ourselves. But we don’t have lots of free time to learn, we all have busy lives. The SENDcast is a great way to learn that fits in with your life. You can access over 180 episodes, with a new episode every week across all the different podcast platforms, Spotify, Audible and more, or you can listen through the SENDcast website.
The SENDcast is there to support schools and parents/carers. By parents/carers and schools accessing the same information, they can have a shared understanding to support each other and the children.
Visit the SENDcast website to listen or to subscribe to the podcast and access our library of 100+ CPD training sessions – https://www.thesendcast.com/