There's a story about that...

As promised, here is the story behind the unusual title of the blog. I have been called an "outside of the box" thinker; special educators often are. When the neat boxes that apply to typical learners were handed out, I guess I had stepped out of the line (my family believes that I was in the bathroom). The working title of the blog was "What box?", but some clever soul had already claimed that one.

I attended conference recently on postsecondary education for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The great Cate Weir of www.thinkcollege.net gave the opening presentation on person-centered planning. She shared the following stanza from the poem Six Significant Landscapes by Wallace Stevens:

Rationalists, wearing square hats
Think in square rooms
Looking at the floor
Looking at the ceiling
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse
of the half moon
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

By far, this is the best description I have ever heard about outside the box thinking. My goal with this work is to find stories about adults with disabilities (especially intellectual and developmental disabilities) who are living meaningful lives and to study how they do it. I'm not looking for inspirational or overcoming stories, but stories about real lives. What's to overcome, anyway? There is room in the world for people of all abilities and I'm not sure we can figure out how to continue making the world better if we don't have good examples.

As for the use of ellipses, I use them frequently in speaking and writing, because stories about real people are in constant evolution. You can't put a period on a sentence until a thought is complete. My thinking is never complete... just ask my husband.