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Educational Jargon Bingo
Dr. Rebecca Bell Branstetter
When I worked as a graduate student researcher at UC Berkeley, I had this game I secretly played with my co-worker during staff meetings. It was called “Educational Jargon Bingo.” Before the meetings, we wrote down all the educational terms that researchers throw around and placed them on a bingo chart in random order. The key was to find a word that everyone uses repeatedly but no one really knows what it means in real life. Some classics that usually guaranteed a win:
Authentic Learning
Milieu
Developmentally Appropriate
Accountability
Rubric
The reason I bring this up is much to my chagrin, NOW I’M ONE OF THEM! I realized this yesterday when I had a discussion with a special education teacher. Here is an actual transcript:
Dr. Bell: Hi Teacher, did you get my note about the IEP tomorrow?
Teacher: The IEP for the LD kid?
DB: Yeah, the LD/ADHD kid we wanted to recommend for RSP instead of SDC.
T: Why RSP?
DB: Because we need the LRE, especially since he bypassed the SST process.
T: Do we need to bring the paperwork for AB3632?
DB: No, we need to SB1895 first.
T: Ok, and are the parents ok with RSP instead of the SDC-LD class?
DB: Yeah, because the SDC we have on site is an SDC-ED not an SDC-LD class.
T: Make sense.
Average reader: ???? Anyone else in the field of special education: Got it. See you at the IEP.
So today I will translate some commonly used terms in special education that we throw around like everyone knows what we’re talking about. Feel free to use as a cheat sheet.
