From The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent:

Jewish Learning Venture, (formerly the Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education/Jewish Outreach Partnership), The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and 12 other Jewish communal agencies, will come together to help make area synagogues, schools, camps and other community organizations fully accessible to persons with special needs.

On Sunday, April 29, 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., at Congregation Adath Israel in Merion Station, these groups will strive to "Open the Gates of Torah" to all members of the Jewish community through a comprehensive conference.

Read the full article in The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent...

From The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles:

Daniel Ozer-Ross studies hard. He does his homework. And it's not enough.

A freshman at New Community Jewish High School, the 14-year-old has, since preschool, battled visual-processing challenges that have impaired his short-term memory and made it difficult to remember what he sees.

Read the full article in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles...

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

Philadelphia – March 6, 2012 – On its face, there was nothing unique about this Purim carnival, with children parading around like Esther and Mordecai, hamantashen and popcorn for the grabbing, and holiday-themed fun and games.

But on closer look, this one stood apart.

Read the full article in eJewishPhilanthropy...

From The New York Times:

I AM a special education teacher. My students have learning disabilities ranging from autism and attention-deficit disorder to cerebral palsy and emotional disturbances. I love these kids, but they can be a handful. Almost without exception, they struggle on standardized tests, frustrate their teachers and find it hard to connect with their peers. What's more, these are high school students, so their disabilities are compounded by raging hormones and social pressure.

As you might imagine, my job can be extremely difficult. Beyond the challenges posed by my students, budget cuts and changes to special-education policy have increased my workload drastically even over just the past 18 months. While my class sizes have grown, support staff members have been laid off. Students with increasingly severe disabilities are being pushed into more mainstream classrooms like mine, where they receive less individual attention and struggle to adapt to a curriculum driven by state-designed high-stakes tests.

Read the full article in The New York Times...

From The Financial Post Tech Desk:

Sara Winter spent nine years watching her nephew struggle to socialize with his peers, her heart breaking each time the 11-year-old Toronto boy suffering from autism would grow discouraged, further eroding his fragile self-esteem.

As his dedicated aide at home and school for much of the past decade, Ms. Winter worked with her nephew's parents to try to help him overcome his autism, employing a wide range of techniques, including behaviour recognition therapy.

Read the full article in The Financial Post Tech Desk...

From Jweekly:

Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, a Boston-area organization dedicated to ensuring a Jewish education for students with special needs, is providing resources to creatively engage kids with the lessons and perspectives of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

A variety of High Holy Day materials and activities useful for children across the learning spectrum are posted at JGateways.org.

Read the full article at Jweekly...

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

Tema Krempley, 23, has had Birthright Israel on her mind for a long time. For Krempley, who graduated this year as a religion major from Ohio Wesleyan University, the free 10-day trip of the Holy Land provided by Mayanot offers the chance to learn more about Israel and visit Caesarea, where her favorite poet, Hannah Senesh, wrote her favorite poem.

“I’m very excited because there’s so much to see and so much to learn,” Krempley revealed before departing John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sunday.

Krempley was one of a batch of young people gathered outside of El Al Airlines’ check-in desks getting ready to depart on a special Chabad-Lubavitch run Friendship Circle/Taglit-Birthright Israel trip. Now in its fourth year, the free trip gives Krempley and other young people with special needs the opportunity to take part in the carefully-tailored program.

Read the full article at eJewishPhilanthropy...

From The Jewish Journal of Greater LA:

Over the Purim weekend, a Shabbaton for Jewish adults with disabilities sponsored by JFS/Chaverim was held at AJU/Brandeis Bardin camp, and there was a late Saturday afternoon session called “Ask the Rabbi”. Questions zinged in from every corner of the room: Why can’t we eat meat with milk? Why do the Jewish holidays move around the calendar so much? Why do we sit shiva after someone dies? Rabbi Deborah Graetz Goldman patiently answered each question quickly and to the point, but the session ended before everyone could get in his or her questions.

These Jewish adults with special needs had clearly been encouraged to ask questions, even if not afforded much formal Jewish education. In asking their questions, they were connecting themselves to traditional Jewish learning. As Barry W. Holtz, author of Back to the Sources: Reading the Class Jewish Texts writes : “In the world of the yeshiva, Jewish learning is carried on in a loud, hectic hall called the bet midrash where students sit in pairs or threesomes, reading and discussing out loud, back and forth. The atmosphere is nothing like the silent library we are accustomed to. Reading in the yeshiva is conducted in a room with a constant, incessant din; it is as much talk as it is reading. In fact, the two activities of reading and discussion are virtually indistinguishable.”

Read the full article at The Jewish Journal of Greater LA...

From the Palm Beach Sun-Sentinel:

Plans by the Jewish Community Center of the Greater Palm Beaches for a permanent branch in northern Palm Beach County have gotten a big boost: a $5 million grant from the Cleveland-based Mandel Foundation, the center reported on Thursday.

The grant brings the JCC a third of the way toward its goal of $15 million to build the 37,000-square-foot facility for arts and recreation.

Read the full article at The Palm Beach Sun-Sentinel...

From The LA Times:

Not long after excoriating the local teachers union, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is taking charter schools to the woodshed as well, saying they need to take on bigger challenges such as turning around low-performing schools and educating greater numbers of disabled students and English-language learners.

In a speech, prepared for delivery at a state charter schools conference in San Diego on Wednesday morning, Villaraigosa offers a milder rebuke than the one he delivered to the union in December. But the occasion was carefully chosen to drive home his points. Villaraigosa will be accepting an award as the “elected official of the year,” according to his office.

Read the full article at The LA Times...