A Guest Lecture

On Tuesday evening, I gave a guest lecture to about fifty Greek general education and special education teachers from Ioaninna.  My topic was the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).  I picked this topic for a couple of reasons.  First, this is the 35th anniversary of President Ford signing into law the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, now known as IDEA.  Second, all three branches of American government were involved in its passage.  I started off by focusing on the Brown v. the Board of Education case of 1954 (i.e., judiciary branch), which was about school desegregation, but would prove to be the impetus for IDEA about 20 years later, especially the famous line from this case stating that "separate but equal is inherently unequal."  Next, I discussed two court cases involving students with disabilities in the early 1970's that helped shaped the basic tenets of IDEA as well as advocacy efforts of various groups for the disabled with Congress (i.e., legislative branch).  Finally, President Ford signed this Act into law (i.e., executive branch).

I put a lot of time and effort into this presentation and I was rather pleased with my key points as well as the catchy graphics and photographs that I included.  However, as is so often the case when I give a lecture, the audience became animated in reaction to a minor point to which I only made a passing reference.  I happened to mention teacher accountability and, in particular merit pay, that all of the sudden resulted in a cacophony of voices being raised.  The teachers were extremely interested to know if merit pay was widespread.  They seemed apprehensive that Greece may adopt a similar strategy in determining teacher salaries.

Just in case you were wondering, I lectured in English.  My colleague, Dr. Eleni Morfidi, summarized my points every couple of minutes in Greek.  She also included Greek translations just below my English text on my PowerPoint slides.  I could only imagine how tired she must have been listening to me in English and then interpreting that into Greek and then listening to the teachers' comments and interpreting that into English so I knew what they were talking about.  However, it was evident to me that the teachers for the most part could follow me in English, but they were hesitant to respond in English.

After the presentation, I stopped for dinner at the student cafeteria nearby.  Unwittingly, I sat down at a table next to two of the teachers who were at the presentation.  They invited me to sit with them.  They had many questions about American education.  To my surprise they had more questions about the Brown case.  They wanted to know more about Linda Brown, who was the central figure in the case and was ten years old at the time.  They were some awkward moments while they tried to find the English words needed for the questions that they wanted to ask.  They kept apologizing for their English skills.  At the conclusion of our discussion, one teacher asked me for the time; she was impressed that I was able to tell her in Greek.  With that they were off to catch their bus home, which was about an hour away.