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... Sorry, but as someone who spent a lot of time working within the field of 'special needs education', I would like to have someone tell me precisely what tangible difference it made to reclassify "special education" as "special needs education."

Because it didn't really make any tangible difference. If anything, it started reclassifying kids in ways that segregated them further (even while mainstreaming them), and it also still invokes the idea of any person's needs being inherently "special." That designation of "special" is the core problem because people act like it really means "unnecessary" when they are incredibly necessary.

A multilingual child who struggles with the language of instruction because it is their fourth language and is new to them does not have "special" needs; they just have needs that are different from everyone else who speaks the language of instruction as their first language. A child who is dyslexic does not have "special" needs; they just have needs that other children may not have. A child who uses a wheelchair full-time to move around the school does not have "special" needs; they just require different structures to be implemented within their surrounding environment.

But that does not mean the strategies taught to them, developed with them, or built into the environment for them are entirely useless to others. Because they aren't.

But sure, adding the word "needs" made that tangible difference of viewing their educationally differently.

I struggle with these authors' inability to look deeper than the surface level and to fail to understand how the Salamanca Statement operated. In order to recognise this, a person needs to understand that the people who wrote this were "representatives of governments" that were present at the World Conference on Special Needs Education. The first question that should be asked is this: How many of these people were disabled? How many of them had needs related to their disability that went unmet during school? How many of them would even acknowledge that they were disabled?

And the answer is very few. We can look at our current governments, not even the ones in 1994 (when the statement was drafted), and see that the representation of disabled people remains quite low. Knowing this, it should've prompted the authors to question how this "groundbreaking policy" (which it isn't; I'd argue that it is yet another example of a "saviourist policy," where non-disabled people pat themselves on the back for remembering that disabled people exist) could further miss other intersections of marginalisation with disability.

Granted, they also are questioning the "multi-dimension of discrimination operating within education systems," but they're rarely looking at the education system itself as being the site of that discrimination. When teachers fail to recognise that the system they work in was built to fail most people, we cannot get an accurate picture of how things work. Most of these people are reformists who think we can tweak the schools as they are in order to better meet people's needs rather than demolish them and find better and more inclusive tools for learning. In fact, the latter is almost never a consideration among teachers (I guess because they're afraid of losing something, like position).

This wasn't a book that I could particularly feel okay reading; I'm fine with being made uncomfortable by topics within books, but there are rarely ways material is presented that makes me want to crawl in a hole until it stops. That is how this book felt because the constant focus on the social media landscape made me want to look away, especially when I just kept repeating to myself all the things that June should've done (as if she were a real person).

The concept is really interesting, though I find the initial premise harder to believe in the setup (maybe it's simply that I wouldn't steal a manuscript from the apartment of someone who I'd just watch choke to death on mostly cooked pancakes, as that would never be my first thought). Everything that comes after, however, is mostly believable. (Well, except for some nitpicks, like June not knowing how to look up an IP but being able to figure out how to get one. Also the fact that there were already WordPress plugins, even prior to the publication of this book, that were able to get all that information for you in one go without a person doing much work and without someone needing to involve their brother-in-law.)

It's worth noting that, by the time I'm reading it, its structure is already quite dated because of the focus on Twitter. Even a couple years after publication, it feels bizarre considering how many people have fled that platform for other walled gardens. I imagine in a few more years, it'll feel even more awkward as people lose the cultural memory of what Twitter was for what it currently is.

This book is really cute! And it's super enjoyable on its own. I'd definitely say give it a go, but do go into it knowing that the audience is primarily aimed at younger teenagers.

Anyway, I've been reading this book with my student, and they are someone whose English fluency is very much in the middle. They have a lot of typical school-based knowledge, but they haven't really had to use English that much outside of class (and even the class is very much lacking in actually using English other than the assignments). Those complaints are slightly irrelevant, but it does contextualise what I'm going to say here since my review is mostly with regards to that element.

This book is really good for kids who are newer to reading in English, and it is one that I'd recommend to people who want to encourage kids to start reading in English (especially if the goal is for fluency). The images really back up the text to make it easier for people to guess the meanings of words. For those that aren't, the rest of the text often does a good job here, too. It's also a very easy book to read in a group setting (one-on-one with a more fluent person or as a group of learners), as there are a lot of elements to engage with.

I put this here because there is a dearth of information about age appropriate books for teens who are newer to learning English, especially as everything constantly recommends giving them books that are geared for a much younger audience (which often bores them to tears).