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WHAT IS DR. RANDY SOFFER UP TO?

By, Randy Soffer, Ph.D.

It has been said that the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.  My life of purpose is as follows:

Preparing the next generation of teachers.   As a lifelong educator, I feel it is my turn to give back to my chosen profession.  I have been fortunate to have had some excellent learning experiences over the years and want to share my expertise with those now entering the education profession.  Besides my love of teaching, I am also the Director of Field Experiences and Certification Officer for my university, the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.  In my role as Director of Field Experiences, I have several projects underway to develop a better system to match developing teachers with exemplars of instruction.  This will help to ensure that these developing teachers have the best possible role models to emulate.  A second project that I am also currently involved with is providing future educators with a cross-cultural learning experience in Jamaica.  In Jamaica, my students and I are immersed in the Jamaican culture by living with families in Lucea, a small coastal town, and participating in service learning projects in the schools and elsewhere in the community.  As a result of these experiences, students are more sensitive to issues surrounding student diversity and more likely to appropriately respond to student diversity in their classrooms.

Making ALL education special.  As a life-long special educator, I have seen the benefits of personalizing instruction.  As a result, I am doing all that can to help foster an accommodating and flexible educational system that builds on the strengths, needs, and interests of its students.  Toward this end, I am involved in a number of projects.  These projects include working with school districts, both on the systemic and individual student level , to improve and expand inclusive education practices.  I am also working with other teacher educators to improve teachers’ preparation for inclusive education classrooms.  

Helping the ‘underdog’ to make the world a better place.  This is why I went into special education in the first place.  Currently my efforts to make the world a better place focus on the third-world country of Jamaica.  I am leading two initiatives in Jamaica now.  One is to provide Dyslexia intervention training to Jamaican teachers.  During this past summer, a first ever pilot project was launched in Jamaica to prepare 24 teachers working in Jamaica schools to address the needs of struggling readers in their classrooms.  I was able to establish partnerships and obtain grant funds for this project and am working on obtaining more funds for the second phase of this project.  A second project I initiated involves the community in which my study abroad students are immersed.  For this project, I am seeking grant funds to purchase computers for Lucea’s one elementary school.  At present, the school does not have a single computer.

Fostering greater collaboration among special education student program planning team members.  As a special educator, I have always appreciated the benefits of collaboration.  I have also, unfortunately, witnessed, over the years, a lack of collaboration with regard to the special education student planning process.  In particular, a life-long goal of mine is to increase the involvement of parents in the special education decision-making process for their children.  What started with my dissertation topic 30 years ago, has continued to be an area of my passion up to the current time.  Presently, I am designing a study to not only address the participation of parents in the special education decision-making process but all participants.  The study’s purpose is to foster greater collaboration among all participants.  For this study, I am now seeking a school district or a group of school districts to work with me on this initiative.  Thus, if you are with a school district and truly want to foster greater collaboration among all individuals involved in the student planning processing, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks.

   I appreciate the opportunity to share my life’s professional direction and purpose with you. If the focus of my work matches your needs, I look forward to the possibility of working with you towards our mutual goals!