Full Name
Marsha Swindler
Title
Core Faculty: Special Education
Institution/Organization
Pacific Oaks College
Bio

Dr. Marsha Swindler is Core Faculty and the Lead Professor for the Education Specialist program for the School of Education at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena CA. She has been an instructor in Special Education for over twenty-three years, in the public and private sector, and has been a professor at Pacific Oaks College for over ten years teaching online, on ground, hybrid, and blended courses in special education touting the college core values of inclusion, diversity, social justice, and respect. She has a passion for teaching Special Education strategies and mentoring new teacher candidates in general education and special education to better understand that all students have the capacity to learn, but it is up to educators to uncover the potential in every individual. In addition to her work with Pacific Oaks College, Dr. Swindler presents at workshops and seminars, online and face-to-face, teaching educators and families how to better support sustainability with an understanding that every individual is a responsible participant in the environment in which we exist. Infusing Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory into the curriculum for everyday teaching promotes the inclusion approach and empowers educators to assist every student in the classroom despite unique learning styles. Dr. Swindler's vision in education seeks to create an intellectual understanding of a deep and lasting change to how students in special education must be included in general education classrooms, recognizing that there is a paradigm shift for the 21st Century. Dr. Swindler’s doctorate dissertation, Effects of Teacher Training for Individual Differences to Improve the Academic Performance of Special Education Inclusion Students, includes projections for the transformational potential of all educators to become agents of change in support of students at all levels of learning, culturally, social-emotionally, and behaviorally. Reducing ableism and the marginalization of students with support needs must be moved to the top of the priority lists of all teaching and learning institutions. Families working together with teachers in support of their children brings us closer to meeting the needs of all learners.

 

Marsha Swindler