Special Education Today

When people ask me what I do for a living and I say that I teach students who are deaf/hearing-impaired, I almost always am asked: "Oh, so you sign?"

But, no, I don't sign. And there's no quick way to explain the hundreds of years of history in deaf education and the competing philosophies that are out there. For the purposes of this post, I'll just say that there are two main camps: the Total Communication method, and the Oral method (there are many more methods out there, I'm just over-simplifying here!).

The Total Communication method advocates the use of sign language as well as some speech/lip-reading to educate students with hearing loss. The Oral method involves teaching students (with hearing aids or cochlear implants) to use spoken language by listening.

So when parents are informed that their beautiful newborn baby has a hearing loss, they should theoretically have a choice (the choice offered really depends on where you live in this country). Do they want their child to learn to sign, or do they want their child to be able to talk and hear as best as they can? There are advantages and disadvantages to each choice.

I mention all of this because I'm at an Oral campus within a Total Communication district. There are three T.C elementary schools in our district, and just one Oral campus. I'm teaching at the Oral campus, and while I believe that sign language is a beautiful language, I personally think that we should be giving children with hearing loss every skill they will need to function in a hearing society.

I have deaf ed colleagues who strongly disagree with the Oral philosophy and I'm still wondering why they're working at my campus (as much as I like them as friends!). I wince when I see them signing on the sly to the kids. Because, bottom line, we need to respect the choice that the parents have made. In California, I worked with a lady who was all about sign language--but she was able to put her personal feelings aside in the classroom and respect the methodology that the school campus and the parents subscribed to.

So all year I've been feeling like a black sheep on my own turf, and sometimes I resent it. But, I thought, at least my deaf-ed administrators have my back! They understand!

Until recently. Our speech/language pathologist (who is refreshingly neutral on the methodology issue!) came into my room after school and handed me a bunch of papers to send home with the kids. Papers for SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES. After some probing, I discovered that this directive was coming from none other than the Big Cheese herself. Yep, the HEAD of the entire district's deaf education program is sending fliers for our ORAL kids to learn sign language.

Oh the ridiculousness. Would you buy Chinese textbooks for your Spanish classes? Would you substitute salt for sugar in a cookie recipe? Would you use a football in a basketball game? OF COURSE NOT.

So I distributed the fliers.... in the trash can.

Yesterday, we had a practice fire drill. Two things bothered me about this:

1. It was 29 degrees outside. Why couldn't they have waited for a warmer day?!!?
2. The fire drill doesn't go off in the portables.

Yes, you heard that right. The portables that I teach in -- the portables with three classrooms full of DEAF KIDS -- aren't connected to the fire drill. Each room even has a bright red bulb above the doorway, and the blinking red light didn't even go off during the fire drill!

So the only chance we have to save ourselves from a fire is if we glance out the tiny window and happen to notice a mass exodus of kids and teachers onto the field.

Umm... hello, Liability. We haven't met before, but we may soon become very well acquainted.

I expressed my concern with the powers that be and I was informed that this was a problem for all the portables in our district and that our deaf-ed portables are somewhere on the list to be fixed.

Oh good. Let's just hope there's not a real fire before now and the time they get to "somewhere on the list".

Remember when I said that no token system is going to stand against a chemical imbalance in the brain? 'Member? There is just no defense but to brace yourself against the wrath and fury that is sure to be unleashed when that One Student walks into class with murder in his eyes...

"Jose" is that One Student on my caseload. He's had trouble regulating his emotions since preschool and is frequently defiant (but maddeningly passive aggressive about it!), avoids any kind of work, is verbally and physically aggressive, and loves to engage adults in power struggles.

As far as I can tell, the staff that have worked with him have been great: documenting what goes on, involving the parent, enforcing consequences to the best of their ability, trying 101 strategies to find one that works, writing Behavior Plans and Functional Behavior Assessments up the wazoo, and calling the behavior specialists when they are out of ideas.

Unfortunately, the behavior specialist assigned to our school is less of a behavior specialist and more of a Professional-Documenter-and-Boss-of-the-World.

I had my first interaction with her last week and she was quite rude. She asked me what had been going on with Jose since the beginning of the year. I tried to tell her, but PDBW kept interrupting me to berate me for behavior documentation done last year that wasn't on the CORRECT FORM. Last year, you know, when I was in Michigan and not in Texas. And the form!!! If we document on the incorrect form the world will stop turning!!!

After SEVERAL interruptions to my answer, I started to get pretty ticked. First of all, listen to the answer to your question, or don't ask the question in the first place! Secondly, I shouldn't have to feel defensive when I'm doing all the right things!

Trying my best to keep the anger out of my face, I succeeded in being respectfully assertive. I started with "LOOK..." then talked very quickly to get out what needed to be said.

I ended my mini-speech talking about appropriate placement: his primary disability is no longer his hearing impairment, it's his emotional impairment. She responded by saying that she didn't want to put him in a behavioral unit because he was just going to get worse.

And she may think that she has the authority to single-handedly decide the placement for a student, but she has another thing coming.

My plan? Document (on the CORRECT FORM) the heck out of every misbehavior, then call an IEP meeting where the IEP team will make a decision about Jose's placement in a behavioral unit based on our data.

If that doesn't work....