Special Education Today

YOU GUYS! DO YOU HEAR THOSE SOUNDS?

 

It's the sound of a host of angels singing "Hallelujah". It's the sound of a million people applauding. It's the sound of rainbows in my classroom and unicorns running free through the fields. It's the sound of my feet as I jump up and down with excitement.

 

Because that meeting I was telling you about in my previous post? That meeting went well. So well, in fact, that "Jose" is finally going to get the help he needs by going to a behavior unit on a different campus. He's scheduled to leave the last week in March, right after we get back from Spring Break.

 

We met with the psychologist (who is a different person than the incompetent "behavior specialist" who's been out here a few times already). She took one look at the stack of documentation I'd been keeping since September (all 24 pages!) and her eyes widened. She said most schools barely hand her two pages. She flipped through it. She went through his official file. She listened to our list of failed interventions. She formally recommended him for a behavior unit.

 

And I was so excited, it was all I could do to stop myself from peeing my pants. She even said that we should have called her directly a long time ago (but let's not focus on that: better he gets the help late rather than never). The principal even complimented me on my excellent documentation because we couldn't have made our case without it. And my colleagues asked me when we were going to go out and celebrate!

 

My face hurts from smiling.

Tomorrow I have a big meeting that I'm not feeling very hopeful about. I'm having an "M.D ARD" for a student. It means I'm basically having an IEP to address major behavioral concerns and determine if this is the right placement for "Jose". You may remember previous posts about Jose. I don't have very nice things to say about him which is why he's not often featured on this blog. If you want to know what he's like, imagine the most passively agressive oppositional-defiant ten year old EVER. Who walks out of your classroom if you're making him do something he doesn't like (ex: any kind of work). Who plays staff members against each other. Who bullies other kids (one set of parents is threatening legal action!). Who pushes my every button like some kind of professional button pusher. Every day with him is an exercise in self-restraint: to keep my voice calm, to stay consistent, to give choices, to not let him see how angry he makes me.

 

My colleague suggested yesterday that if you needed to break down prisoners-of-war to make them talk, it would be more effective to have them come deal with Jose than it would be to waterboard them.

 

There have been many times where I've felt like marching into the principal's office declaring: "Someone's gotta go!!! It's either him or me!!!". But I haven't. I've kept careful documentation of every single time he's been defiant and disrespectful. I've overhauled my classroom management system more than once.

 

And despite my best efforts, this is where the system fails: I can't make his two other teachers keep documentation. I've offered two or three ways they could do this (shoot me an email, and I'll document it; talk to me when I'm in your class every day, and I'll document it) but bottom line is they don't do it. And I can't make them adopt the management system I've found works "best" for him either.

 

So tomorrow when one of the district psychologists comes out to run the meeting, I have a feeling I already know what she's going to say: "Your campus hasn't been consistent in your interventions, therefore a decision about placement cannot be made at this time".

 

I sure do hope I'm wrong. But if I'm right about the outcome, I may be the one to have a melt-down instead of him this time.

Standardized state testing is almost upon us.

 

In Michigan, state tests are in October. Students take them: wham bam, thank you m'am. Then no one thinks about them and everyone teaches normally until the end of the year.

 

Not so here in this fine state. Our tests are spread throughout March and April and every staff meeting since August has been about improving test scores. Teachers are forced to tutor for two hours twice a week after school expressly to raise student's test scores (Oh, Teacher's Union, WHERE ART THOU?). We take practice state tests twice a year and students' scores are graphed on bulletin boards. We hold pep rallies to get kids pumped the day before test day. We promise them Happy Meals if they pass. We take them to the movies if they get commended ("commended" means an almost perfect score).

 

In everything we do and say we are communicating to our students that this test is the only important thing in their academic careers. If they fail, then they might as well have stayed home all year instead of coming to school because that state test is the only thing we want to look at for proof of progress. And the adminstration communicates to us teachers that if our students fail the state test, then WE have failed them as teachers.

 

I know the kids are feeling the pressure because my fifth graders have burst into tears when they failed the math practice test. Yesterday we graded the practice state test for reading. Most of my fifth graders did pretty well, but some sat there looking sad. So I closed my classroom door and reminded them that I don't care if they pass or fail the test: what I care about is how hard they tried. "Because 10 years down the road, you are not going to remember if you passed or failed this test. But how hard you try determines how successful you are going to be in life". I mentioned that there are other teachers who are counting down in big fat letters on the board "31 days till the test" and so on, but that I did NOT want them to worry or stress out about it.

 

As soon as I got those words out of my mouth, they all piped up. Apparently, they don't appreciate the countdowns either. One student said: "It makes me feel worried and then it's one more day and I say OH NO". One girl said: "Ms. K does that and it.... and it.... and it makes me so... IRRITATING!!"

 

There you have it. I know that state testing serves as school accountability, but shouldn't we be trying to shield our students from all of this pressure instead of passing it onto their shoulders?

 

 

Posting may be light for a while. I'm drowning in a sea of paperwork and IEPs while simultaneously navigating the shark-infested waters that are Office Politics. I'm doing my best, but at the end of the day, whatever work isn't finished I just pretend doesn't exist. I close my eyes, plug my ears and sing LA LA LA LA THE STRESS ISN'T REAL IF I DON'T THINK ABOUT IT!!

 

Thankfully, in a little less than two weeks, I'll be able to come up out of the water and gasp for air. Spring Break will give me a while to catch my breath before going back under for the final push until June.

 

In the meantime, I'm trying to do things that make me happy... like giving Barney a new toy and watching him leap gleefully around the house with it. Or watching TV with Max. Or trying new recipes.

 

What do you do to stay happy?

A veteran education writer is calling the decision to fire all educators at a Rhode Island high school "sad and desperate" and a move that doesn't take into account issues such as poverty, home life and previous education. Valerie Strauss writes in this column that there is no evidence that schools improve if staffers are replaced and that no one reform method has led to across-the-board school improvement. The Washington Post

Today, as I was helping out in the classroom my fourth graders mainstream into, I was again reminded of the gaps in my own education. Because I spent so many of my elementary school years in France, "commonly known" facts like Chicago is in Illinois and not northern California totally escaped me. And I found out this morning that George Washington had bad teeth, another little tidbit I was not aware of. In fact, he only had two teeth left when he became our first president! Old news to you, probably, but breaking news to me.

 

This reminds me of my junior year of high school. I was in California that year, after have spent the last four in both France and Germany. All of that summer before eleventh grade, I had nightmares that my American History teacher was going to give us a blank map of the U.S and ask us to label as much as we could. And I knew I'd flunk because I only knew where Calfifornia, Oregon, Washington, Texas, and Florida were. I mean, I had only just learned in tenth grade that Chicago is in Illinois and not northern California!!

 

So there I was in a new school, surrounded by thousands of seemingly unfriendly (and oh so American!) students. I'm sitting in Mrs. K's American History class on day one. And what does she do?? YOU SAW THIS COMING, PEOPLE! She hands us a blank map of the United States and tells us this is our first quiz: label as many states and capitols as you can. Well, it only took me about ten seconds to label the five states I knew. The rest of the time was spent staring at all that blank space in the middle and considering what to write: "States I've never heard of?", "The ones in the middle?", "States I'm not in right now?", "White space highlighting my ignorance?" The possibilities were endless. The most appealing possibility, of course, was to flee the scene... maybe hop back on that plane and fly to a place where I knew the names of all the countries surrounding me. Maybe there I wouldn't feel like such an ignoramus.

 

Thankfully, Mrs. K was a very understanding teacher and one of the best all around teachers I'd had, to boot. By the end of the school year, I could tell you where all the states were. And I could tell you some other history facts I had picked up along the way.

 

And now? Now, at 27 years old, I can tell you that George Washington had bad teeth.

 

 

A lot is going on here at school. I'm dealing with bullies, parents screaming at each other, IEPs up the wazoo, the state's standardized writing test looming, and paperwork/materials/student work piled so high on my desk that I can barely see past it.

 

It's like I've always said: Teaching is constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the game while always falling two steps behind.

 

But there are some happy things to look forward to:

So I'm going to think happy thoughts in an effort to prevent the stress and drama at work from swallowing me whole... Have a happy weekend, everyone!