Advancing Miracles November 23, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Day-to-day school drama, Ed Policy Discussion, Future Teachers, NCLB, Special Ed., Special Education, Teachers, severe disabilities.2 comments
One of the reasons for my frustration, is that I am forever looking to advance my students along. The current economic and political realities seem bent on thwarting those efforts, and I suspect every teacher feels this way. We want to keep moving forward, but get bogged down by forces beyond our control.
But we still do it and we succeed in spite of public policies, like NCLB. And so it is, I’m blogging the student teacher I said I wouldn’t blog about. Well, this is noteworthy and deserves to be published and promoted!
I have several students who have profound intellectual disabilities, meaning they rely almost totally on caregivers to meet their needs. It’s one of the reasons why the adult:student ratio is so critical. If there isn’t an adult around to meet a need, it is not going to be met. Period. However, any move in the direction of independence is a monumental one, considering that these students are all in high school. If they have not learned something by now, it isn’t likely they will, especially since the adult/student ratio is cut in half as soon as they exit middle school.
But having a capable and motivated adult can really help move things along. In this case, the student teacher has been working with one of my students who has PID as well as being mostly physically disabled. She has to be fed, like most of my students. She can move her hands and arms, but just doesn’t very much. Until now. We started off teaching communication skills, geting her to push a Big Mac switch in order to say “more” meaning she wanted more food. She quickly caught on to this, as eating is highly reinforcing to her.
However, this student did not stop there. At some point the food wasn’t coming fast enough so she grabbed the teacher’s hand and brought it up to her mouth. This was HUGE! We hadn’t seen this before, but then we never had time to look. Feeding time is something we generally do as quick as we can to get it over with, like any other task we have to do. However, we made a break through, past the communication exercise. I showed the student teacher how to hold the spoon and help facilitate more engagement and learning in the feeding and within a couple fo days, the girl was beginning to feed herself. It is still a very sloppy process, but we are off and running!
It’s been awhile since we had a breakthrough like that in our room. It looks downright miraculous. It’s mostly good teaching involving consistency and persistence. And it is also a good shot in the arm for all of us, morale-wise. It will be interesting to see if we can sustain it over the course of the year, even after this student teacher leaves.
Here’s the thing: This is a gigantic leap forward for this one student. Feeding herself with the spoon. It is monumental, significant and practical. But it is not even a blip on the NCLB radar screen. It carries NO weight to anyone outside of this girl’s life. It does not improve a test score, does not improve the graduation rate or any other measure devised to measure “accountability.” It is not something I could use to become one of Georgia’s Master Teachers. The resounding message from the outside is that what we do doesn’t matter, when in reality, what we do totally matters!
But I have no idea how on earth to convey that to the people who make decisions about our staffing. Those folks never darken my door and they miss these miraculous victories. Having key people in the key spots matters, but I don’t get to choose who is in my room with my kids. Sometimes I am very fortunate. Sometimes, less so.
Anyway, I simply had to blog it and make whatever political hay I can out of it. Unfortunately, these things do not happen every day and few times do they happen in such short amounts of time. It’s also good for a new teacher to get this boost very early in her career as those are the memories that sustain us over the longer and leaner times.
Some Positives November 16, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Day-to-day school drama, Future Teachers, Special Ed., Special Education, Teachers, moving on, political activism, severe disabilities.1 comment so far
One good piece of news is that I think I have GAA collection #1 finished! WooHoo! Or at least that’s what I think. Now I have to compile it and organize it and get it all onto a recognizable portfolio from the formless mass of files and pictures I currently have. That will take a lot of work, and I may have to go back and pick up a couple of things, but other than a few pick-ups, I feel like I got it. I actually had to totally redo the science from the planned experiment since the early freeze and heavy rains killed most of the plants I had going. Another advantage of pushing strong early is that I had (and still have) options for revision and improvement without crashing the deadline. This is good, because I have a few other deadlines that will get me.
A couple weeks ago, our dept. head sent out an email asking if anyone would want to host a student teacher. One would think I might jump all over that, and just a year or two earlier I would have. But many of the feelings that generated the earlier whine posts have dampened my enthusiasm for bringing someone new into the business. I’ve worked with a few paras and other people who are somewhere in the pipeline toward becoming a special educator, but my recent state of mind has put a dark cloud over whatever recruitment efforts I might engage in. In years past, the hope was to bring other competent and passionate people in, in order to raise the bar of professionalism and minimize the sort of shock many new SID/PID teachers encounter when they are hired off the street from another field or with NO teaching experience. They have no idea what to do with these students. Recruitment got more serious as I was wanting to move on and find a replacement so that I could. Then despair set in as I realized there was no replacement and that those who make such decisions have never had any intentions of letting me teach anything else, anywhere else, no matter what I did.
So the idea of infecting someone brand new with that sort of cynicism wouldn’t be my first choice. Plus, what are the odds that someone who was student teaching would even want to be in this setting with these students? Last job fair I attended, I informally polled the job applicants who were standing in my vicinity. Guess how many had any interest at all in SID/PID at the high school level? How about NONE – Zero. In fact, several were trying to escape self-contained settings. So imagine my shock and awe when I learned that the student teacher was very interested in this population! And so, she’ll be spending most of here time here with us.
I’m not going to blog her, but I immediately think of Ms. Ris, who often blogs about mentoring student teachers. I can not even remember the last time I encountered a special education student teacher as they are often hired first, before they even finish a master’s program. That’s essentially what happened to me almost 20 years ago.
What I will blog, tho, is that having someone new in the room can have collateral effects all around. For my part, it does give me more of a purpose in life beyond my own fuzzy, murky, smokey uncertain future. Here’s someone interesting in learning the craft, and I find I do have a thing or two to teach. And the act of passing it on also helps me reflect and learn myself. A body naturally processes and thinks more about the content when they are teaching it, and in this case the content is teaching! This blog provides a great deal of reflective space for me, but this is a different level. Even my video channel was an effort to pass my ideas and knowledge on. I think it is just part of every teacher’s DNA to want to pass on what they know.
But it isn’t just me. The paras also can feel that sense, because they also have a chance to share what they know. And it goes without saying that I could never do what I do without them. So there’s this building dynamic going on, which puts us less at a defensive posture and back on the initiative. And that is exactly where we needed to be after being swamped and feeling overwhelmed by circumstances beyond our control while it seemed no one was hearing us or cared. In the final analysis, it’s the students who ultimately benefit from the newer and more positive energy. Part of the reason for the earlier posts was to just get some stuff off of me and out into the air as well as just process it and noodle it out. Plus I know several other folks who could relate.
In the interest of fairness, I also need to mention a couple of gains this year that some folks have kindly pointed out to me:
- The paras and I have a duty-free lunch for the first time in 10 years. That is a big miracle. Of course, stuff still happens with the kids I teach, but it is still a milestone, similar to the planning period that I acquired a few years ago. Speaking of which….
- I do have a planning period. It is only fair to mention it so it doesn’t sound like I’m totally trapped all day long. Just most of the day;-) Lunch time isn’t the most convenient time, and I do help get the kids through the line and help all those involved in the feeding.
- Other helpers are around. Other teachers and paras have pitched in and supported us through some of the toughest and stickiest times. Feeding time is HUGE and a lot of other teachers and paras outside of my own private little band are involved in this effort.
As far as the battle for trying to get more help in the form of another para or another teacher in the room, it is pretty much over. No relief is coming in the foreseeable future, so it’s time to move off of that. Generally, when I fight I try to make my first blow the strongest and most direct possible. I am not a fan of long protracted struggles especially when I am on the losing end. So I do what I can with whatever resources I have remaining instead of wasting time and effort battling a brick wall. I’m going to need all the energy I have to do what needs to be done.
And I’m going to have to dig deeper than ever before. So perhaps now is a good time to channel a couple of my favorite movie scenes:
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.
An hour of wolfes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crushing down! But it is not this day!
THIS DAY WE FIGHT!
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”
Aragorn
The Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King
The Great Horde November 15, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Day-to-day school drama, Paraeducators, Parent Support, Survivors.2 comments
I also, on occasion, teach adult Sunday school. Last weekend I taught part 1 of 2 on 2 Chronicles 20. I had no idea at that time how appropriate this lesson would become in the week ahead. My brave band of paras and I bravely stand against a horde of responsibilities and insensitive bureaucrats and administrators who seem bent on crushing us.
Well….maybe not so brave. For the past week, I have not even wanted to go to sleep, because I knew that as soon as I closed my eyes, I would awake to a new day of being crushed. And so it was, as some of my paras were out for all sorts of reasons and I had substitutes who courageously tried to soldier on with me. But by Friday, my back was positively aching from all the extra lifting.
In 2 Chronicles 20, the king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, is threatened by not 1, not 2 but 3 separate armies who have joined together against him. He gathered the people and cried out:
“O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. 7 Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? 8 And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, 9 ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save.’ 10 And now behold, the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy— 11 behold, they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit. 12 O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
That last verse totally resonated with me and where we are. I was told not to send any letters to parents until they are approved. Therefore I’m giving up on that, although those letters do chronicle past and current problems. No, I will call or talk to parents in person. It’s time for some parent involvement. Trouble is, the school doesn’t really like such involvement. But outside of that, I must not fret, worry and sweat it. I was told that nothing would change unless something bad happens. But it’s my job to ensure that nothing does happen. And we will hold the line. Fortunately, Jehoshaphat was not left dangling and neither are we, for a the spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel:
15 And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. 16 Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz. You will find them at the end of the valley, east of the wilderness of Jeruel. 17 You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”
And so it turns out that not a shot was fired from Judah in anger. The invading armies turned on each other and wiped themselves out! It took 3 days for the people of Judah to carry the plunder from the enemy camps.
So tomorrow, I’m going to face the horde and trust that God is with us.
Bricks Without Straw November 9, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Blogging, Day-to-day school drama, Paraeducators, Special Education, moving on.3 comments
I always intended this blog to be mostly informative and supportive for parents and other teachers that do what I do. In the earliest days, it was also a place to vent my spleen mostly about NCLB and the GAA. Those things are still vent worthy and I’m overdue for a vent. But today I’m throwing up yet another lament.
The “Whining”‘ post resonated with many readers, probably because there is an epidemic of this sort of pain running through the field. To be honest, I hated that post, which is why I tried to bury it immediately behind a more informative (and longer) post. But I needed to write it and needed to post it. Just this one needs to be written and posted.
Perhaps I have a “fan” at the central office or in administration who read my post and decided that perhaps I needed to have something to really whine about. Perhaps the Almighty, in His great wisdom is making sure I don’t miss the signs. I’ve been known to be a bit slow on the uptake. Before relating the present woes, indulge me in a story from my past…
I was teaching science at a private boarding school in the early ’90’s, teaching science. I lived at the school, which was handy since I went over a year without a car. The hours were long, as we had duties at night and on some weekends in addition to teaching. And the pay was less than what paras make in public schools. But it was a good place to start out. But during my 3rd year, as I was working on my Master’s I was deciding whether or not I should leave and look for something else. That summer, we had torrential rains which flooded the apartments where I was staying. Natural disaster, right? 4 months later, in a totally different dorm, a pipe broke and the place flooded again. A few months later, lightening struck and destroyed a bunch of my electronics. It, along with deteriorating politics there, was a neon sing to me that read “GET OUT!”
So now, I begin to tally the score for this year. Three years ago, I aksed to move into co-teaching. I was denied. Two years ago, I asked again, even taking and passing the science test to be certified and HQ so I could coteach. Again denied. Last year, I asked to transfer within the district. Denied AGAIN. Apparently I’m meant to stay. Right? As we began the year, one of my best paras was moved off and replaced against both of our wishes. That cost me as well as the students she bonded with. Then I was hit by the numbers while being understaffed, hence the “whining” post.
Today, I learned that there was a reduction in force, a RIF. Our school lost two para positions. Two paras were transferred to a middle school. And they took one of mine to replace one of those that were transferred. They picked one of my best, and put her in with less disabled kids and informed me I would be doing what I was struggling to do before with substantially less help. We are now an accident or an incident waiting to happen.
Now I have to finish letters drafted a few months ago and at least document the peril we now face so whenever whatever happens, does, no one can say they were not warned. Meanwhile, me and my ever-decreasing brave band of paras will hunker down and attempt to hold an ever-expanding line.
Grades for Students with Severe Disabilities October 25, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Curriculum, Ed Policy Discussion, Parents and parenting, Special Ed., Special Education, severe disabilities.add a comment
One of the most common questions I am asked is “How do you grade the students you teach?” I mean, they don’t do any paper and pencil activities, they don’t produce anything and there are no permanent products. At the high school, every other student is producing something in the way of writing or projects or test scores. Oh…TEST SCORES which have become the gold standard in this country! Don’t get me started…
I do progress reports and have some sort of program data on most of my students, except for the very lowest ones, especially since discrete trial lends itself to accumulating data. But it does not translate well into the sort of letter/percentage grade that schools make teachers give high school students. A student may not be doing a single task independently during any trials and in any setting this would be viewed as a total failure. In my classroom, I look at level of support, and usually we have a mixture of trials requiring verbal, gesture, partial physical or full physical prompts. I suppose I could assign a score to each part of the prompting hierarchy and arrive at a more empirical figure. But when it comes to high school academic standards, no figure I could come up with would have any sort of validity. None. So when I do the report card, I take a wild guess according to effort, progress, and where we are in relation to goals. And most parents don’t have a problem with their teachers doing this as long as that grade is an ‘A’ or a ‘B’. As long as their child is making honor roll, they aren’t going to complain.
However I have over the years raised the ire of more than a couple of parents when they come from the middle school. For their entire school career of getting letter/percentage grades, they have been getting mostly 90’s the entire way through. Other teachers I have taught beside did exactly this, giving every student a 95 or 96. This is one of those Horace’s Compromise things, where there is a tacit agreement that “good enough is good enough” and we demand and deliver as little as possible. For other students, it is mostly between student and teacher: You deliver the minimum amount required to meet certain expectations, and you are rewarded accord to meeting the minimal criteria. If you want an ‘A’ you know the minimal performance required to get there. For students with severe disabilities, it is between teacher and parent: “Give my child an ‘A’ and I won’t ask for any justification.” So in a sense, I am severely disrupting that tacit little agreement when a student comes home with a 78 or a ‘C’. Now we have a problem.
The problem that I have is this: does a child who is uncooperative, disruptive, belligerent, violent, and otherwise assaulting themselves or other people legitimately belong on the honor roll? And what if, even in simple discrete trial tasks they are uncooperative? I’m not going to fail anyone on account of their disability, but neither can I justify elevating that into “honor” status. And it’s not like any of my parents are gong to take advantage of their child’s exam exemption to keep them at home!
So here’s, generally, how I arrive at a grade:
A = 90-100 – The student is totally trying and is making progress. It’s a bit relative, and with 9 kids, I have a sample size that allows me to judge who is the best and who is not. I might have given 1 ‘A’ this marking period. By the end of the year, I will have more. It means the student is making real attempts at completing things independently.
B = 80-89 – Most of my students are working in this area, which means that we still have some problems that we’re working on, but we’re still making some progress. I leave room to show improvement, so during the 1st marking period all grades are lower. I’m looking at the data and how much prompting and support is needed.
C = 70-79 – Here, we have many issues that we need to address, and many students will start here, especially if they come from summer break wild and off the chain. I have to work twice as hard to get them into the routine as the ‘B’ group. Freshman typically seem to end up here, as they are well below their classmates. Remember, this is ongoing. A student can totally move up by Christmas and still get their B and make semester honor roll if everything is going like it should be. But if a student is physically capable of pushing a button or pointing to a card and refuses or throws the material, we have some issues to work on. You should not be on the honor roll if you are refusing to do things independently when it is well within your capability. It represents a significant gap between potential and actual achievement. A person can’t give what they don’t have, and I take that into account. But if you’re slacking, do not expect a break. I’m just sayin’.
In our school, there are no ‘D’s and I’ve never given one anyway. Yeah, we ALL need improvement and my kids don’t need to be labeled as “poor”. The ‘C’ smacks over achiever parents hard enough as it is! Failure is not an option here. And it wouldn’t make any difference, anyway. If the kid is on the honor roll for 4 years, they will still stay 3 more. If they fail, they still come back. Conventional “promotion” doesn’t really exist compared to typical peers. However, I have promoted kids to the Moderate class, but that was mostly because they were misplaced in the first place.
In a sense, my grades are a reflection of what we do at school, but it can also be a reflection of what is going on at home, which is probably what alarms so many parents. In a typical, nondisabled classroom, we know that parents have a lot to do with how their kids do in school by providing guidance, structure and motivation. many students will not do any homework, unless a parent insists and prods and cajoles and bribes or whatever it is they have to do. Trust me, I know how much of an ordeal this is! Homework should be something students can do on their own with a minimum of assistance. For my students, it is a bit different, because they don’t have any homework that a student could do at home independently. I suppose I could do what many of the teachers of my two boys do and assign projects that demand parent involvement, like large intricate craft projects. Then I’d have something to grade! But then I suspect I’d get even more grief when I gave a lower grade than expected!
However, parents do have a lot to do with encouraging their children to do things independently, like feeding themselves or playing with toys or pulling up their pants. I see this more with feeding that anything else, as I’ve had occasion to socialize with other parents who have children with disabilities. I’ve irked more than one parent when at one of these events I got on top of them for spoon feeding a child who I knew was capable of feeding himself. Here you demand that we put this as a goal on the
IEP and work on it at school, and you are not doing this at home! Don’t demand a goal on tooth brushing on the IEP if you are not going to do it home.
So I have students who come to me and have no physical reason why they can not perform a given task. It’s not necessarily the student’s fault, but it reflects some ground that we will have to cover that should have been done previously. No honor roll grades, there. But that doesn’t mean that will always be the case, and hopefully we’ll get to the point we should have started.
Assessment for this population isn’t a matter of simply taking a test. You can’t just give them a pencil and paper and say “Here do this worksheet, answer these questions.” NONE of them are even verbal, so a verbal assessment is out. Most have limited mobility and serious motor issues, so manipulative assessment is out. And I’m not going to say a lot about a severely truncated attention span or limited perseverance. That’s not to say we can’t measure progress, but it translates very poorly into a report card A-B-C-F format. So I send home daily notes to parents in their notebooks. They are informed every day not just during quarterly report card periods. I’m more transparent than any other teacher in the building and possibly in the entire county! I have a blog! I have a video channel!
Grading is never a precise science, as there is a bit of an art to it. Most teachers of students with severe disabilities do neither, and just give the kid an ‘A’ whether it is earned or not. And that is fine for them, as long as we all agree that the grades on the report card don’t mean anything unless they open up Harvard to students with IQ’s in the single digits. But I’m trying to communicate at least a little bit with the hideous system that I’m forced to use, and convey some degree of meaning to something that isn’t terribly meaningful in the first place.
As a parent, when we went through school, grades were also used as a motivational tool. Study and work hard, get good grades and get rewards and honors and a good job. None of that motivational stuff applies to this population . Even if they comprehended the difference, quantitatively, between 78% and 98%, or an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ , why would they care? This actually applies almost universally to all students with disabilities. The graduation rate in my high school for students with disabilities is 30%. The employment rate for students with disabilities in my county is about 10%, with most of those being part-time or less. Which means that over 90% of students with disabilities emerge from high school with few quality prospects. Those in the population that I teach are not even at that level, and have a waiting list waiting for them when they leave my program. So in the grandest scheme of things those 1st quarter grades are not terribly relevant.
I want to say one more thing about grades, and this goes to everyone regardless of whether the student has a disability and cuts across grade levels and even that first college midterm. Mainly, that those first marking period grades should be intentionally more stringent than any others. That means that a student (and the parents) should expect the grades to be lower than “typical” for that child. This represents the first period of a new grade level/year with newer and higher expectations. If the student is already exceeding the standards in all areas, what is the use of continuing to go? Many students, when grades are a motivational, will go into “early retirement” if they think they have already got it in their back pocket. It also doesn’t give any indication of relative strengths in weaknesses especially when using marks like our elementary schools i.e. C,S,U,N or 1,2,3 or faces or stars. As teachers, we need to allow for room for growth. So as parents, we need to take a relative view of the marks coming out after the first marking period and not be too judgmental toward the the student or his/her teacher and those marks. It’s merely a guidepost and a relative indicator of where that student is at a given time.
Whining October 25, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Special Ed..9 comments
This is going to sound awfully whiny, and there might be some SID/PID teachers who have more of a reason to complain than I do. But I don’t think any are in my county.
I feel swamped. I think I have always felt swamped in some fashion or form but this year it hit particularly hard with 3 new students and 2 new paras. Nine SID/PID students is simply too many for this level of disability. I’m trying to keep track of 9 diets, 9 medical conditions, 9 bathroom schedules (gotta keep track of when everyone has a BM!) 9 parents, 9 IEPS, 9 academic programs across all subjects and all 4 grade levels. While all my paras have talents in their own way, they are not charged with keeping track of everyone all at the same time. Sure, that’s why I get paid the big bucks, but where is the limit?
I am totally crashing up against it. I forget stuff like jackets, snacks, medications, and a variety of other little niggling things. I used to like talking to parents and related service providers, but I find I have less time and patience for the various nitpicking requests. “Can you brush his teeth?” “Can you make sure her shirt is tucked in?” “Can we make sure he uses his communication device at lunch?” “Can you make sure he stays on the GFCF diet in the school cafeteria?” “Can you make sure he uses his picture schedule?”
If I had a sane class size, these would be just part of the job and everyone would get the special treatment we’re supposed to give him or her. I felt full at 7 students but we were able to do some cool things. This year, it feels more like just survival, and not sustainable. I do have to give credit in that several other teachers and paras have chipped in and helped when they could. My parents have generally been supportive. My paras are generally competent. The thing is, is that I feel like we are past the point where adding more paras will do us any good. Adding another adult helper is simply one more person that I have to keep track of and manage all day long.
Some may hate me saying this, but we are a school/nursing home hybrid. We do what they do in a nursing home plus I have to do what 4-5 other teachers do, albeit on a different and much abbreviated level. The shift to the regular academic curriculum on top of the daily living skills curriculum adds a level of incredulity to a mission that was already seen as bordering on futility.
Most of the real stakeholders know all of this already. I’ve voiced a lot of concerns to those in positions to help and ease our plight, but they are not listening or at least they are not responding. Either they are unwilling or unable to do anything. And since some students were allowed to jump across the zone into my class where another parent was not allowed to go to a different zone to in order to escape my overcrowding. So indicators are pretty much pointing to some sort of willful hostility or ignorance at the county system level.
The core problem is that each of my students have so many pressing needs, some which need to be met in order to maintain their health and their lives! I feel personally responsible for each and every one of them, and don’t have it in me to say “Too bad” and not try my best. I’ve known many teachers who were willing to simply let things slide or simply do the bare minimum or less. This particular position sometimes attracts those characters. But I can’t do that, as I am blessed and cursed with a moral conscience that does not allow it. So every time I fail to meet a given need, or forget something or don’t get to something, it is seen as a demoralizing failure on my part. I don’t think my standards are too high, but with this many kids, the toll has been substantial. In the grand scheme of things, forgetting to send a jacket home or keep up with who had a BM when is comparatively minor, but this sort of thing has been happening more and more this year. I feel like I’m losing my mind. But I’m trying to noodle it out and basically chalk it up to the fact that I am trying to do the best that I can under the present circumstances. I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but I do have high standards for myself. I expect mistakes and expect to learn from them. Is feeling down about neglecting some of my students perfectionism? I think that is what it is; I feel like all of my students suffer from neglect at least at some point during the day. I can not sit all of them around a table and have them physically within arms reach. When they are being positioned and changed, those not needing positioning are hanging loose. When teaching those who are less disabled, I can barely include those who are more involved because they all need intense instruction!
Horace’s Compromise (or at least the dilemma described therein) has officially arrived in my classroom.
New Project – My Backyard October 14, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Blogging, Linux, moving on.add a comment
In the interest of fairness, I’m unveiling my latest blogging project. Longtime readers know that I occasionally blog about Linux, and sometimes people actually read it.! It’s a small niche project and I enjoy being part of that little niche community. While more eyeballs land on this blog day-in and day-out, blogging for and about enthusiasts is quite an adventure.
Here, I write for and about my life in the world of exceptionalities, professionally and personally. It’s been a total labor of love, and I enjoy it. In the early days, as an anonymous blogger it was a great place to vent my spleen about being a teacher and a parent. Then I came out as “me” and made this accessible to everyone. And several people in the higher echelons were not well pleased with many of my opinions and writings. So I find myself still trying to find a voice of passion that is still acceptable professionally. Not an easy tightrope to walk upon! And this is a source of frustration in my writing here, since it often feels stilted. There’s definitely a pall of oppression that weights things down in my present teaching circumstances.
There are going to be changes, no doubt. I’ll write more on those as we go along, but in the interest of disclosure I’m unveiling a new blog: My Backyard. This is where my interests in science, nature and agriculture can come together and hopefully find expression. Plus, it’s a place where I might be able to post on-topic pictures without running afoul of FERPA or HIPAA or any other privacy/confidentiality laws!
The whole beekeeping bug bit while I was helping Thomas with a school project a month or so ago. He had drawn the topic of “wasps” for a report and we started researching and took a few pictures in the backyard and pit together a little power point. I then extended the research to bees, in general, and…well, the rest is already blogged over there!
This place isn’t going dark, by any means. I still have the GAA to finish! Plus I want to blog my last 10 years “by the numbers.” You’ll know it when you see it. But if things slack off here even more than they already have, you’ll know why!
D.
Getting the GAA Finished October 3, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Curriculum, Special Ed., Special Education, severe disabilities.2 comments
My goal is to finish my entire GAA before Christmas. It’s a lofty goal, but it is totally possible. In order to have any realistic shot at it, though, I need to have all of collection #1 finished before the end of this month. So how am I doing?
I’m over half finished, but I’m being reminded as to why it is a serious mistake to wait on data collection for these things. Murphy likes to set up camp right in the middle of one’s plans. The more urgent, the more likely things will go wrong. In this case, it happens to be the flu. The same thing happened last year with one of my students. He missed more school while I was working on GAA activities than in the previous 2 years combined! And so it is this year as I have a student who has been out a couple of weeks due to the flu. Plus we had a flood day, and who knows what other natural disasters, delays and issues will crop up?
This is why a body has to ruthlessly hack, chop, fight and claw through this process with as much speed and efficiency as practical. Stuff happens, and the longer things are put off, the more stress that will visit later.
I’ve written my basic outline on a planning sheet, and am busy checking off as I go. The lesson plans feed into the GAA tasks and follow the outline I’ve mapped out. Next month, while waiting for the 3 week lag to pass before laying into collection #2, I’ll do some alternative activities that also fit the GAA plan. so in a sense, I’ll have a parallel portfolio of other tasks to use in the future, if necessary.
With my present numbers and the severity of my students, it is difficult to do anything outside of a couple of tasks per day. Every student needs changing, every one needs feeding and most of them need to be positioned/repositioned throughout the day. Plus I have 2 new paras to train and an old para who came back after it took 8 years to get rid of her. So it is a major challenge just to keep the fires out.
So when it comes to nailing down a given GAA task, it is best to plan on doing the same task multiple times. It’s unlikely that all students will be there for a single take, and it is also unlikely that you’ll get a decent or usable collection on the very first trial. so I generally schedule 2-3 tasks over 2-3 days in order to have multiple opportunities to get it. I’m also an opportunist when it comes to grabbing data and using resources. This is another reason to get all over a basic collection. Sometimes, something better comes along and you have a chance to jump on it.
For instance, I was doing some listening/speaking/viewing activities with the Gotalk with a student, when the SLP came in. I quickly got her to work with my GAA students on the required task, and got pictures and data to go along with it. Things just clicked into place. I like to get a variety of people involved, including OT’s, APE teachers, and other therapists. The idea is to incorporate a lot of diversity into the mix so there are several options and pieces of evidence to choose from. It also looks good on the final product, because it illustrates that this isn’t just a one-time deal and reflects superior teaching practices. If you are all stressed about just getting the thing done, you may miss these opportunities because of sheer stress. What the knobs who are pushing for “accountability” fail to see is that no one performs at their best if they are overly stressed. This assessment is not assessing students, it is assessing teachers. So get it it done quickly and then keep improving it as time passes. With increased revisions, it does get better, but you can not revise and improve what you have not already finished! I find that having a time line and calendar helps. It keeps me focused on daily goals and tasks rather than being overwhelmed by this big, huge thing hanging over me. It’s easier to make progress when it isn’t looming so large.
That being said, it is looming large! And having a student absent fir a long period of time does derail my little calendar. At first, I wanted to hold everyone up, so we could all move through together. But I couldn’t wait forever, so I tried to do some of the easier tasks that were most differentiated across participants, which for me is the ELA speaking/listening tasks. Science and social studies seem to lend themselves to more group work, but I’m not waiting anymore. We’re going to go ahead and plant our plants and move on.
And remember as Murphy is fond of saying: As bad as things may seem at the moment, they can always get worse, and they probably will. So you might as well enjoy the moment!
Hopefully, the rest of you teachers are progressing along! Good luck!
National Autism Center Report October 2, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Behavior Analysis, Ed Policy Discussion, Teachers, Therapy.add a comment
Before I even get into anything about the report itself, I do want to mention that actually getting a copy of the report involves submitting your name, email and state. I looked for any privacy notices regarding this information, but didn’t see any. So before even reading it, I resolved that I was going to mention this hoop that everyone must jump through. I think it is needless and detrimental to the stated primary mission of the organization which is to help professionals and families of individuals with autism. If you’re going to release the report to the public, then release it. If you’re going to harvest information from people who want to see the information, then be explicit about that.
Parent Involvement August 27, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Ed Policy Discussion, IEP, Parent Support, Parents and parenting, Special Education, home schooling, severe disabilities.comments closed
There’s a huge push in Georgia and around the country relating to parent involvement, and right this minute there is one going on in the metro Atlanta area sponsored by WSB-TV and Bethere.org. And there is a lot of research that indicates that parent involvement is one of the key elements of a good education as well as well adjusted kids in general, that you can find at the BeThere website.
In my county, there are a couple of theme schools (elementary and middle) as well as a high school academy that have parental involvement as the central focus. Parents sign an agreement that they will volunteer for a number of hours as well as adhere to a list of rules and guidelines. In exchange, the school promises to deliver a better education and better outcomes based largely on the increased parent involvement.
I agree that parental involvement is a crucial element in education. In fact, I believe parent involvement is more important than the teacher, the principal or the school district in determining academic outcomes. If you could get rid of the entire educational apparatus and replace it with involved parents for every child, there wouldn’t be an educational crisis in this country.
I have a couple of family members who have been home schooling their children, and these kids are absolutely awesome and brilliant. Of course the parents are awesome and brilliant, too, but these kids are as socially adjusted, confident and creative as anyone you would ever meet anywhere else. A well-educated and motivated parent can do things that a school system simply can not do. And with the leaps in technology, the gap between what public schools can offer versus what someone educated at home can get is approaching zero. Throw in some community theater, music, sports and clubs and you’ve got everything pretty much covered. Homeschooling is the ultimate in parent involvement as it involves dedication and commitment far beyond what any of the local theme schools demand, which is why it isn’t for everyone.
We’ve kicked the home school idea around our house. Jane has been to some home school expos and has a number of friends who are homeschooling their kids. And my youngest would do really well with it, but he’ll do well no matter where he goes to school. But my oldest is a big question mark. Right now he’s getting OT and sppech/language services through the school system via his IEP. There’s a good resource on home schooling and special needs found at the Home Schooling Legal Defense Association. I may hit on that more later.
But I do want to speak concerning those of us who are not home schooling and are being asked to be involved. It’s difficult for responsible parents to NOT be involved, so this movement does strike me as a bit bothersome and condescending. We all do know parents who aren’t very involved, but it’s hard to imagine any ad campaign having much of an effect on people who are unable or unwilling to be involved. We do need to face a very real, if unpleasant to educators, fact: the public school system has as a primary function a custodial role; a safe, secure place to keep kids so that parents can go to work or just get a break. We are paid to babysit as much as educate.
There, I said it.
Public schools exist, in large part, because parents don’t want kids running amok all day. A few months off in the summer are about all most parents can stand. They love seeing the bus pull up in the fall! And while many kids won’t admit it, they like having a place to go. they get fed and looked after and if all goes well they might get an education. But in any case, they are in a relatively safe, clean, environmentally-controlled place. Parents can go about their business during the day without having to worry about their kids. And if they do worry, they have a myriad of people to blame and complain to including the school board, the superintendent, the principal and right down to the teacher. There are ample opportunities for parents to raise a fuss and be heard. Plenty of involvement there!
Which brings up another aspect of this parental involvement business. Fact is, schools want parents involved as long as it’s the system calling the shots. As long as parents volunteer to raise money, schools like parents. When parents start wanting a voice in how the money is spent, then there may some problems. In special education, the school system is negatively reinforced for having parents who are not involved. If a parent isn’t present, an IEP can be done in a much shorter amount of time. If a parent is involved and brings an advocate or attorney, then we’re looking at hours. Some parents are in the office a lot, advocating for their child or complaining about something or other. Some are calling their board representative all the time. They are already involved quite a bit! But this is not the sort of involvement the districts involved in the “Be There” campaign are looking for, I suspect.
They are looking for parents to be involved with helping their child comply and succeed with the requirements put forth by the state. They want parents who will help their child (as well as maybe others) with homework, teaching math and literacy and fundraising. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but I am saying that any campaign seeking involvement from parents might want to consider all the ways parents are involved, including those who get involved by suing the school system! I think parent involvement is good when there is good communication and trust between a school and the parents. In such a system, though, a campaign like “Be There” wouldn’t be necessary.
I have a mix in my class. Just by the nature of severe and multiple disabilities, it demands heavy parental involvement. There’s just no getting around it when a student demands total care and supervision 24/7. I totally get that, which is why I try not to make a lot of demands on the parents. They are all doing the best they can. Most have been pretty supportive over the years, and I think I have a decent relationship with all of them. After several years, a body tends to develop a sort of trust relationship as my classroom becomes a second home of a sort. A very CROWDED home, at the moment, but we do the best we can with what we have.
What do you think? Are there some parents who are too involved? Are schools really that interested in a reciprocal partnership with parents?
