Welcome Skeptics! March 31, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Blogging.comments closed
I'd like to welcome the Skeptic's Circle, by way of Terra Sigillata by way of Liz. I had no idea there was such a thing! I hope you all enjoy looking, reading and otherwise snooping around.
Really, I had no idea my little screed would attract much attention. At least positive attention. I actually half expected to be attacked by someone who would be offended at me for going after one of their sacred cow treatments.
I've had the sacred cow treatment…it's powerful stuff.
How odd (yet appropriate) that I would be "discovered" by a larger group unrelated to education before making it into a more mainstream educational circle. Actually, this is a bigger deal, because I've discovered an entirely new community of folks who've discovered me. Thanks Ms. Liz!;-)
It's been a helluva day, which I may get around to blogging about later, after I recover. In the meantime, I'll be happy to imbibe some of those malted beverages y'all are serving at the Skeptic's meeting!
dick
Alternate Assessment March 29, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in NCLB, Special Education.comments closed
True to my last post, I’m procrastinating. I’m putting off what I could do today for tomorrow. Specifically, writing up a GAA portfolio. GAA = Georgia Alternate Assessment.
NCLB says that all students must be assessed at varying times, in order to determine whether or not the school has made AYP. 99% of all students take some sort of standardized test. In
Magnolia
County
High School, that would be the high school graduation test. But what about the other 1%?
This is where the science of teaching intersects with the art. Students with intellectual disabilities who are in an alternate and functional curriculum can undergo some sort of alternative assessment, which we in
Georgia call the GAA. But only 1% of all students may be in the GAA. Every student in the GAA over the 1% mark counts as a failure towards AYP. Otherwise, schools would be herding all of their special education students into alternate assessments.
So what, exactly is an alternate assessment? Obviously, my students can not take a pencil and paper test, filling in little bubbles. They would eat the tests, the pencils and possibly the proctors. No amount of accommodation or support is going to get them through such a test. But we still have to measure their progress, somehow. We still have to be held to some sort of rigorous standard of accountability, right George? So how do we get these kids to participate? I’m almost embarrassed to tell you.
The year before the student enters the 11th grade (when they would be taking the high school graduation test) we sit down at the IEP and decide which goals should be included in the GAA. Actually, I decide because no one else on the committee really cares. I pick out 5 goals, with one of them having to be a communication goal. Making sure to write out the goals as explicitly as possible and making sure it is measurable, I pluck these 5 goals from the IEP, one each from several domains. There are 8 possible domains: Communication (required), Social/emotional, Recreation/leisure, Motor, Community, Vocational, Cognitive/functional academics, Daily living/personal management. So the GAA I’m procrastination on has one objective from the daily living skill domain, specifically to make simple meals such as making a sandwich, with 80% of the steps being done independently over 3 consecutive sessions. Throughout the year, I keep track of him making sandwiches during our daily living skill time and observe how independent he is. Which it turns out, he is almost 100% independent in this. Great!
So when his IEP comes, I check off this goal as mastered, and on the GAA recording sheet I get to bubble in “Functional” as in the goal has been mastered. If he didn’t quite make it, but made 50% or more of his goal, I bubble in “Progressing.” Heaven help me if this student is not either functional or progressing, because that would count as a failure on the AYP. Two other ratings are “Emerging” and “Initial” which we will never ever bubble in again, after we failed to make AYP 2 years ago. Our instructions from our principal are explicit and direct: ALL GAA students MUST be either functional or progressing on all goals. No exceptions. No Excuses. So this is why I picked easy goals that I was pretty sure this student could do. I also pick objectives that are easy to measure. All objectives are supposed to be measurable, and my IEPs are among the few in the world where all of the goals adhere to GAA standards.
Up till now, you are wondering; what am I procrastinating on? In addition to bubbling in sheets, I have to write up some sort of portfolio on each objective that is one page long. This should include a discussion of the data collection system, results and discussion of his progress. I’m good with graphs so I can take graduated prompting or discrete trial data to make something that takes up half a page. But then I have to come up with more content. For my sandwich goal, this will be a bit challenging as I can’t find his data sheets. At least I had/have them as most teachers don’t have real data. So I’m going to have to resort to doing what other teachers do: make it up. There’s where the artist in me comes into play. I have data sheets on all the other objectives, but this one doesn’t have much documentation. And I’M not going to be the one to have my student cause the entire school to not make AYP. So there you have it. Alternate assessment has a lot of room for subjectivity and messing around which is why only 1% of students are allowed to be in it. For students like mine, the whole concept of AYP is a bit ridiculous since we’re more often concerned with maintaining performance rather than progressing. Students with CP, seizures, other health problems and severe cognitive deficits often get worse as they get older. Students with Down Syndrome frequently have health problems as they enter something akin to “middle age” in late adolescence. This is not to say they can not learn, because they can and it’s my job to teach them. But their goals don’t resemble what the rest of the high school students are working on.
Next year, the GAA will be aligned with the regular, grade level curriculum. We still do not know how it will manifest itself but changes are coming down the pike that will make things more difficult challenging.
I guess I might as well stop procrastinating and start writing.
dick
What Kind of Student Were You? March 27, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Backstory, Teachers.comments closed
It's interesting reading how
teachers react to certain kinds of students.
They are most often indignant with students not doing homework and not
completing assignments. A good student
is someone who turns in all their work, has it done neatly and completely and
on time. Even if they aren't the highest
achievers, if they can do those things, they will usually be seen as good
students. These good students are striving for A's all the time, with an
occasional B. Apparently, most teacher bloggers seem to be from that fine
"good student" tradition, and they can not understand why any of
their students wouldn't do likewise.
I am not from that "good
student" tradition. I hated
homework and never did a lick of it in high school. If I couldn't get it done in class, I
probably wouldn't do it at all. And
those assignments that I did turn in were rarely complete, almost always sloppy
and often turned in late. If at
all. I wasn't disruptive in class, and
didn't back-talk my teachers. In fact, I
did listen and participate in class. But
written work was painful for me, who has terrible handwriting. I was always gigged on neatness.
Also, getting an 'A' was not a
goal of mine. I was keen to learn, but I
hardly saw how doing half-a-dozen worksheets demonstrated how smart I was. I did, however, do well on tests. Especially standardized tests. So year after year, my mother would talk to
my teachers who would tell her, "He has all kinds of potential, but he
just won't do the work!" Most of
the homework given by teachers is crap.
Sorry for being so blunt, but I've yet to see much in the way of
homework that is worth doing. So you
see, I'm still belligerent. College is
more self-directed, and I do see more value in what goes on there.
I recognized early on that
getting a 'C' was not the end of the world.
Neither was a 'D'. I even got an
'F' or two. I might have gotten 2 or 3
'A's in high school and a handful of B's.
My high school GPA was a 2.06.
But my attendance was near perfect.
And sure enough, I haven't been asked for my H.S. GPA in over 2 decades.
My son is now bringing homework
home and he seems to have inherited my attitude as well as my poor fine motor
skills. So much of what is sent home for
him to work on is "busywork" that requires his mother (and on rare
occasions, his father) to stand over him.
The boy is in kindergarten but reads on the 3rd or 4th grade reading
level, making him smarter than I was at his age. He is in the accelerated reader program and
has gotten perfect scores on nearly every test he's taken. But he drives his teachers batty by not doing
his work. His mother was a good student,
so she shares your collective exasperation at my lackadaisical attitude.
I did get a 2 point something
for an undergraduate GPA. College was
harder and it did take awhile to become more self-directed. But, again, no one has asked about my college
GPA. Or my GRE scores. You don't care about mine and I could care
less about yours.
In my Master's program and all
classes since, I've gotten A's all the way.
I finally, after 30 years, decided to apply myself in my studies. But it
was never about the 'A', it was about increasing my knowledge and skills. In my graduate studies I too frequently
encountered an attitude of "Just give me the 'A' and the degree so I can
get out of here!" Fact is, without
imbibing some knowledge, the grade is meaningless, and the work done to get it
even more so.
In primary and secondary school,
I frustrated my teachers. When one of my
ex-teachers heard I was going to be teaching EBD, she said, "Nice to know
someone is getting into the business that knows something about it!" I was, in fact, referred for testing for
special education in the 7th grade by a teacher who I frustrated with my
laziness. Mom was hoping they'd find
something, but she was disappointed to learn that I just had a lack of
motivation as opposed to some sort of legitimate disability..
To those of you presently
frustrated by students who are apparently lazy, like I was, I want to say that
it isn't personal. Chances are, a kid
who finds your work not worth doing probably finds the work most other teachers
assign isn't worth doing. I generally
liked all my teachers. I didn't take the
'F's and zeros personally. Just because
I didn't care about my grades didn't mean that I didn't like learning.
To this day, I still abhor
redundancy and busy work, which causes a few problems in my work as a special
education teacher. We live and die by
the paperwork we have to produce. I have
been known to procrastinate, cut a corner or two on the forms and generally
annoy my supervisors just a bit regarding forms that are due. I'm focused on my students and their parents,
not the pencil pushers at the county office.
Thanks to the computer, I am a writer and my stuff is evaluated more on
content rather than my scrawly handwriting.
I'd like to hear about other
poor-ish students who made good later in life.
Any other teachers who ascended from the ranks of academic mediocrity?
dick
Would you go into private practice, if you could? March 23, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Special Education, Teachers.comments closed
Imagine you could teach in a comfortable environment working with students 1:1. There is no lunch duty, no bus duty, a fraction of the paperwork that you normally would have to do. While you do assessments and write progress reports, you don’t have to worry about grades. While accountable to your professional organization and perhaps one supervisor, you are not pressured by NCLB, high stakes testing, IDEA or other regulations. You have greater access to needed resources. You also stand to make more money. The downside is that you might not get the vacation breaks, and the medical benefits might not be as good. You also might be working later in some afternoons and some on weekends. If you had the opportunity to do it, would you?
This is the sort of choice several of my colleagues face every year. Namely those who are occupational, physical and speech therapists. At the present time, the 2 PTs that serve students in Magnolia county have a leg in both, as they do 2 days per week in the school system and the rest of the time they see students/clients privately. We have 6 or 7 OT’s, with a couple of those working part time. The one that serves my students is mostly working for the benefits, since her husband is self-employed. The SLP that serves Magnolia County High School does it for the love of the job, although she also likes the medical benefits. Each therapist has a caseload of at least 60-75 students, in addition to any new referrals that happen to come in. Which means they are writing goals and reports and attending IEP meetings for all of those students. The facilities they work in consist of closets, storage rooms or an empty classroom, if they are lucky. The therapists get paid on the same scale as all of the other teachers, so there isn’t any extra money to be had for treating more students. The difference between working in a private clinic and in a school setting can often be dramatic.
These therapists, in addition to being in demand treating students with disabilities, are also in demand at hospitals and nursing homes around the country. The training required to become an OT, PT or SLP is extensive and rigorous. There are not many places that offer the necessary training to become one of these therapists, and getting admitted into a program is competitive.
Basically, I’m highlighting some reasons why there is a shortage of all of these professionals in school systems across the country. The largest shortage is experienced most keenly in the area of speech language pathology, which requires the most training of the three therapy areas I’ve mentioned. In Magnolia County, we are short about 3 therapists due to one being on maternity leave, one who is on medical leave, and one who left the county. We are on the lookout for SLPs as is just about every other district around the country. Because of this shortage, the SLPs that we have working have to pull an extra heavy load. Most of the SLPs we have in the county have been around for years. Our SLP, Miss Cleotis, has been in the system over 25 years, and each year I hear her talk about how she is thinking about retiring. In fact, there was a rumor that she had retired last year, which surprised me. But she was back on the first day of school and I was glad of it. She has been a close colleague and friend over the years, and we have both been through a lot with these students. She has always been supportive of me, although I can’t say that I have always supported her in everything. In fact, it has taken me a few years to learn how to work with all of these therapists who come in to my room and give me more work to do. But I have learned to appreciate all of them, and they have helped me grow in my knowledge and skill in teaching the students I work with. They have all also been very supportive in helping out with my own children, where my oldest (Thomas) was getting PT, OT and speech when he first started. While he no longer gets PT, the therapist is always willing to give advice if I bring up an issue. My youngest (Percy) is being evaluated for OT by the same therapist who works at the high school, so it is nice being able to consult with her on a regular basis.
With baby boomers aging, there will be increasing pressure on the limited number of these therapists as the demand increases. You can read teacher Sol’s treatment of the subject here. You can also read about the trouble the Baltimore schools are having in delivering services here, where the controversy about students not getting services is a direct result of the shortage of service providers. What do you do when the law mandates that certain services must be provided, but there is no one around who is qualified to provide it?
dick
Trying to Get Off the List March 22, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in NCLB, Special Education.comments closed
The entire year’s worth of work and worry comes down to this week’s test results. All of the juniors at Magnolia County High School are taking the Georgia High School Graduation Test (GHSGT). Well…almost all of them. There are a number of them in special education who are taking the Georgia Alternate Assessment (GAA).
But we had a faculty meeting this afternoon, where the principal gave us all a pep talk, and he thanked everyone for their efforts so far. Three years ago, our school failed to make AYP because too many students were absent during the test. 95% of eligible students are required to take the test on test day. The test lasts several days, and tomorrow is the last day. But it is seen by our principal as the most difficult hurdle, which is the math portion of the test. It’s basically all or nothing, right here this year. If we make the 95% passing rate in all subgroups, the school makes AYP and gets off the “Needs Improvement” list. Failing to get off the “Needs Improvement” list could have some dire consequences, since next year, the standards are supposed to go up 2 more points. Last year, the school made the standard in math by only 0.7%, which is barely making it. We made it last year and must make it this year to get off the dreaded list.
As previously pointed out, every subgroup must make that 95% pass rate. The subgroups include minorities, economically disadvantaged and special education. And it is the special education subgroup that has our principal biting his nails. None of the subgroups are a sure thing, but special education has been the biggest hurdle for most school systems in the country.
Being on the list for two consecutive years without meeting AYP means extra sanctions As it is, students in schools that fail to make AYP can transfer to schools within a district that do make it. However, in Magnolia County, both high schools are on the “needs improvement” list, so transferring is rather pointless.
Go ahead and read this article to learn more about why many schools are failing to meet AYP.
dick
A Few Thoughts on Learning Disabilities March 21, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Backstory, Learning Disabilities.comments closed
I do have some history with working with individuals with learning disabilities and even originally was going to get my master’s in teaching LD before ending up with my degree teaching EBD.
The journey actually begins way back in high school with one of my best friends, Sean, who was classified LD. I knew he might have been a little slow, but didn’t treat him as anything less than what he was; a good friend. He and I both grew up milking cows and it would be fair to say he knew more about dairy cows than I did. After high school he was engaged to be married, and when that fell through he moved to Georgia. A few years later, I followed him down. Sean started out trying construction jobs but found he could do fast food work, with the help of an understanding store manager. While he wasn’t too good on the register, he worked the back making sandwiches. He eventually started his own business with pet and house sitting, making a good living at it. He was best man at my wedding and now is married and in the pet sitting business with his new bride. What Sean lacked in raw intellect he made up for with dependability, honesty and determination.
I worked with him in fast food for a year or so, before landing a job at a private school that specialized in teaching kids with LD, ADD and dyslexia. It was a boarding school that also had day students. It was a good place to get started as a young teacher, living and working at the same place. None of the faculty were certified, most were pretty young and single. It was a very expensive school that offered tutorial, co-tutorial and small group classes, along with very structured schedules. Boarders had 2 hours of evening study halls before getting some free time. It was rigorous, structured and individualized.
The students were from pretty wealthy families, some from other countries. Those who teach LD students know that they often have a repertoire of behaviors that are incompatible with academic success. These kids were, in the words of one administrator, from the “golden ghettos.” Their parents often spent little time with their kids, preferring to indulge them with material things rather than invest in meaningful discipline and interaction. So in addition to being self-indulgent, the students also often had some emotional problems.
This was the early 1990’s, and the drug of choice was Ritalin. Most of the boys were on it, and even a few of the girls. The teaching we did was structured, but there was still enough room to be creative. I taught physical science, chemistry and biology. I quickly discovered that I was doing my best work with the slowest kids. I really enjoyed working with them, and teaching these kids required a lot of patience, precision and self-discipline on my part. But the hands-on creativity I employed paid dividends and my students consistently did well on their departmental exams.
Despite the fact that each student paid $5000 for each hour of instruction each semester, teachers were not paid very well. Of course, I did get a place to live and free meals, but I was still making less than many paraprofessionals. I began to outgrow the place and yearned for more freedom. In addition to teaching all day, I also did duties 2x per week at night and then one weekend per month. During a typical week, I might put in 60 hours and up to 80 hours if I had weekend duty. It was a good thing I was relatively young because it was a challenging pace to maintain for 3 years. By the end of my 2nd year, I started thinking about getting my Master’s degree in special education.
This is my way of introducing you to how I experience the world of LD. As I said, LD students can be among the most fun and entertaining students to work with. They are generally bright, but need help with organization, accountability and perseverence. Many like to give up before they even start a challenging task. My work involved simplifying the process and breaking tasks down into discrete steps that were easier to manage, and then gradually expand the tasks and expectation. I managed to guide some fairly low kids through stoichiometry, balancing chemical equations, learning element names and symbols, learning the parts of the digestive tract, calculating work, force and energy. And we had fun.
So I naturally chose this population when starting on my master’s degree. It was a professor who talked me into changing tracks to get into EBD.
Students are classified as having learning disabilities on the discrepancy model, meaning there is a discrepancy between aptitude and achievement of 2 standard deviations. So with a mean of 100 and a SD of 15, a student scoring 100 on an I.Q. test and scoring 70 on a reading achievement test would have a reading disability. Officially speaking, the discrepancy can not be accounted for on the basis of a sensory disability, such as being blind or deaf which is why hearing and vision screenings are part of the eligibility process. This is all the official party line. However, there are politics involved with the LD classification that exist no where else.
There are 3 mild disability classifications and eligibilities that make up 90% of all students enrolled in special education. One is Emotional Behaviors (EBD). The criteria for EBD also involves falling below the mean by 2 standard deviations along with other behavioral criteria. However, no parent who is half-way savvy wants their child classified as EBD. And if the parent fights hard enough, they can get it changed to something more socially acceptable. Changed to what?
One possibility is Mildy Intellectually Disabled (MID) otherwise known as mildly retarded. This, again, involves scoring 2 standard deviations below the mean on various assessments, including adaptive behavior. But, again, not many savvy parents are keen to having their child labeled as being retarded, no matter how we try to disguise it as MID.
Which leaves LD as the single most popular of the milder eligibilities. Being learning disabled is a lot less threatening than being emotionally disturbed, and not nearly as socially unacceptable as being retarded. Plus, it works better with person-first language. Most people are fairly understanding of someone with a learning disability. They have less comfort with having a mild intellectual disability and certainly less than having an emotional or behavioral disturbance!
In my experience, there is a broad overlap between the mild disability eligibility areas. It isn’t until you get a couple of self-contained classes side-by-side that the contrast comes more sharply into focus.
I was a long-term sub in a middle school EBD classroom who happened to have P.E. at the same time as the neighboring LD class. I’ll never forget the kickball game where the EBD kids took on the LD kids. Since I had kids who were skipping or in ISS, I only had 3 kids in the class who took on 10-12 kids in the LD class in a game of kickball. I had misgivings, thinking it was hardly fair for the EBD kids who were outnumbered 4:1. And I was partially right. It wasn’t fair.
It was a massacre.
The LD kids had many more difficulties with their fine and gross motor functioning, motor planning and were just generally more timid. The EBD kids had no such physical limitations and were fearless in their aggressiveness. That was the first time I had seen such a stark contrast between these two groups. After 3 kids with LD kicked the ball and it was either caught or they were thrown out, the EBD kids went on to score 15 or so runs before us teachers said they had to give the other team a chance. The kids with LD were up…3 up and 3 down. We had to mangle some rules so they could give everyone a chance to kick the ball. About 2 of the kids with LD made it to first base and none ever scored. It was apparent to me that day that there was a lot more to the LD label than intellectual functioning. There were sensory perception issues that went beyond simple reading comprehension or math calculation. These were bright students who were not seeing the world the same way as most other people, or at least in a way that lent itself to winning a game of kickball against a team they outnumbered.
Keep in mind, these were self-contained students who represented the most “disabled” in their respective categories. It is much more difficult to spot who is who among a group of resourced/mainstreamed students. In fact, if you read the two articles cited below, there is some argument as to whether or not LD is a legitimate category of disability at all.
Over at Education Gadfly you can read another article on the LD classification in special education. Hat tip to Liz who gives her own take here.
Once I entered the world the severe and profound, such ambiguities and politics ceased to be factors. Anyone can just look at my kids, and there is no question at all as to whether or not they are exceptional. And I’m okay with that lack of ambiguity.
dick
The Fleecing of the Autism Community March 20, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Backstory.comments closed
What I am going to discuss is the skepticism that exists within the autism community toward whatever the latest treatment/miracle cure is out there. I am from a decidedly behaviorist background, and was before becoming a parent. But my wife Jane was not. Jane, joining the growing legions of parents in search of cures, treatments and whatever else could help tried all sorts of different things.
First, there was the Cranial Sacral therapy. Next was the GFCF diet. Then there were the special tonics, herbs, essential oils roots and shoots from various alternative medicine doctors. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is auditory integration therapy, aquatic therapy, hippotherapy, healing crystals, megavitamins, facilitated communication, holding therapy, floortime, ABA, TEACCH, video modeling, social stories, light therapy, acupuncture, chelation therapy Sensory integration therapy, and I’m sure I’m leaving some out. A few years ago, someone said their son was cured of his autism by taking secretin, more traditionally used to treat digestive disorders. Not long after, doctors were besieged by requests for secretin and a black market developed for it.
You want to know how many research validated treatments there are for autism? Do you want to know how many treatments are considered well established empirically validated? I’ll tell you how many: NONE. How about “Probably efficacious?”
NONE.
No single treatment or treatment approach has passed muster to be considered empirically validated according to Division 12 of the American Psychological Association. In order to be considered empirically validated, the approach must:
-Have a manual documenting how to do it
- Have been validated through results showing clinical and statistical significance by at least 2 separate studies done by 2 unrelated researchers/teams OR have 5 or more single subject design studies done by separate and independent researchers.
- These studies must all be published in peer reviewed journals
-The results must show significant gains or advantages over placebo or other well-established treatments
I might be missing one criterion, but this is the gist of it. So far, none of my listed interventions for autism have passed muster. I’m guessing that social stories might be getting close to being “probably efficacious” which has fewer requirements as far as the number of studies published than that to be considered “empirically validated.”
There is a never-ending supply of charlatans and snake oil salespeople hawking their potions and notions, and none of these are cheap. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Jane bought $12,000 worth of various extracts, mineral waters and such, plus ordered a myriad of tests. We didn’t have the money then and are still trying to pay off that credit card bill, 2 years later. In addition, she took money out of her retirement fund in order to pay for some of this stuff. By the time I found out, we were on the brink of bankruptcy.
These frauds sell crap, preying on the concern of parents for their children. They guilt us by saying, “Wouldn’t you do anything to help your child?” When it doesn’t work, we are told we didn’t do it right which is shorthand for “we didn’t spend enough money.” I’ve seen the shit come and go. And everyone has something to offer…for a price. No one is giving this stuff away. They are impoverishing an entire class of people.
I am pissed at people who prey upon the fears of parents. No other single disability has been ravaged more by broken promises, and outright lies and deception than parents of people with autism. I am skeptical of every single treatment option, without exception. Behaviorist interventions can help with some behaviors, but it is not the final answer. Anyone who walks into my door, promising to SELL me a cure for my son runs the risk of bodily harm administered by a 2×4. Our family has been personally held up and robbed by people who are living very well at our expense. Impoverishing our entire family will not do anything to improve my son’s future.
When someone says they have a cure, a research validated treatment or a promise of recovery from autism, they are telling a LIE. They are no better than the merchants of terror who institutionalized (and molested) autistic children because of “refrigerator mothers.”
Look out for these lies:
-Anything that claims to be a cure. There is no cure for autism.
- “We treat the cause of autism, not the symptoms.” No one knows what causes autism. The one who finds it will win the Nobel Prize.
- “Scientifically validated.” There are no empirically validated treatments. Some have greater scientific support than others.
- “Scientifically proven effective.” See above.
- Testimonials by individuals claiming to have been cured. I have an article where a guy claimed to be cured of autism by smoking crack. No lie.
Anything claiming to be a cure or treatment is suspect until proven otherwise. Don’t be fooled by the hype. Don’t be taken in by false promises.
Go sell crazy somewhere else. We’re all stocked up here.
dick
Re-Doing “A Special Education” March 19, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Learning Disabilities, Special Education.comments closed
In a prior post, I did a small review of an excerpt of a book A Special Education by Dana Buchman. A couple of things have developed out of those few lines. One is that I happened to hear an interview with Ms. Buchman on the radio program The Satellite Sisters. As a parent, I could identify with much of what she has gone through in raising a child with learning disabilities. Ms. Buchman’s story, as she says, is a narrative of the emotions behind the journey.
The other thing that fell out of my little review was a comment from Ms. Buchman’s publicist offering me a free copy of the book as well as a copy of a book on autism by Stanley Greenspan. As much as I’d love to accept, I’ll have to decline those generous offers. If being anonymous wasn’t such a big deal for my blog, I’d be more tempted. I also still haven’t started reading my signed copy of Robert and Lynn Koegel’s book on pivotal response training!
Dr. Stanley Greenspan will get a post of his own in the future, especially if he gets some sort of buzz going.
From what I’ve gleaned from Ms. Buchman’s excerpt and interview (Nice publicity work, Ms. Warren!) her book will interest parents of young children with disabilities, and may even become a source of inspiration and courage for them. However, it’s important to note that Buchman was (and still is) a woman of considerable means when going through her experience. She could afford a private school, private therapies and interventions. The emotional journey she went through will be recognizable but other experiences may be less universal.
And then I did notice that Liz at I Speak of Dreams linked over and gave it some treatment. Or at least her commenters have. Go on over there and see what she and her readers think. That, as much as anything, prompted me to give a more thorough look at the topic. After doing still more reading on the topic than I ever intended to do, I have decided that Ms. Buchman isn’t quite the publicity hound I might have originally thought. In fact, proceeds from her book are being donated to the National Center for Learning Disabilities. You can read an interview NCLD did with her here. Okay, so I feel like a bit of a flake for snapping to such a quick judgment of a book I haven’t even read. Maybe that first chapter wasn’t the best one to feature, or maybe I have entirely too many personal biases to give her a fair and impartial treatment.
dick
Autism Awareness and Education March 17, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's.comments closed
I was listening to some talk radio today, in the middle of a teacher workday, and the host had a caller whose son was charged with making terroristic threats because he drew a stick figure of a person with a gun. She mentioned that the boy had autism, and after she hung up, the host started wondering if maybe autism was becoming the latest fad, much like ADHD was during the 1990’s.
“Twenty years ago, I never heard about people with autism! I admit, I’ve never researched it and I think I’m going to because I keep hearing about it. It seems like every time there is a parent who has a child with some behavior problems, autism gets brought up. Just what is autism? And why are we hearing so much about it all the sudden?”
If I had a telephone handy, I would have called him up. I’m a card carrying member of the Autism Society of America (ASA), a veteran teacher of individuals with developmental delays, as well as the parent of a child with autism. I’ve spent more time than I’d ever have imagined 20 years ago dealing with this.
It’s true that 20 years ago, we never heard about people with autism. I didn’t know anything about it and wouldn’t have recognized it if I would have seen it. Now all of a sudden, it is everywhere. The reason why it is everywhere is because it is an epidemic! Twenty years ago, the prevalence of autism was about 1 in 10,000 births. Today, the CDC recognizes that autism is a spectrum disorder affecting between 2 and 6 per 1000. The ASA puts prevalence at about 1:166 births. It is the fastest growing of the childhood disorders in the country at the present time. The CDC has been working on a campaign to help doctors and parents recognize signs of developmental delays so that intervention can begin as early as possible. While not everyone agrees exactly what the best course of early intervention is, everyone agrees that earlier is better.
This does show that there is a lot of education on the subject of autism that we still have to do. This guy is nationally syndicated in several cities around the country. Whether or not you agree with his politics, he is knowledgeable about a variety of topics and has opinions about them all. I’m thankful he at least had enough sense to admit that he hadn’t researched it and knew nothing about it. This person does do charitable work for Children’s hospitals and other worthy causes, which made his ignorance even more surprising.
The fact of the matter is, is that if you don’t know someone with autism right now, you probably will at some point. Everyday, individuals looking up information about autism end up here through search engines. So follow my links above and get a bit of an education if you haven’t already. Our local autism support group will be sponsoring an Autism Awareness Walk in early April and others will be going on around the country as well, I’m sure. Just about the time I think that we have a fairly informed public, I run across folks like the talk show host, who probably represents a far larger group than I could imagine. Since my family and I are traveling autism references and exhibits, all of our friends and family have some knowledge of the disorder. It’s rare that we run into people in our community who do not know someone else on the spectrum or know of someone who knows someone on it. That’s not to say everyone understands autism. In fact, no one fully understands it, otherwise we might have a cure for it.
dick
A Special Education and Allergy Season March 15, 2006
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Day-to-day drama: home, Day-to-day school drama, Learning Disabilities.comments closed
I was just reading an excerpt from Dana Buchman’s book, A Special Education. This is about her journey as she discovers her daughter has dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and other learning problems. As I was reading this, I kept wondering when I would read something new and intriguing. The excerpt basically tells about her starting off on a successful career and then how she had a rough transition into motherhood.
Hello?!?
There really is no story there. I don’t know of any mothers who ever really and truly were prepared for their transition into being a parent. Exceptional or not, having a baby around changes a person’s life dramatically. Coach and his young wife are expecting their first child, and everyone tells him his life is going to completely change. He says everyone keeps telling him that, and he has gotten a bit tired of hearing it. But it is true that life does change and it is also true that no matter how much other people tell you, you never really truly get it until it happens to you. Nothing in Buchman’s except compels me to buy and read her book. Maybe if I see it at my local library I’ll check it out.
Learning disabilities and ADD are relatively mild along the disability spectrum, and are relatively common. I’m sure every parent has a compelling story to tell when it comes to raising their children, and those raising children with exceptionalities especially so. From where I’m sitting, Buchman came into the world of disabilities relatively late. The day Thomas was born, I spent it in the NICU with him, and even he was luckier than the preemies who were living there. Eight months later, we were in the hospital again as he had suffered multiple seizures. By the time Buchman discovered something was wrong when her daughter was around 3, we were already well into the world of disabilities. By the time Thomas was 3, we were well initiated into the brave new world of Autism. But of course, I’m not a famous clothing designer with my own label. But anything that gives more airplay to those with exceptionalities is a good thing. Maybe the more people know and understand about it, the better they will act around them. We can all stand to learn a bit more compassion.
Just to highlight a bit more, my son Thomas has a small cavity. It’s not hurting him, but Jane still wants to get it worked on. Leave it to her, as the daughter of a dentist, to find it. In any case, if Thomas needs to have it worked on, he will probably require general anesthesia and have it done in a hospital. There’s just no way to work inside the mouth of kids with such severe sensory issues with any degree of safety. Just the sound of the drill would be enough to turn him into a wild person. It takes two people to hiold him down just to give him a haircut, and the boy weighs about 65 pounds!
It is allergy season here in Georgia, and metro Atlanta is Allergy Central. A pollen count of 100 is considered high, and we often have readings in the thousands! It is around 200 last I heard and rising. Most individuals with allergies to pollen manifest it with eye, nose and throat irritation, they can get sinus headaches and may have trouble sleeping. Presently, my symptoms (if I have any) are very mild. There’s irritation, but I do just fine without medication. Jane, on the other hand, is miserable despite being constantly medicated. Both of my sons also have allergies, and are also on antibiotics for strep throat.
My students have various ways of manifesting their allergies. A few might have watery eyes and a runny nose. But some also manifest their allergies with an escalation in various behaviors. For instance, Spaz doesn’t eat and drools more than usual. He also will act out more aggressively with a lot more hitting than usual. Taz gets a runny nose, but gets more hyperactive and defiant. Charlie just acts totally spaced out and will probably have several breakthrough seizures before the season is finished.
But we are still relatively drama free for the moment. I can handle sickness, drooling and even just a little aggression; at least from the kids. It’s mostly the adults that tangle me up!
D.
