Going to War October 30, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Uncategorized.Tags: Backstory, disabilities, discrimination, Special Education
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I am currently at war with my school over a really silly, stupid issue. But it does go to a core culture of discrimination against people who have disabilities that is pervasive all through society. I’ll put off blogging the current battle for a bit but go ahead and blog one that took place during my first year with an administration long gone.
In 2000, I was part of a room with 2 other teachers and 6 paras. It was a huge operation, but I saw even then how the students and teachers were marginalized to the remote outskirts of school life and culture. A room that was well-suited for teaching the most severely autistic students (i.e. no windows, mirrors and noise) was taken and given to the next door vocational teacher. We were told that this was temporary until they got industrial certification. That was 8 years ago and it was never given back.
While the health occupations room next door had a fully equipped handicapped accessible bathroom, our students had to go all the way to the other end of the building to use a special restroom by the gym. The closest wheelchair accessible drinking fountain was on the opposite side of the building from the gym through another set of double doors. By the time a wheelchair student went through all that to get a drink, he would need another one by the time he/she got back!
Then we got a student who needed to be changed and catheterized 2x and the only place we had was our little computer room on a computer table. The administration at the time wanted the school nurse to have no part in catherizing this student.
It was an appalling situation. I had fire in my gut from just having my own son diagnosed with a form of autism. So it was that I filed a section 504 complaint against the entire administration listing how they were seemingly and actively discriminating against these students. And this was done without the considerable knowledge of disabilities and the law that I have today. But it did get everyone’s attention. We ended up meeting with the county special education director to address the complaints. Notably missing from that meeting were the principal and associate principal who were the ones who I had the biggest beef with. The principal retired and the associate didn’t talk to me for a year. And that was only after one of my students kicked in the shin. We ended up making peace once she darkened my door and saw what I was doing and who I was doing it with. She was a lot more supportive then.
I wish I could say that I was totally victorious in that war. I had to wage this war for several years. We got a changing table and a place to catheterize and change our student…6 months after I filed the complaint. The nurse was available to use whenever I needed simply because I forced the issue and defied administrative directives not to get the nurse involved.
The room that was taken was never returned, but we no longer require the space. They remodeled our restroom 3 years later when a parent finally raised a ruckus with considerable support from me. Accessible drinking fountains were installed about the same time.
My reputation for being willing to fight became widely known and I found I didn’t have to do it is as much. But I also think I became somewhat complacent. I was willing to compromise and avoid rocking the boat. There is something to be said for being politically skilled in order to get what you want.
At heart, I am generally an avoider when it comes to conflict. However, if I am forced to fight, I fight to win. And once my ire gets ignited to the boiling point, I appeal to the William T. Sherman school of thought. Basically, if I’m going to war, I’m going make conflict with me so unpleasant that you won’t want to do it again very soon.
And it has been too long since I’ve gone after the culture of discrimination. There really is a rampant culture of discrimination that exists in the larger culture as well as the school culture. Sometimes government regulations help but often times they hurt. No Child Left Behind put special emphasis on students with disabilities, however it also stigmatized those students and the teachers who teach them. If you look at the movement towards paying teachers on the basis of student test scores, this inherently creates a hostile atmosphere against every student who has a disability that slows them down. And teaching the students that I teach who do not take the standardized tests pretty much means that I can not apply for Georgia’s Master Teacher program. It is no wonder that students that are slower sense the culture of hostility and drop out. It is also no wonder that many of the teachers who teach special education follow suit and move on to other fields thus resulting in the highest turnover rate among any group in teaching.
If there is a problem or a need, it seems to only get addressed when it affects the regular education population. If you are a special education teacher, you are the one who is going to be moved, marginalized, and put off. Your classroom will be the most uncomfortable, your supply budget will be the smallest, your computer will be the oldest, your equipment will barely function. If there is a spare closet, basement, trailer or dungeon, that is where you will be teaching. It will be somewhere that is unsuitable for the regular kids and yet perfectly fine for you.
Those of you who have been teaching special education for any length of time know of what I speak. It happens pretty much all the time, and everywhere I’ve taught, special education has been relegated to the fringe, outskirts and outposts.
So when I consider this pervasive culture of repression it becomes pretty obvious to me that total integration is the only solution. The only way to gain equal rights is to be in-your-face militant about it because otherwise people will be all content in their little comfort zones. Yes, my students are disruptive. So are all the other students. But I am sick and tired of us being pushed to the back of the bus every time a disability is inconvenient. Anyone can teach a “normal” student who is always compliant. They often learn in spite of what teachers do. But it’s the exceptional students who demand more expertise and skill. Those are the students who need to make the most gains and who need the most attention. The problem is not that my students can’t learn. The problem is that no one wants to put forth the resources (money) needed to pay someone to teach them the way they need to be taught. In order to make any sort of gain, they need 1:1 intensive teaching. And no public school is going to pay for 30 hrs/week of 1:1 instruction for a student with severe disabilities who will only make minimal gains with that sort of dedicated effort.
So what’s the use of total integration? It’s to help educate the rest of the school population about disabilities and tolerance. Right now, our non-integration serves to sustain the current climate where discrimination and oppression are the norm.
Should Everyone Use the Same Lesson Plan Template? October 26, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Regular Ed, Special Education, Teachers.Tags: lesson plans
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A typical Sunday ritual for me is to work on lesson plans for the next week. I suspect this is true for many teachers. It helps me re-orient to where I’m heading and what I need to do to get ready for whatever is coming up after doing my best to NOT think about school for the past 48 or so hours.
I have struggled with lesson plans for the past 8+ years, but I finally have something that kind of works for me. Unfortunately, I’m not in synch with all the other teachers in my building. What else is new?
Basically, the principal wants everyone to turn in lesson plans every week. At first, I had major problems with this, but I quickly realized it is not that big of a deal. Like I say, it helps orient me to the upcoming tasks. However, he is insisting that everyone in the building conform to one lesson plan template. That is a problem for me. The template takes up two pages and there are vast stretches of real estate that do not apply to me and my students. I can get everything I need on one page per subject. I teach the 4 basic subjects (ELA, maths, science, social studies) plus everything else they are going to ever need. And their needs are considerable. At least this seems to be the expectation that I have as a self-contained teacher. With my own template, I stretch that to 6 subjects/plans to more closely align with the GAA. With the template, I’m only doing the basic 4. So the universal template matches a theory (a very flawed one, IMO) but not the practice, at least in my case.
I tried the template for 3 weeks. It depressed me, because it includes spaces for remediation, homework, modifications, adaptations, activating strategies, assessment methods, enrichment, and a materials list that is totally inadequate for me. It felt like having to write 4 IEP’s every single week. I really, really wish my kids could do things the way the other kids in the high school do them. I wish I could teach them all the same way with only a few (or many) accomodations and modifications. But there is nothing that I do academically that is NOT some sort of modifaction! It is 100% remedial! The template simply reinforces my feeling of being totally separated from the rest of the school in terms of its mission and improvement plan. I’m not raising test scores or increasing the graduation rate.
Ironically, I was involved in adapting the universal template a bit to help other teachers be able to use it. It necessarily involved hacking the template and then making a minor adjustment so that the 2 pages could be in a single document. I kept it true to the original format and with some help from a tech person in the building managed to put it back together. Teachers still can’t change the color, font or anything else on it. I disliked it but decided to give it a try. There was some discussion of the lesson plan when it was being developed, so the case was made that it was made with our input. While that is somewhat true, I feel like there should ahve been a follow-up after everyone had a chance to use the thing for a few weeks. The universal template was in a beta stage, at best, when we were told all of us had to use it.
One problem that I have (and it would exist no matter what I was teaching) is the utility of a uniform lesson plan template for every teacher. I feel like this is simply taking us further down the road of conformity and stripping away more individuality and creativity. I’m not sure why having everyone use the same lesson plan is important. Are we still in a factory model where we are turning out machines that must conform to all the same standards with very small tolerance for deviation? Is it critical for the English teacher to use the exact same lesson plan template as the vocational agriculture teacher? Why? Are the administrators who are doing the evaluating incapable of recognizing the presence or absence of the essential elements of the plan? I’m just askin’! Our economy is moving in the opposite direction as our schools, or so it seems to me. Never in my relatively short life span have I seen a time where creativity held such a big premium in the work force. With the emphasis on originality and the creation of new knowledge and content going on, schools are quickly becoming dated institutions. Things like this just reinforce the stone age within which the age of low tolerance for diversity is set. And low tolerance for diversity is the nursery of discrimination. As if me and my students need more of that!
Is anyone else out there who deals with a population like this required to use a uniform lesson plan template? How do you manage/cope?
Actually, I’m interested in hearing how all teachers feel about lesson plan templates. Are they good? Or are you indifferent? Or am I making a big deal out of nothing?
I’ll attach my own template so you can look at it and then I’ll attach one of the new templates so you can see it. Note that my own plan covers all 6 topics while the new template covers just one. I just don’t like all the wasted space of the new one.
A. My Template (all subjects)
B. The New Template that principal wants everyone to use (ELA):
Yes, my lessons are pretty simple and static, mostly because my students require hundreds and even thousands of trials to learn a new skill.
Which would you prefer– A or B?
D.
Para(pro) Olympics October 17, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Future Teachers, Paraeducators, Special Education, Teachers.Tags: Paraeducators, parapros, student acheivement
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This year, I have probably the best para team that I’ve ever had. I’ve had many good paras, but the ones this year are 100% competent, educated and looking forward to becoming teachers on their own. The trouble has been that I haven’t truly been utilizing them to their fullest potential and have not really challenged them enough. This is a real common weakness among teachers who would rather work together as colleagues (or even work alone) rather than supervise and evaluate. As teachers, we would just as soon have our paras just know what to do and do it without having to be told. Telling someone who we regard as a colleague what to do is an awkward thing. But from a para perspective, the situation is even more awkward.
On one hand, we like our paras to take initiative. But on the other hand, we like them to have good judgement. “Good Judgement” means doing things the way WE would do them, which involves a higher degree of mind reading than you might think. Mind reading is definitely on a higher pay grade than that of most paras. Sometimes you can click just right, which I’ve been able to do with some over the years, or at least come close to it. Other times, it can be a long battle which neither the para nor the teacher really want to fight. I see more passive-aggressive battles between teachers and paras than anywhere else.
These three people that I have are pretty good but vastly underutilized. I needed to find some why to see if I could better utilize them and take advantage of their abilities. I also wanted to see what those abilities were. I also wondered how possible it would be to assess thei competentce. So, I designed a bit of a competition between them.
At first, it seemed like a good idea. But then after I had mapped it out, it seemed a bit crazy and stupid. so I just threw it out to them to see what they thought. To my surprise they bought into it. Or at least they seemed to. I have two paras who are pretty competetive. Coach#3 (no surprise there) and my other new para who I’ll just call Georgianne. I’d call her Georgia, but that might get too confusing since that’s the state we live in. And she is a Bulldog fan, so it fits. Georgianne is VERY competitive and seems pretty driven. The other two will not be given any slack. The third, Patience, has been with me for a few years and is the most experienced. She’s also not as competetive but is up for the challenge if she’ll take it on.
Basically, each pra has a student they work with independently, while I work with another small group. I outlined 5 basic skills on which I would assess each of those students.
1. Tell me “how many” using a Gotalk if I show them a certain number of objects (1-4)
2. Point to a number 1-9
3. Correctly answer “What is your name” by pointing to their own face on a Gotalk.
4. Point to a correct shape (circle, square, triangle, star).
5. Draw a circle, square or circle.
Plus they each would have to be able to answer 5 yes-no questions. I already told them the questions, so it’s no secret. No need to make this harder than it already is.
The students really are pretty evenly matched. However, in order to compensate for this, each para will be trying to teach a set of three pictures/words to 2 of my other students. Each para has three pictures, so if I say “point to the kite” the student will point to the correct picture from an array of three. So I’ll see if any of the paras succeed in teaching either or both of these students how to identify their pictures.
Part of the design of this is to stretch the paras but it also hopefully will get them to interact with two students they are less likely to engage with on a more regular basis in instructional tasks. It gives them a challenge to shoot for, and it is pretty easily measured. These are pretty much all discrete trial tasks. The fact of the matter is that my time for interacting with each of these students seems really limited and so I’m expanding their instructional time by giving the paras a more explicit direction in which to travel.
I haven’t promised the winner anything except bragging rights, as of yet. I think I could manage to put $20 on the line easily enough, tho. Any ideas what else would be a worthwhile thing to offer the winner of such a contest?
It’s as much of a study as a contest, and I’ll be there to help each of them however I can. Getting them to more fully committ to the outcome might help shake loose some additional questions and issues. I primarily do group work, plus deal with the most profound students plus all the other things we have to do with toiletting and feeding.
It will be interesting to see how this thing works. Is it crazy? Too compettitive? It does have the virtue of being novel, and I’m not sure I would have tried it with a different group of paras than the ones I have this year. It just so happens that I have 3 who I think can handle it and they think they can handle it. We’ll just have to see.
A Few NICE Words About NCLB October 13, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Ed Policy Discussion, NCLB, Special Ed., Special Education.Tags: NCLB, No Child Left Behind
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I have been bashing No Child Left Behind pretty much nonstop for the last 3 years. Most educators hate it with a flamey white hot passion. NCLB has done some very bad things for education, teaching and students. I will return to my regularly scheduled NCLB bashing right after this little break.
So what are some good things that have happened since the passage of NCLB? Let me list them….
1.
Okay! Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to drop a comment in the box!
Okay, seriously, there are a couple of things that I would consider improvements under NCLB.
First, because of the new emphasis on a standards-based curriculum, schools seem a bit more streamlined in their mission and focus. By that, I mean in the past schools seemed a bit lost in their mission and seemed focused on mitigating various social ills and inequalities. The mission was so diffused that they couldn’t do anything right. Schools are still expected to accomplish more things, but now that emphasis is codified within state standards. This does have some very real consequences within special education, especially the goals and objectives, but that is an entirely different post.
Another benefit that I am going to have to allow is the fact that many students within “the golden band” have benefitted. That is, those students who were just below the line in proficiency. In fact, we have seen some students who were further behind catch up faster than expected within this year’s 9th grade class. Every 9th grader with a mild disability is in a regular class, and most of those classes are co-taught. This is good for the co-teaching even though co-teaching is an expensive proposition. This is the one big area where funding could do a lot of good.
Within my own class, this focus on academics has pretty much taken me off the hook for a lot of the stuff we used to have to do. Technically, as a teacher, this is a positive thing. As a parent, this would not be a very good thing. However, remember the focus is on the state standards. We can not justify spending time and money on things that are not focused on the standards. Communication has become a more critical area and as we try to get our students to respond and adaptive technology has been stressed more. Schools could use more monetary help in this area, too. Specific grants towards adaptive technology research as well as developing more open source solutions would benefit schools and parents who are all under budget restrictions. But in the meantime, toileting, feeding and social skills are fading from the table because they are not standards-based. The school’s mission is to deliver the state-mandated curriculum, and since NCLB trumps IDEA, that is where teachers are going to be spending most of their time.
I have had to develop my sense of humor, and in that respect NCLB has enriched me. I sit with my little groups studying American literature, algebra, geometry and all manner of social studies and science. The few brave teachers who darken my door walk in, look and then shake their heads in amazement before walking out. I am taking thousands of photos of us doing this stuff, and it is pretty crazy. I manage to bring things down to their level but am thinking about simply abandoning all the prerequisites and just get pictures of them doing some calculus, Latin and AP economics along with some physics. Why not?
I’ve had to stretch my concept of “teaching” and “learning” in order to make the curriculum fit with my kids. Again, a wry sense of humor does not hurt, because if you take any of this too seriously, it will depress you beyond words. My creativity has been tested and over time I think I’m getting more clever about how to work the system and have some fun with it at the same time.
As you can see, many of the “good” things are rather mixed and half of them are as personal benefits that may or may not have anything to do with student achievement. “Student achievement” is more than simply one test score, and I’ve been challenged this year with finding creative ways to measure and track it unlike the federal government who has no interest in creativity.
PETA Cashing in on the Autism Fear Factor October 7, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Blogging, Parents and parenting, political activism.Tags: allergies, autism, dairy, dairy farming, PETA, soy
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I was trying to catch up on some blog reading and checked in with one of my favorites today (I don’t visit as often as I ought). I followed her link to the PETA website, and sure enough there was that abominable billboard, trying to connect dairy with autism. Once again, those who are peddling fear, misinformation and general ignorance are on the make at the expense of those who have children who are autistic. The exploitation of autism for personal or political gain knows no bounds, does it? Whether you’re an aging centerfold model looking for more attention and money or an organization looking to further a political agenda, autism is like an over ripe golden apple just waiting to be exploited and harvested.
A good deal of my outrage on this particular issue is personal. You see, I was raised on a dairy farm. Any kid who was raised on a dairy farm would laugh hysterically at the mere suggestion that dairy cattle are not treated ethically or humanely. These animals have to be among the most humanely and ethically treated creatures in the entire world! They are pampered to excess by their owners! Any proper dairyman (or woman) will tell you that the production of milk is as much of a state of mind as it is proper nutrition for the animal. They need to feel comfortable in order to produce the most milk. That means they have to be happy, non stressed and healthy. A happy contented cow is a major milk producing cow.
This is in contrast to the lives of those who are actually milking and caring for the cows. Happiness, contentment and lack of stress are not prerequisites for being able to milk a cow. My siblings and I hated milking cows. And yet, we were expected to do it. There is no such thing as a 5 day-a-week cow. It was 365 days/year. We couldn’t go on long vacations or travel more than 4hours from home as a family because we had to be back home to take care of the bloody cattle. Those cattle ruled over us! Everything we did was in service to their needs! So this crap about not treating them ethically is total rubbish. Chickens and pigs, yeah I might partially understand that. Perhaps even beef cattle. But not dairy cattle. PETA is off their rocker. But that’s not where the personal side of this story ends. Oh no, there is more.
About 16 years after I milked my last cow, I became a father to a boy on the autistic spectrum. He was all kinds of colicky and never really breast fed due to a stint in the NICU. Since his mother had a mild milk allergy, she figured his crankiness and reflux was due to him having a milk allergy. We never tested him for it, it was just sort of assumed. So he got the lactose-free formula and then when he started drinking “milk” he was drinking soy milk. All this occurred mostly before we even knew he was on the autistic spectrum. And for years, we never really questioned it.
Fast forward to 3 months ago. Jane decided to test Thomas for allergies because he complained about stomach ache and headaches at school. Those symptoms mostly disappeared once school was out, but Jane still went ahead with the tests. By the time the test results came back, Thomas didn’t really exhibit any physical symptoms of whatever was bugging him a couple months earlier. But the results were kind of shocking. The tests did show an extremely mild reaction to milk. However there was one thing that he was so allergic to, that it was absolutely and literally off the chart. Yep, that would be SOY! So, we are on a soy-free diet and he does drink regular milk but not without protesting sometimes.
And he is still autistic. He was before any of the diets and he’s remained so after whatever diet/fad we’ve tried. He’s on the somewhat mild side of the spectrum (or at least that’s what I’m hopeful of) but he is still himself. He does not need to be cured as much as he needs to be self-assured that he is okay. He needs to know that he is safe, that he can eat things without worrying whether or not whatever he eats is going to poison him. Paranoia is an extremely contagious condition, and unfortunately I know of no vaccine against it other than a good healthy dose of skepticism. Even that isn’t going to make you immune to fear, guilt, shame, worry, insecurity and other assorted neurotic psychopathologies that organizations like PETA are trying to introduce. Let’s face it; you don’t advertise without the hope that your message goes viral. PETA was trying to introduce a pathogenic virus into the consciousness of those who saw their billboard in order to infect the population with fear, shame and guilt by using autism as a primary vector. This is more dangerous and costly than West Nile or Bird Flu because it preys on the fear mongering already sown by other infectious agents who want to depict autism as a horrible death sentence. Fortunately it was taken down but probabl not without already infecting a large segment of the New Jersey population.
I do wish the CDC would do something about the contagion that seems to grip and handicap any meaningful discussion of autism and those who have it.
D.
Gov. Sarah Palin October 3, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Ed Policy Discussion, NCLB, Special Education, political activism.Tags: community reinvestment act, education, financial crisis, interview, NCLB, Palin
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Okay, I suppose its about time I weigh in on the big election race, since that is one of the biggest stories around the nation and around the world. I am sure there is considerable buzz and excitement within the disability/special education community concerning Sarah Palin’s candidacy for Vice President. One of the very first things she noted in her acceptance speech was that she will be an advocate for families of children with special needs. And this is a very positive thing in her favor, indeed.
But I want to talk for a few seconds about how the candidates have been handling education issues, in general. That is to say, they have absolutely NOT been handling it at all. Obama was the first to bring it up at the tail end of his debate with John McCain last Tuesday, and basically it was about funding NCLB. The primary position of his party has been one of saying that the main problem of NCLB is funding. I certainly do agree that this business of passing unfunded mandates is an extremely nasty habit in Washington, and education is the most frequent recipient of this shabby treatment. In fact, if you fail to pony up and comply, they’ll take away what little funding you already get from the feds. Neither party has everseriously considered fully funding IDEA, and this is something that has been on the books for 35 years. Why would NCLB get any better treatment? However, the problems with NCLB go much deeper than just money. It lacks fundamental fairness and undermines IDEA by forcing a one-size-fits-all approach to education. It buttresses a factory-style education system developed to produce factory workers. What is the future of factory workers in America in the 21st century?
Anyway, neither presidential candidate has bothered much with education as an issue. Edin08 has been a dismal failure as far as raising awareness of education issues in this campaign. An opportunity to lay out new ground and “build a bridge to the future” has been squandered. If you’re concerned about education, you’re going to have to hold your nose in this election. I will say for my part, the senate election is actually a bigger one for me, because I’m going to see to it that Saxby Chambliss will not be voting to reauthorize NCLB.
So back to Ms. Palin…
When I first heard about John McCain’s pick for VP, I was as shocked as everyone else. I figured Romney or even Huckabee would be more natural choices. Who was this woman? so like everyone else, I went and searched for whatever I could find out about her. The fact that her youngest son had Down syndrome was one of the earliest bits of interesting information to come out about her. Not long after that, there was all the stuff about the state trooper scandal, her oldest daughter’s pregnancy and all that.
I watched her announcement speech and she seemed pretty…well awfully pretty! She also seemed very confident and well-poised. As a former Huckabeesupporter, I was actually happy with the choice on a lot of levels. Her speech at the convention was truly electrifying in a lot of ways. But after that speech, a couple of things bothered me. First off, John McCain was with her every single time she was out on the campaign trail. It was like he was some sort of guardian angel for her or something. She never did or said anything without him being right there, and I saw that as him having to hold her hand. It was just an embarrassing display of paternalism or condescension or maybe even sexism. Heck if I know. I actually suspected that while she might be cute and poised, she might also be kind of dumb, like many other beauty pageant contestants. The stereotype is there for a reason. Heaven knows, I would rather look at her than Joe Biden the next 4 years, but not if she’s going to be incompetent.
The interviews she had with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson were partially journalistic hack jobs. Bush Doctrine? I’m not sure I even agree with how that is being pinned on GW. And it is perfectly reasonable that intelligent people can say that it is possible for the earth to cool and warm regardless of what people do i.e global warming. The passport question was dumb at the outset. While the questions about foreign policy were sort of on target, no questions like that were everasked by the media about Obama’s experienced. And then when Palin couldn’t give exact answers on McCain’s record of asking for more regulations, Couric just kept dogging her on it over and over.
Having said all that, Palin’s repertoire of answers have been narrow, at best. She talks about energy, she talks about giving power back to the people, she talks about being a hockey mom. She talks about being a maverick and she talks about reforming Washington. Those are her talking points. In light of that, her mention of education in the debate was a breath of fresh air from the usual agenda and script. She did bring up some hostility toward NCLB, which you’ll notice Biden simply said was underfunded. I give Palin high marks for not calling it “George Bush’s No child Left Behind.” She’s the only one on the ticket of either party who didn’t vote for it. That alone gets some support from me. But at the same time, she was too vague about what she might do and Trig isn’t old enough yet for her to know much about how IDEA has been gutted and disemboweled by NCLB. I thought she held her own in the debate okay, but I would really like to see her more on her own before the election. Sure she might be an advocate for the special needs community, but she’s not going to be much of an advocate if she’s seen as being dumb and incompetent. She really hasn’t proven much to me and I’m not sure if she’s proven enough to get my vote. I’ve swung to third party candidates more than once before in order to escape having to make such a stinky choice.
If Obama could make a spirited effort to address education beyond just spending more money, he could still get my vote. But I think it was the federalization of our schools that has gotten us in this mess in the first place. Obama is not going to lessen federal involvement and regulation because he has consistently chosen MORE regulation and federal management.
I think I’m going to hear someone say something about bank regulation and the need for more and how our current financial crisis was caused by the lack of oversight. Let’s nip that right now. There was actually TOO MUCH oversight in the form of of the Community Reinvestment Act, that actually rewarded banks for making these bad loans. Mainly, it was more regulation and interference by Washington that caused this crisis in the first place. Regulation by the feds in order to combat one form of abuse resulted in an abuse of a far more serious nature.
D.
More GAA Tips and Tricks October 2, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Ed Policy Discussion, Special Education.Tags: GAA, georgia alternate assessment
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When you all went through your Georgia alternate Assessment (GAA) training, you may have encountered a slide that looked something like this:
What is a prerequisite skill
- In order for an instructional task to align as a prerequisite skill, it must address the specific aspects of the element.
- In the case of this standard/element, the prerequisite skill would have to somehow address the concept of variables or missing values.
- Although mathematical symbols are often associated with algebra, it is not necessary to be able to use or identify them in order to be able to solve for a variable.
- For most students with significant cognitive disabilities, it may never be meaningful, purposeful, or attainable to solve higher grade-level algebraic equations that require the understanding of mathematical symbols.
- But they can do Algebra
The bold, italicized part is what I’d like to direct your attention to. You can see the full Power Point here, and this happens to be from slide #20. And that last statement is pretty funny just by itself. “But they can do Algebra.”
B.F. Skinner taught pigeons to play ping pong, so it shouldn’t be surprising that most students with severe cognative disabilities could learn a bit of algebra. But even Skinner realized that teaching pigeons to do tricks like this wasn’t particularly useful. If teaching these kids to do Algebra is not purposeful or meaningful, just exactly why are we spending ungodly amounts of money trying to do it and then showing that we did it? At least the pigeons are entertaining! Kids aren’t pigeons and when it takes hundreds and possibly thousands of trials to teach the simplest of tasks, it stands to reason that the best use of limited time and resources would be spent on teaching tasks that are purposeful, meaningful and attainable. But that is our government at work.
So I have developed a bit of a template for choosing tasks for the GAA, and once I got in the groove, it made the experience a lot less traumatic for me and the students. What it involved was looking at how I was going to show improvement between collection period #1 and collection period #2. Since the entire GAA lasts less than 6 months (plus there’s a lot of breaks in between) there is little chance that a student will master a grade level task in that amount of time, especially at the high school level. Progress might occur, but I have students that still can not recognize their name or their own face after 15+ years of instruction. Let’s be realistic.
Fortunately there are many ways to show progress, and by employing a simple strategy you can do it and still keep most of your hair.
- Decreasing the prompt level: getting the student to accomplish a task more independently is progress. In collection period #1, the bar is set relatively low. you are introducing the standard, topic, and prerequisite skill to them. This task will not necessarily differ from how their peers are introduced to a new topic. You are going to present something to them or have them read it. Since our kids can’t read, you can read it to them. Or you can show a video, movie or presentation on the topic. The interaction the student has with the topic will look pretty minimal. Like their regular peers, they are vessels being passively filed with knowledge and wisdom. You could show a student the movie Tom Sawyer and document the student watching it. Note the student’s attention level, interest, mood and any reactions they make to the movie or story. Maybe get them to point to the screen. Take pictures. This is task one.
Task two might be looking at flashcards or working with the vocabulary of the topic. Almost everey subject involves new vocabulary, so this is an easy one. You can put the new words on a voice output device and have them practice “saying” the words. Include lots of prompting and document that prompting level. At this initial stage, there should be lots of it. Take notes and take pictures.
I do use mostly pictures, but occasionally go into audio and video to document what I do. I take tons of pictures and video. In order to document a single task with a series of 4-5 pictures, I will take hundredsof shots…of each student. Even students not taking the GAA are going to get in on the photo shoot. While GAA spurs me on to do this, I make it worth my while by puting together big slide show productions for parents and these are video presentations my kids really like watching. But the point is, is that you really need to have a ton of documentation in order to pick and choose the best. Often, I’ll do video, sound and photos at the exact same time and then pick which one I like best later. The point is that you want the flexibility that comes with having choices. My first year, I didn’t have enough choices for my evidence and the only ones I had were lousy. So now I start collecting early and I collect all the time with the goal of getting the right sort of documentation that looks the best.
Collection period #1 is a set up for collection period #2. I know exactly what we’re doing for collection period #2 before I even finish #1. In the first period, the bar is intentionally low and more realistically mirrors the experience they would get in a typical classroom. I deliberately keep things low tech and the involvement low with high prompting levels and rates. In collection period #2, it’s time to pull out all the stops and get that student interacting with the material as much as possible in the best way possible. This is where I bring out all of my high tech adaptive technology. Now the student can read independently using his/her switches. They can read an adaptation of stories and textbook using a switch and having the material on a power point. The student might even be able to presenta power point to a class! I’ll use my voice output devices and Intellikeys and whatever else I can get to bring the student more fully into the content. This second collection period is also when I generalize outside of my classroom and into the general ed. setting and into the comunity. Get them listening and speaking with other people nd you have this part of the GAA covered. So a task for this period involves reading more indepently, speaking with others and doing more manipulating. A second task will involve some sort of test or quiz for mastery. This can be identifying characters, elements, figures, historical people or whatever from an array of 2 or three. Again, I’ll use some technology like a switch to enable the student to complete this as independently as possible.
If you work on this on an ongoing basis for the rest of the semester, you can really make things less painful for you later on. That is, DO NOT procrastinate! You can wait on filling out entry sheets, but you need to be collecting something pretty much every single day from now until Thanksgiving. Then between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you are just putting the portfolios together. Keep a planning sheet on each child and check off each task/subject as you complete it.
A lot of the training you get regarding the GAA is all about the regulations and format of it, without getting into details on how exactly you’re going to make this work. That’s because the people who come up with this stuff don’t really know. All they know is that they can do Algebra. gaa-blank-planning-sheet
I already have the ELA tasks pretty well nailed down, and have a good start on my math tasks. For science I want to do states of matter, but how to you graphically represent “gas”? Boardmaker doesn’t have anything so I’m going to have to either make up my own or find a different standard. Any ideas?
Good luck!
D.
