I don’t always agree with everything she posts, but Carol Sadler is definitely someone that is worth following on Facebook.  And she recently posted this:

Advocates Advice – We are quickly moving into “IEP Season”. Time to get your year end IEP meetings scheduled and on the books. Better to get scheduled in advance to make sure you have time to invite your help. Be sure to notify the school you will tape record the meeting and ask for a Draft copy of the IEP “that has been updated” with their proposed PLOP’s, accommodations and goals/objectives. Take the time to compare the Draft line by line to last year’s IEP to see what they changed and what they are proposing and make sure it is appropriate.

If you are a teacher and reading this, your hair might be turning a bit white or falling out.  Or you might be tempted to start pulling it out.  Let me tell you that what she is suggesting should be a matter of best practice for competent teachers.  Getting the meetings on the calendar early serves everyone well, and knowing who all is going to be attending will help secure a place that is big enough for everyone.

Tape recording the meeting (or using an mp3 recorder) is not a big deal.  If you are a teacher, bring your own to the meeting as well.  Both the parent and the district should be recording at the same time.  There is no presumption of privacy at these meetings, even though they are confidential.  You can’t podcast the meeting.  But by now teachers need to be getting used to being in the spotlight,  being recorded at any time, any where.  Transparency is our friend.  Stop being hostile to it, and open up your records, your mind, your intentions and your heart to the parents of the children you teach.  You might discover a wealth of rewards await you as the relationship transforms from confrontation to cooperation.

The idea of having a draft prepared a week ahead seems to always trip up teacher case managers. They can not seem to wrap their minds around the idea of moving their entire time table up one week.  You have to write this thing one way or another.  Stop the procrastinating and the excuse-making and just do it, and get it done.  You send it out a week or so ahead of time, with “DRAFT” written by hand in big letters, and attach a note “Please look over the enclosed proposed IEP DRAFT.  Please write down any concerns and/or suggested changes that you might have on the draft and send it back to me so I can include them and make sure they are acceptable to you before the meeting.”

Imagine an IEP that is less than an hour long, and everyone leaves the room smiling, and pleased and relaxed, feeling good about what just occurred.  If you have several annual reviews that are NOT like this then you should probably consider sending out your drafts well in advance so parents can look at them.  But aside from pleasing a parent, there are also other good reasons to move your time table up a week.  Remember you HAVE to write the thing regardless.  Why not do it well in advance when you can actually THINK about what you are writing instead of having that deadline looming over you?  You will discover that you make better choices and decisions when you are not rushed and pressured.  And if there are problems looming ahead, you have some time to begin addressing them before the meeting with the parents and the rest of the team.

I always did this as a matter of regular practice.  I always tried to get the draft done and out at least 4 days ahead of the meeting regardless of who the parent was.  If I get a parent making a request like Carol, guess what?  I move my time table up TWO weeks!  I want to swap IEP drafts, ideas and suggestions several times in advance of this meeting if at all possible.   If the parent is bringing an advocate, then I would rather the advocate look over my IEP, mark and bleed all over it with red ink and send it back however many times before the meeting, rather than rip me to shreds for hours in front of the rest of the team.  The advocate will have plenty of fodder for bloodletting at the meeting from other members of the IEP team but not me if I can do anything about it.

This is because the other members of my team balked at writing their portions in advance.  The occupational therapists, physical therapists and speech language pathologists have HUGE caseloads and I understand that.  BUT the workload is exactly the same whether you do it now or later.  I put all members of my team on notice as to the day the draft is going out.  It is up to them if they are ready or not, and 95% of the time, they failed to meet that deadline.

IEPs are exactly the same as alternate assessments that way.  If you procrastinate, you will end up under a huge backlog, and it will seem like a dark pit that you forever are trying to dig yourself out of as each deadline comes and overwhelms you.  You have got to get ahead and try to stay ahead.  Give yourself some wiggle room.  Waiting until the night before is a terrible choice that invites mistakes and trouble.

I actually attended one middle school meeting where everyone was there except the caseload manager.  When I asked the SLP where she was, I saw an eye roll and she whispered “She’s upstairs trying to write the IEP!”  This was a meeting that was already an hour late.  It was a good thing that parent was not paying Carol’s hourly rate!

Previously, a PLN was a “Professional” Learning Network: a somewhat fixed group of people that you join or are asked to join for your professional development. Now PLN is being used instead to indicate a “Personal” Learning Network: a very personal (individual) set of people you choose to follow or communicate with for your professional development, usually outside of any formal requirement.

Today’s Mightybell, like many of the other ones, consists of something that I have done somewhat naturally without necessarily doing it with the explicit purpose of building the network.  The main point of today’s exercise was using the RSS feed in order to subscribe to various blogs and websites, and then using some sort of service or tool to aggregate this information.  I actually do use both Google Reader and iGoogle to gather and organize my RSS feeds and information.  iGoogle is my tool of choice because the layout is more appealing and I can pick and choose what I want to read much easier.

I also use RSS to subscribe to various podcasts and use iTunes or another open source program like Banshee in order to subscribe to podcasts.  Podcasts are actually slightly better for me because I often find my reading time at a real premium.

In fact, te single biggest complaint or concern from fellow Mightybell travelers is pretty much the same: having too much information and sifting through it all.  I almost always get behind on all of my subscriptions and end up only reading or listening to a fraction of what I have coming in.  I’ll talk a little more about this overload in the next exercise, but it really is a concern even though I am not even using all of the tools available.  I have lots of interests, it is just a matter of managing them all!

For me there also has to be some balance between reading and writing.  Reading more makes me a better writer for sure, but I need to find a balance in order to continue to be part of the network and environment that I choose to participate in.  The two go together for me, so the PLN is a crucial piece.

The biggest weakness for me, at least at present, is how to leverage this network into something that has a more tangible benefit professionally.  I have interests and enjoy pursuing those through reading or writing.  But it is only recently that I have been concerned about these pursuits having some sort of monetary value.  I have always seen the reading and writing as a sort of sideline hobby, but it IS something I enjoy doing.  I still scratch my head when I consider that people would actually pay to read something that I write.  The Thinking Person’s Guide To Autism is at least a step in helping me see some potential in that direction.  But generally the biggest satisfaction for me is derived from helping other people  which is what I think underlies most of the content and people in my PLN.

I have enjoyed contributing online and for the most part have enjoyed my fellow travellers.  The biggest hurdle I have faced, and still face, is administrators who are scared to death of content that they can not control.   Add a few stories like the ones about Ashley Payne and Dr. Talvatie-Siple and it  puts a real chill on social networking and sharing anything!  And this is where the habitudes kick in.

As content creators we have to own what we put out.  This takes a lot of courage.  When I was blogging anonymously, I was able to write much more honestly but I was not able to really help the people that mattered most to me.  Or help anyone outside of the blog.  So now I write with more sensitivity and more responsibly.  As an anonymous blogger I could hurl out ideas, even some very good ideas, but I didn’t take as much responsibility for what I was saying as I do today.

The best example of the worst sort of online habitutes cultivated by anonymity is Youtube comments.  Dial up any popular video and read the comments.  That sucking sound you hear is civility being being sucked out of the universe as people leave stupid and hateful comments.  And this happens as well in the blogging world,but for some reason Youtube had a bigger population of degenerate haters.  However, sometimes the feedback is brutally honest.  When I have posted a video that was kind of crappy, people did not hesitate to tell me exactly how crappy is was.

As a professional, I can’t afford that same level of honesty without being willing to back it up in some way.  But I am also more conscious of the person on the other side of the screen.  They had the courage to put something out there for others to see and comment and even if it isn’t the best, they did create something original.

And that is something that we need to do with our students; all of them.  Encourage some risk taking and creativity, while at the same time making sure that the feedback we offer is constructive and honest.

The Professional Association Georgia Educators (PAGE) have said, and are basically still saying, in regards to social media “Don’t Do It” or “If you have to do it, be professional.”    Not doing it is not an option today.  Even the school systems themselves have a presence on Facebook.

So a person needs to be aware of what is out there, and they need to manage their own online presence.  For instance I have been out there for quite a long time and have a fairly big internet footprint.  There is not a lot I can do about that because once it is out there, it is out there potentially forever.  But I can mak sure that my best stuff is on top.  That means having  Linkedin site that I am active with and gets updated and it is listed on Google.  That means posting useful information here on my blog.  And it might mean contributing meaningfully to other projects.

Students need to manage their personal web presence, because they are inevitably going to post or have things posted about them, that might not be professionally enhancing.  Things that seem like a good idea at the time later turn out to be pretty dumb.  But even the best and smartest can enhance their future goals and options by starting to manage their web presence and putting forth a positive image.  And that is what the management is about; managing your own brand instead of letting others do it for you.

• What sites do you go to regularly to learn new things?
• Are there authors or sites that you “follow?”
• When does the Internet or the Web help your learning, and when does it distract from good learning for you?
• How do you feel about technology and learning?

Where I go depends on what exactly I am learning about.  If I want just a general overview of something I have never heard of, I have no problems going to wikipedia.  I have no idea what a Higgs Boson particle is, so I can go there and learn something about it.  Easy, right?  But I might have never gotten curious enough to learn about it, if it wasn’t for a Youtube video about the subject.  And I discovered that video through this person’s main channel, which is just one of several Youtube channels I subscribe to because, well, because I’m a nerd!  The point of this being that even a distraction can lead to learning.

But the other side of it, is that the internet seems to be built for distraction.  For instance I start this blog post and start looking for Higgs Boson particles, and enter the world of Youtube, the mindless distractions are just a click away.  And it is SOOO easy to say “OH, this is only 2 minutes”…and an hour later I still haven’t finished this because I got lost in videos, Facebook and emails.  This was only supposed to be a 20 minute task!

I have an iGoogle with all of the news and interest sites in one place that I like to regularly read.  I have an education page and a technology page as well as a general news/weather/email/calendar page.   There is so much information, it is almost impossible to keep up with everything!  Another important tool in my internet arsenal is my podcast subscriptions.  I’m going to be on the road a couple hours per day, and the podcasts are a way to continue to learn while on-the-go.

I’ve made a conscious decision to kind of avoid Twitter for the moment, because I sometimes I feel as if I am already swimming in information as it is with blogs I can’t read, podcasts I haven’t gotten around to listening to and other things I have had to skim over.

To be sure the internet is an incredible resource for learning and teaching, and I’ve done my share of both through this blog, Teachertube and other resources.  I notice a lot of other teachers who have joined in and we are looking for ways to leverage this technology to better reach students.  One of the unique and interesting things about Mightybell is that you can support and cheer on colleague through comments or just clicking the “cheer” button which is more or less like a ‘like’ button on the Facebook.  And I notice that feature on my blog as well.  So I can imagine a time when students might be writing and producing content, posting it on the inernet using it as a sort of virtual refrigerator, and then everyone can view it and ‘like’ on it.  Now that seems a lot a lot more realistically motivating than grades or test scores.

A few months ago, I signed up for MightyBell through the Future of Education group that I belong to.  And then I promptly forgot about it, until I started getting the daily email alerts, encouraging me to go on to the next step, which is to say, take the first step.  The initial idea of signing up what to have something blogworthy, thus it might get me writing again.

I know that I am not the only person who is feeling pretty dissatisfied with education and the direction it has been going the past 10 years.  In fact I have never talked to anyone who has anything to do with it, who is totally satisfied with the direction of our educational system.  But the online groups, Future of Education in particular, has at least kept me in the loop when I have otherwise wanted to run away from the education business. It’s still an awkward relationship, but I’m at least willing to give it another go.

Mightybell is simply a string of tasks that is done whenever you feel like it, with a daily email reminding you of what you need to do next.  For instance, step one is signing up for Teacher 2.0.  That was fairly easy, although it took a day to get approved.  The next task was thinking about and listing your talents, as well as thinking about how to recognize student talent.  I sort of breezed through that with teaching being a talent, some writing, dealing with and using technology and applied behavior analysis.  These are all things that when I think about, people either have recognized me for, or they are asking me about.  I was one of the technology nerds as a student and as a teacher, who people ran to when they were having trouble with their computer.

The next task was about passions.  Things I love doing and things I love learning about.  I was pretty stumped and decided I had enough for the day, right there.  Now there are a lot of things I like learning about.  Technology being a big one, along with U.S. History and science.  I like learning about the latest trends in gardening and becoming more self-sufficient.  I like learning about elves and hobbits.  But I don’t know if these are all passions.  I’m pretty sure my family would all agree that I am passoniate about my laptop as I spend most of my time on it.

But a follow-up question asks: Do I spend enough time on my passions?  Lately, the answer has been “no”.  Or at least not enough on where my passions and talents align.  And that is what I’m working through at the moment.  Discovering where my passions and talents align.  It occurred to me the best things that have happened to me in the past month WERE because of my writing right here on this blog.  It’s one of the rare places where the talents and passions seem to intersect.  Of course, the real trick is to get this intersection to pay the bills!

I had a poll once (the only one I’ve ever run here!) where I ask if this blog helps or hurts my chances of getting hired.  It occurs to me that if it hurts, than I might possibly be ill-suited for whatever that job is.  I do love teaching, and it still is a passion of mine.  In many ways, this blog has provided me a platform to do some good teaching.  And some good learning!

Passions and talents don’t need to be the same, but it certainly does make things easier if you can get the two together.

Task completed!

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is a collaborative effort that has brought together a lot of wonderful writers and experts.  It really is the book that I wish I would have had 11 years ago, when our oldest was first identified.  Over the years I had a chance to read a number of the other writers who were also blogging and writing on the subject and became contributers in this book.  We were all working our way through, trying to discover and put together the pieces that would make our lives better, more manageable and happier for everyone in our families.  This book represents the best of what we each discovered and is a field guide for anyone who is working their way through the novelties and oddities posed by autism.

The editors did a fine job of putting this together.  In particular, I want to give a shout to Liz, who has always been a source of encouragement and support to me and my writing.  Thanks so much for allowing me to be a part of such a great resource!

1. Open up the classroom, at least to the parents but also to others: Transparency. Make the place visible! This addresses the problems of isolation and powerlessness. The tendency to isolate this population is exactly the opposite of what should be done. Being visible will minimize the risks of abuse because everyone will see. It also helps educate everyone else about this population. And if there are problems, it will be more difficult to sweep them under the rug. The privacy concerns for these students are secondary to the safety concerns and that needs to be looked at. The privacy and confidentiality provisions of the law have been used to keep things out of the light that would have prevented abuse had they been known in the Fulton County case. Parents did not know their children had been abused until almost 2 years after the final report was released! Keeping secrets never benefits the students.
2. Get them out of the single room and enforce LRE. Least Restrictive Environment is built into the law, but with the most severe group, it is the least enforced. Community-based outings should count toward LRE as they are in the community with nondisabled community members. Also more than one teacher should be involved with these students in a given day. That means they need to move around within the building and spend some part of their day, even a short time, with nondisabled peers. This is a VERY inconvenient thing, but it is part of the law and it is part of the solution that can keep classrooms for the students with the most complicated disabilities from becoming incubators of abuse and neglect.
3. Hire people that are the most qualified and experienced possible. And some schools are not doing that because they need a coach or because there is a relative of someone who needs a job, or because there is a teacher they know of who needs a job but can’t teach in another area. For whatever reason, some administrators are NOT hiring the most qualified and experienced people. This alone might have saved years of abuse, if the recommendation that the existing teacher not have her contract be renewed would have been followed. But that did not happen in the Fulton Middle School. And it does not happen in many other counties. The nepotism and corruption will eventually find your district and be costly. And this goes also for the paras and assistants. The most needy students need the most competent people. But they tend to be staffed in the reverse fashion.
4. Make sure that those who need the most training have some good models. One of the most beneficial things I ever did my first year was visit the classroom of someone who was experienced and qualified. That totally helped change and shape the way I would teach this population. So even if you can’t find someone who is experienced, the chances are there is SOMEONE in the district who is. In my case, that first year it was a middle school teacher. In later years, I was allowed to travel and visit the classrooms of new teachers to help model and demonstrate things to do with them. And sometimes they came and visited me. One of the biggest breakdowns I had was when I asked to visit any other school that had a program the size and scope of the one I had. Sometimes just seeing is believing and if I could have connected with other teachers who were coping with similar challenges I think it would have made life more bearable.
5. Keep the class size manageable. Doubling the size literally triples the problems in this sort of classroom. The logistcs of having enough floor space for wheelchairs, adaptive positioning equipment and just space for the students to be able to move becomes a serious issue. We ended up stacking a lot of the chairs outside when we had the students positioned in other devices, which also had the benefit of letting the chairs air out. Class size is always an issue for all classrooms, but for students with multiple needs, there is always a safety concern as there needs to be enough people t move students efficiently and safely.
6. Connect with others who are in the same business. This is something that does not have to be very costly at all, but can pay dividends in professional growth. In a lot of ways, this blog has functioned that way for me. A lot of special education teachers have found their way here, and have gotten some degree of affirmation knowing they were not alone in their struggles and feelings. Other teachers take this somewhat for granted as there is almost always another math, science or English teacher around with whom to swap ideas and commiserate. It is almost never true for those who teach students with multiple needs that there is someone down the hall to talk to. BUT even having someone across the county can be a source of strength and comfort. Let these folks get together on professional learning days, where they can tackle issues and swap ideas.
7. Let the teacher who is going to supervise and train them help hire new parapros. Imagine if the superintendent did the hiring of everyone from the central office who was going to be in the building. The principal or a committee designated does this for a very important reason, as they know their own culture and their own needs. The same should be true of the classroom serving students with severe disabilities. I actually had the privilege of doing this for a couple of years when we had an administrator who admitted he was less familiar with my classroom and allowed me to sit on on the interviews. I was able to explain what we we did and what the requirements of the job were upfront. It saved a ton of grief down the line when they knew ahead of time that diapers and feeding tubes were involved. As a side benefit, this can also help groom teachers for leadership, helps the administrator know what the teacher needs and expects as well as helps the administrator become more familiar with what is happening in that classroom.
8. Keep the lines of communication open. And this is between everyone, including the families and the administration. This particular population requires more collaboration and communication than any other teaching I have seen or done. NOT having open lines causes more problems when things eventually come to light. I am basically reiterating the call for transparency in point #1. I always wrte something to each parent, each day, about their son or daughter. Most parents were fairly decent about keeping up with my notes and responding to any questions that I had. I tried to make sure that parents especially had as much access to my classroom and had as much awareness as to what was going on as possible. The most uncomfortable position in the world is when a body feels like they have to hide something. Whenever we had staffing cuts and reductions mid year, I always struggled on how to inform parents.
9. Require high standards in regards to student welfare as well as professional and personal integrity and ethics. It’s hard to put a price on such a thing, but this is probably THE biggest thing that could prevent abuse and neglect. It means being conscientious, striving for excellence in all things. “Excellence” with this population is measured differently than in most, as they don’t produce test results. But steady improvement is always something to strive for, as well as fighting against stagnation and regression. This was something that I was never willing to compromise on, even though it became harder and more challenging at times. Mediocrity was simply not acceptable to me. One does need to pick their battles, but in all things I wanted to get the best from my students and then stretch them even more. And I did it. In many ways this has driven my desire to work with a slightly younger population in order to see if I might be able to coax a bit more earlier on. Perhaps we can make that next transition easier for them. But a large part of this involves personal accountability, and doing the right thing even when no one else is looking. It’s one reason why I don’t mind anyone else looking in. I always knew we were doing right by the kids.
10. Everyone needs to be an advocate. It sure would be nice if there were not a need for advocates. But unfortunately there does seem to be a need as I see story after story of teachers abusing students, or of students not getting needed services. I honestly believe that a society will be judged mostly on how it treats its most vulnerable population. It has been my privilege to have been on the front lines of that effort and I would hope that I am on the same side as the family in regards to wanting what is best for that student. I understand the struggles of families who are doing the best they can with the limited resources that they have. I’ve been there and I still am. I am also aware of the realities of the modern school climate with the emphasis on test scores and budgetary constraints. We need to make sure we get the biggest bang for every dollar spent. This is one population where the “free market” currently has no model of service. We ARE the front line in the battle for justice and equality. The arena of disability advocacy is the last and greatest civil rights cause that we face in the U.S. The current economic climate is going to sorely test our society’s moral and ethical resolve to do what is right for those least able to advocate for themselves.

“The Fulton County School System will not tolerate the mistreatment of any children and has strict policies in place to prevent such actions. We have hundreds of caring, devoted individuals who work every day with our students with disabilities.”

This is a statement made by a spokeswoman for Fulton Couny schools in a case where the system is being charged with neglect and abuse.  To be sure I have no doubt that a part of this statement is mostly true.  There are some caring and devoted individuals working with students with disabilities.  But the first part?

Let’s just say that Fulton County is not alone in having a culture where those who have the most severe disabilities are systematically marginalized, neglected and outright abused.  It is not an isolated case.  It is a systemic problem where several heroic and caring individuals manage to overcome a bias against these students and those they care for that is inherent in our present system.  To be sure, I think this is an extreme case that was allowed to go on well past what it should have.  Reports show that there were loads and loads of reports, interviews and statements by faculty and staff that this was going on.  You see stacks of CDs with videos with these interviews on them.  I don’t think anyone seeing this video can be anything other than outraged.  It truly makes my blood boil which is why I am so moved to blog about it.  And I am so close to the business as a parent and as former teacher of this population, it does touch a raw nerve.

So how could something like this happen?  There are SO many reasons…let me see if I can count them…

1. The students are nonverbal and powerless.  These students represent the most vulnerable segment in the entire school population.  They are vulnerable to anything and everything because they can not tell what happened when they get home from school.  Many of them can barely move.  They have severe and multiple needs including limited language and limited mobility.  They can not escape and can not fight back.  Actually, some of them can and try to escape and fight back in their own way, but they are largely at the mercy of who ever is caring for them.

2. These students (and the staff that care for them) are the most isolated group in the school.  If you want to create an environment for abuse and neglect, the recipe is fairly simple: Take a bunch of people, put them in a room together all day and then put some stress on them.  I’ll talk a bit about the stresses in a moment, but the isolation is one of the things that makes this so bad in so many ways.  Despite the provisions in the law for “least restrictive environment” the students with the most severe disabilities continue to spend their entire day in a single room.  Many do not even eat in the cafeteria.  With budget and staff cuts, community-based instruction is largely a thing of the past.  If the staff in Fulton County saw abuse in the halls, you can only imagine how hideous conditions were in that room.  There are reasons for the isolation and I should do a blog post just on that alone. But isolation provides a place where bad things can brew and incubate, especially given #1 above.  Students and their teachers need to get the heck out of that room once in awhile!

3. The staff are some of the most poorly trained and unqualified.  I have had a chance to work with and around some wonderful and brilliant people in the field.  Some of them were truly amazing, especially a lot of the paraeducators.  With a bit of training they really shined, and were tremendously good with these students.  And then the administration promptly transferred them somewhere else.  To be honest, many of them may have asked to be transferred.  But many did not.  As a rule, truly competent paras usually were moved into other settings outside of those who have multiple and severe disabilities. As a rule, teachers have little or no say as to which paras get assigned to their classrooms.  They are expected to be thankful for whoever they get.

4. Overcrowded and understaffed classrooms.  If you simply look at the numbers, you would wonder how something like that could be.  How could a class of 10 students in a classrom with 5 adults be overcrowded and understaffed?  Part of it goes back to #3.  If I had the most qualified and capable staff, I could do a lot more with a lot less, and that is the way I would prefer it.  More adults CAN add to more overcrowding and more stress. But each of these students demand total and absolute care.  It isn’t necessarily the ones who have the most impairments that have the greatest needs, either.  It is the combination of the physically immobile and fragile, combined with those who might be totally physically capable that causes many of the problems.  If I have 10 students and 5 are in wheelchairs, it takes 5 people to to push 5 chairs such as during a fire alarm or assembly or fieldtrip.  However if I have 5 kids who like to run, it puts the teacher in a dilemma about leaving the one child to chase after another.  So this leads to problem #1.  It’s simply easier for an understaffed group to hunker down in the one classrom and play ‘zone defense’.  By the way, the state of Georgia once had a class size limit of 5 for individuals with profound intellectual disabilities.  Since waiving class size requirements, class sizes and caseloads have routinely doubled for this population.  I know of a teacher who at one point has 15 students.  And no matter how many paras you cram into a room to help, each student needs direct 1:1 time with the teacher, something more than just changing a diaper.

5. The noise level adds to the stress and isolation.   These students may be nonverbal but they are not silent.  Not by a long shot!  I have had several students that could rattle every window in the hallway with their various noises and screeches.  And they would do it often, they would do it all day and they would do it LOUDLY!  Many of the most frustrating instances of abuse occur over the noise and the stress it causes.  And the more students in the room, the more the noise level increases and the more stressed it feels.  It’s not that these students are necessarily in pain.  Sometimes they are expressin happiness.  But sometimes they are verbalizing their own frustration and stress.  And sometimes I’ve found myself with some of the loudest staff on the faculty!  Talk about days where I wanted to just wear earplugs!  But that is a big reason why many of these classrooms are as far away from other classrooms as possible so as to not disturb those who are trying to take and pass a standardized test.

6. Where is the administration?  Probably not in the self-contained classroom where none of the students help increase AYP, the graduation rate, test scores, athletic prowess or college enrollments and scholarships.  The sad fact is, is that not many administrators know what happens in these classrooms.  Not many know what should be happening in these classrooms.  This is a different world where things are not as easily measured as bubbling in answers.  The principal in Fulton county should have known that students were not supposed to be pushed, hit, kicked and kept isolated in little dark rooms.  But she probably also had no idea what should have been going on instead.  Many of my observations were conducted in the lunchroom while we fed the students.  At least once, I had no idea I was being observed!  And my final year, the principal never observed me.  He watched this video and based his observation on that.  I had videos of me actually teaching that he could have watched, but he made me take those down.  I’ve tried to show people what I do, but the administrators frankly do not care that much...until something happens:

“Many schools do not have a sufficient number of students with disabilities to ‘count’ as a subgroup for Adequate Yearly Progress,” the auditors wrote. “School-based leaders could not answer questions regarding the performance of students receiving special education. Their answers included these: ‘I will have to look it up,’ ‘It’s not as good as they want it to be,’ ‘I can’t remember the exact number but it was not good,’ and ‘We don’t have to worry about the group because there are not enough to count.’”

And this often leads to them hiring someone who is unqualified because they are unsure of what ‘qualified’ looks like beyond the certificate….

7. The #1 question I get asked by teachers who are just hired and new to this field is “What do I do with these kids all day?“   Anyone else see a problem with this?  I think it is good that a new teacher reaches out and asks for help.  And I am more than happy to help them!  Teachers in this positon are usually pretty good at listening and taking direction and they pick things up pretty quickly and are able to run with it.  I have no idea the credentials of this Fulton County teacher, but I do know of at least one very highly qualified and experienced teacher who has been passed over  for jobs like this only to put someone less experienced and qualified into it.  Why?

8. Speaking out against abuse, neglect, inequality and discrimination will get you fired, it may make you unemployable and/or make working conditions more unbearable.  In an age of accountability and feedback, this is one area where the tolerance is very low.   Teachers who talk too much, who blow the whistle and try to point out injustice and outrage find themselves in big trouble in a lot of ways.  In the Atlanta Public schools we saw this before in the cheating scandal where the district tried to fire teachers and humiliated and intimidated those that tried to report instances of cheating.  I have tried my best not to be overly critical in my blogging of specific instances in my home district, but my advocacy efforts using this blog might be one reason why I am writing this at home right now instead of delivering outstanding services to students with disabilities at a school near you.

9. Parents have no idea.  And that is probably the most frightening thing of all, as a parent myself.  At least my children are verbal and can talk.  That doesn’t always mean thay will but at least they can.  So how can a parent know?  Sometimes their kids DO let their parents now through behaviors.  But mostly the parents of these students are in the dark, and the system likes to conspire to keep it that way.  See #6 and #8 above, and you see why a teacher who knows will not necessarily tell you.  Everyone in the building may know that your child’s teacher is horribly incompetent and abusive but you, the parent, will be the last to know.  Unless you sew a microphone in your son’s shirt collar.

10.” Something bad has to happen before anything will change.”  This is what a former principal once told me while I was sitting in his office.  We were discussing a letter that I had written and I was getting ready to send home to parents, telling them about what was going on in my classroom.  He was not happy with my letter because it was written in such a fashion that it made it sound like the district and the school cared less about my students than other students in the school or less than I cared.  See #8 and #9 above.   That letter never did get sent out to the parents.  My job was to make sure nothing did happen, while the system was making choices that seemed to guarantee and foster an environment where something bad had to happen.

THAT is why I resigned at the end of that year.  I could not speak out and tell my parents.  I didn’t feel like I was being listened to.  I was feeling more and more powerless as things deteriorated.  Keeping bad things from happening was getting to be more difficult and more stressful.  I am not a pessimist by nature, and always seek to turn situations around by finding new and creative solutions to whatever problems may exist. But I was faced with a situation where those above me were pretty much going to continue to let things deteriorate until something bad happened and then who would be to blame?

The system is set up so that bad things have to happen before people are motivated to do anything.  And even then, sometimes they are reluctant to make the necessary moves.  Which of you would volunteer your child to be the victim of abuse, injury or neglect in order to turn things around?  I know the parents of Alex Williams would not have wished this on their own child for anything.  I don’t think Stefan Ferrari’s parents would have volunteered their child for mistreatment.  In both cases the school district is aggressively trying to cover up and defend itself and seems rather unrepentant throughout the entire process.

The environment in education today is ripe for this sort of thing to happen in a school near you.  Is it happening in your school?  In your classroom?  With your child?

What happened in Fulton County is happening all over.  Much of what is happening can be summed up by the term “Willful Ignorance.”  Everyone acts like it is all okay, especially those within the institution itself.  Anyone who speaks out is shut up and silenced and intimidated.  Heaven forbid we let one of these people who see the problems back into our organization!

Next time, I would like to talk about what a teacher, a principal and/ or a parent could do to minimize the risk of this sort of thing.  Are there things that could be done to prevent this sort of abuse and neglect?  Yes!  But for now, I’ll leave you with an informative video about the tyranny of positive thinking:

I’ve always been fascinated by how our brains function, and how it enables us to adapt.

The drawings add a lot of context but also a lot of humor that make this worth watching more than once because there is so much that will be missed with one viewing…at least for me who favors the narrow focus of things while often missing the broader contexts or things.

In a sense the lack of connections between the two hemispheres has left us slightly learning disabled, I think, hence my categorizing this under that heading as well as perhaps having consequences in the the world of interventions and therapy.