This Is How I Swim

A Fine Balance

2009-01-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

A school in my district that is piloting full inclusion (really, truly full inclusion - with the exception of students with such significant mental health needs that safety can't be maintained) gets regular training sessions from my office. The training that is at the top of their list is how to balance the needs of exceptional students with typical students. On the face of this question is a concern that we all have as teachers: How do we meet everyone's needs given the limited amount of time and resources we have. This is a fairly universal problem.
However, it seems to me that this question always implies from the asker an answer (you can't) and a course of action (those kids should be taught by someone else). It doesn't seem like a pure request for guidance. Maybe it says something about me that I view the question as insidious and disingenuous but that's the way I see it.
I think you answer this question with the following two-pronged approach:
1) Students with special needs have...special needs. By definition they take up more of our time. This is only fair if we accept that everyone should get what he or she needs. Until we accept that students are truly different and require different amounts of time spent on them, we'll keep hoping the high needs students disappear. This is the philosophical approach to answering the question.
2) We can be sure that students with high need are going to take up a lot of time one way or the other. The thing that we can do to mitigate the feeling of being overwhelmed is by deciding when we're going to put in the time - beforehand or afterward. Fortunately we get to decide whether we want to spend the time preparing so that during class the student has a better chance of maintaining without an exceeding amount of attention or putting in the time during the activity or what have you because we failed to prepare. The choice is ours. And obvious. This is not to say that we can always anticipate the needs of students but we often can and choose not to. Part of good practice is attempting to cover all the possibilities for what might happen - checking the equipment out ahead of time, having a back up plan, keeping extra, relevant work at the ready for someone who finishes early, willing to be flexible to accommodate bad days, etc.
So I feel like I can give a 5 minute training on this. But they gave us an hour so we're going to the planning piece to the next logical level: differentiated instruction. This is not really happening in ours schools even though we're moving full steam toward more and more inclusion. Without differentiated instruction we're just using band aids. More on this later.

Where Now?

2008-12-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

I went to a meeting recently for a student who recently transferred here from another state. This elementary school student was expelled from school for bringing an airsoft gun to school. He took it out at recess and threatened to shoot students while holding it to their heads. He apparently also actually did shoot a few students. Airsoft guns are "relatively" safe and I don't think any students were actually injured. A few days after this the student's parent was incarcerated - I don't know for what - and the other parent, who lives in our district, gained emergency custody.
This parent enrolls the student at the local elementary school without saying anything about what's happened until the student's first day. On that day, the parent requested a meeting with the principal to inform him of the situation. So now the student is being tutored outside of school pending a safety screening to determine if it's safe for him to attend school.
In this meeting I kept thinking, "Where now?" for this kid. He needs some immediate mental health service and removal from his previous environment may be life altering and I hope it is. It's terrifying to think what's next for this student. I don't mean for me or the other students but for him. That's a lot of weight to carry around with you at such an early age.

Who am I writing the plan for?

2008-12-02T13:15:00.000-08:00

I spend most of my time gathering data and writing behavior plans. Lately, I keep feeling like I'm writing a plan with the student's name at the top, but really I'm writing a plan to change the behavior of the teachers. Case in point, I'm working on a student who is placed at a private school because his team decided that his mental health issues make it impossible for him to attend his home school. He definitely has some unmet mental health issues. However, his teacher provides little consistency or structure, demands compliance and doesn't really teach social skills explicitly. Additionally, she doesn't seem to lesson plan - she just kind of makes it up as she goes along. In the student's plan I've got things like, "Provide a consistent schedule with times for each activity that is referred to frequently throughout the day" and "When correcting the student tell him what he has done wrong, why it was wrong and what the correct thing to do is." I try to play it off as speaking to the specific needs of the child but really, who am I writing this plan for?

Your Personae is Driving Me Crazy

2008-11-19T12:04:00.000-08:00

I just figured out why so many people at my office are so annoying: they're mostly former teachers who have carried over their teaching personae into their administrative jobs. I think most people adopt some sort of teaching personae when they're in the classroom, whether that's a little nicer than you actually are, your most professional self and/or the person with infinite patience. Sometimes the personae is quite different from the actual person and sometimes it's a minor variation.

I think the people in my office, particularly the people in my cubicle, have adopted their teaching personae as their professional personae in general. They use cutesy voices to talk on the phone and address groups of people that might have been appropriate in the elementary school classrooms but comes across as condescending when they talk to other adults.

Anyway, it drives me kind of nuts. I know that's silly and petty, but it does. So there.

To be wrong, to be right

2008-10-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

To be wrong:
I've often joked with my friends that we're all destined to become our parents (in my case, not such a bad thing). I hope this is not true for my students.
Miss Popularity told me that her step father hangs out all day at home smoking pot and playing video games. This is what all of her mom's boyfriends are like she told me. I asked her if she thought it was hard for her mom and she said that she knows it is and that's why she can't be around her any more. She's now living with her aunt in a different district.
Let's Ride Bikes was taken away from his mom when he was very young because - as a drug addict - she neglected him utterly. He has visits with her now - he loves them.
Trains! has a mom who never came to school in the two years I worked with him. As I wrote elsewhere, his mom didn't attend his promotion ceremony to high school despite the fact that it was a major achievement for him.
A new student at my old school, Little Brother, has a mom who tried to drown him when he was 3. He remembers it too. I had his sister 3 years ago. They had 21 cats and she came in smelling like it (mixed with cigarette smoke). He was just placed back at home after living with his aunt and uncle for 8 years (believing they were his parents).
Fake Gangsta's mom had planned on living in her car with FG when she had to leave her apartment because the building was being renovated. (She was only given 6 months notice and 3 months of extensions.) Fortunately, following our urging, she found a new place before that became necessary.
Nintendo's mom seems to be on the hunt for a lawsuit. That and she's enabled her child to be in charge of the family and his old school. According to her, he can't be asked why he behaves a certain way, everyone treats him unfairly and he can't possibly spend time in regular education classes. (He's now in 50% reg. ed classes - ha.)
The list goes on.

To be right:
Introductions' mom advocates for him strongly, accesses outside services, collaborates with the teachers, disagrees respectfully, compliments his teachers and generally works very hard to support Introductions.
Lalia's mom wants her to stay in her home school if at all possible but makes no bones about her goal being Lalia's safety (she's been running lately). She's open about her struggles at home as well as what's been working. She's easy to work with despite the fact that she's got strong opinions and she will disagree with staff if she needs to.
The list of parents who are doing great work, particularly in the face of adversity, is much longer than the above list, I'm sure. I just don't get to work with those parents much.

En Garde

2008-10-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

We've got this kindergarten student in the district that I already wrote about here. He spends most of his 1/2 day of kindergarten in a room with two staff members. He's got a visual schedule that includes gross motor breaks, visits from and to preferred staff, play time, work time, chores to do, a system for transitioning to his regular education classroom, snack, etc. Still, between the two staff members (both of whom are excellent) he punches, curses, bites, runs and kicks. When he goes to his regular education class the students hunch down under their clothes because they're scared of him. We just ordered arm guards for the staff because he has been biting them and breaking skin. His therapist and 3 or 4 district specialists frequent the room to work with him. And yet, his progress is incredibly slow. This isn't to say there's no progress but it's very slow going with him.
He's clearly a traumatized kid. He tells the staff things like, "Mommy is never coming home," and "I don't deserve you." He also tells them he loves them. He's probably the most difficult student we have in the district at this time. There's been meeting after meeting with plan after plan that have been refined and redesigned ad naseum. As a proponent of inclusion, I want to keep this student in his home school. But there's no inclusion going on because we haven't been able to keep everyone safe. Additionally, our staff is getting the hell beaten out of them and school just can't be a fun place for this student to be. After two months of work, I think he needs an outside placement. The problem is, I don't know if we have a placement for him.
The district contracts with several private programs but only a couple that might meet his needs. One of the programs would place him in a room with 3 exits and just a couple hundred feet from a busy road. The other one is full. It would be my hope that he attends a private program for a year or two and then is able to come back to his home school. But the reality is that it's very difficult to get students out of outside placements once they're in them. On top of that, it seems to me that he needs some significant therapy - which is something the county should be taking care of but he seems to be getting less help rather than more despite the fact that his behavior is escalating both at school and at home.
It seems like there's nothing for it but to pack him off to a more restrictive setting if we can find one for him. It feels like we're giving up but I don't know what else to do for this little guy.

Coming around

2008-10-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've been helping with a 1st grade student who has a history of running from class. Mom was insisting that he get a one on one assistant to "keep him safe," refused to consent to testing for autism, insisted he spend most of his time in the general education classroom despite him getting no meaningful work done (as well as being in heightened state of anxiety) and generally being unpleasant to work with. She was afraid that if we found him eligible for special education services for autism and started serving him in the resource room part of the time we would secretly be moving toward sending him to a different school. We had a really hard time convincing her we had no intention of changing the student's placement - and we really didn't. He wouldn't qualify for a different placement under the district's guidelines and we were all certain that we could meet his needs in the home school. We did feel like he needed a good deal of time in the resource room initially because we needed to work on desensitizing him to different elements of the school - such as the overhead machine, singing, the school bathroom, etc.
We were making some progress with Mom and then the student ran from a classroom, got outside and was two blocks down the street before he was caught. Everyone freaked out. The student was temporarily put in the resource room for most of his day without really getting Mom's permission for what amounts to an official placement change, confusing paperwork was sent home that made it look like we were going to keep him in the resource room 100% of his day, it became evident that he wasn't really getting the skills training he needed and mom decided she wasn't going to send him to school again until we had a meeting.
At the meeting following the running incident we were able to come to an agreement wherein he would spend 2 hours a day in the resource room and the rest of the time he would be in general education with support. We hammered out a calendar, decided on target behaviors, created a plan to desensitize him to his triggers and assigned our skills trainer to work with him.
Three weeks later he has been spending time in the general education classroom alone, gotten over the overhead projector (mostly), participated in a couple of assemblies and even initiated conversations with other kids. This is enormous progress.
At his meeting yesterday, Mom consented to his eligibility as a student with autism and thanked everyone for their work. She really came around to the idea that he's got to have some time to work on skills acquisition away from his triggers and everyone agreed that he should be in the general ed classroom as much as possible. It was a good place to be in considering the fact that it seemed like Mom was thinking about suing the school district just a month ago.
Of course, the student ran later that same day and got outside - though not to the street. Not that that fact undoes all of our work but I'm sure it was a drag for the principal to make that phone call home.

My first one

2008-09-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

This week I had to restrain a child for the first time. I had come to the school to observe him and some other students who were running out of the building. While I was there he kicked and hit his teachers, threw various objects while laughing and tried to run out of the building several times. This is an unhappy kid. At one point the staff could not seem to get him into his classroom as he kept heading for the outside doors and they didn't seem to want to use a restraint or were unsure if it was OK. He was hurting people and trying to run out of the building and after 30 minutes of trying to calm him down I felt like I had no other choice. As soon as I had him restrained he totally calmed down. I asked him if he was calm and he said yes. The principal asked if he wanted to use the blocks in his room and he said yes. I told him I would let him go if he promised to walk to his room with me while holding my hand the whole time. He said OK. So I left go (this was maybe 3 minutes later) and we walked to his room. He went in and played happily with blocks. For a little while anyway.
I was happy to have not had to struggle with him and also that it was brief. I wish the little guy was happier though. We spent about 2 hours working on recommendations for his team today. It will be a little while before things really turn around for him though because the school year has started off so poorly for him and he's got a lot of unmet needs. I imagine he completely hates school.
It was a scary and intense experience for me. I can only imagine what it's like for him.

The Other Shoe Drops

2008-09-24T21:00:00.001-07:00

This past Monday I had to give two presentations in front of about half of the special education teachers, speech language pathologists, school psychs, and related service providers in my district. One was on what we're screwing up as a district in terms of discipline and one was on fading adult assistance so students become more independent.
My presentation was 2nd following the boss's overview of the year to come. As I was setting up beforehand I noticed that the heal of my right shoe was coming loose. I really hoped it would last the day. It last about 20 more minutes. So the boss introduces me and I walk up with one intact shoe and one without a heal- which you couldn't really notice unless you looked. Though the supporting strip of metal clicked when I walked like I was wearing tap shoes. Bummer.
During their lunch time the participants were supposed to read an article to set them up for my 2nd presentation immediately following lunch. I passed out the article and pretty soon I heard from them that it only contained every other page. I had copied it wrong. Well, lunch, which was provided, hadn't arrived anyway so someone else did their presentation and I ran out to make copies. I stopped at Target and bought a $14 pair of shoes. They were the only ones made of all "man made materials" (I don't wear leather). Then I drove back to the office (only 3 miles away) to make copies. At copy #30 of 40, the copy machine died. One of the secretaries was able to fix it so I could squeeze 10 more copies out of it and then I raced back to the site.
Fortunately, lunch was very late so they still had time to read the article. Midway through the article I realize I hadn't copied another form (with a scenario and work space) they were going to use for an activity at the end of my presentation. I had to read the scenario to them and ask them to write up their ideas on the back of a piece of paper. Good one, me.
In general it wasn't as bad as it sounds. The presentations went well anyway and no one noticed the shoe. I have to give the same two presentations this coming Monday. I plan on making sure the soles of my shoes are on tight ahead of time.

Stress Differences

2008-09-16T13:45:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I figured out the difference in the types of stress I dealt with last year as a behavior classroom teacher and this year as a behavior consultant. As a teacher, the stress came from students who were melting down. When this was happening I was trying to prevent a student from hurting himself or others. There's a level of trauma that's associated with this type of stress. With my new job I have a million things on my plate at once and it's really quite stressful. But the stress comes from, for instance, having to get a presentation done in two days that was assigned yesterday. That's stressful but no one's safety is on the line. I guess that's what I often thought of when people would tell me about their stressful office jobs during the past 8 years. And now I have an office job.

Meetings

2008-09-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

In my new job I go to a lot of meetings. As a teacher, you don't have time for meetings because you're with students all day. Now though, I go to 3-5 meetings daily. Fun times.
One of today's meetings was about a student who attacks his teacher from time to time. It seems as though he gets really angry when he's got to give up an object he has fixated on. If you take it from him- watch out. You can see how his teacher would feel pretty done with him. However, it seems that with some more training (on the part of the teacher) we can keep this kid in a regular school. I imagine this school year will entail a lot of meetings at which I hear about some intense behaviors and then try to figure out how to keep the student in school.
Also, you get to observe other folks pretty carefully when you're the outsider because you spend most the time listening. The parent in this meeting was really nice and wanted to work with the teacher but she was also tense and had a slight undercurrent of wanting it her way. The teacher was definitely feeling put upon and resigned but came around some toward the end. It's was interesting to watch them dance around each other a little as they tried to figure out what each one was going to give and how to avoid blaming and being blamed.
Eight more meetings scheduled for the rest of this week.

Other Promotion

2008-08-26T15:41:00.001-07:00

The school year begins for students next week but teachers started today. However, though I am still technically a teacher, I started a new job today as district behavior consultant. It's kind of a promotion but without the pay raise or prestige.
My job is to work with teachers who have the most difficult students in the district. It's a bit strange because I've never worked in an office before and now, here I am, at my desk with one of those office-y phones and pictures of my family in the corner. Weird. Hopefully I'll have an opportunity to impact the lives of the most needy students and have a broader affect overall by improving teacher practices. We'll see. I'll also be in a lot of meetings, drive around the district a lot and spend a lot of time in front of this computer. Oh well.
The office is OK so far. Coffee is always brewing (though it's kind of crappy) and there's ice cream in the freezer. And a chocolate drawer. Not bad. More soon when I get away from the desk and into the real world.

Promotion

2008-06-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

Three of my four students attended the promotion ceremony from 8th grade to the high school yesterday. I had to pick up Trains! myself because his mother was working and couldn't bring him - at least that's what she told him. When I arrived at his house his mom was there and had "just gotten home". I said, "Great. So you're going to be able to take him." She said, "Well, I just stepped in the door." Me: "We've got time. It's his 8th grade graduation." Her: "Umm...I don't think I can make it." Me: "Really? It's a really big deal that he's in the ceremony." Her: "Yeah. I just stepped in." Me: Staring at her for a moment then turning to Trains! "Ready to go?" In the car Trains! told me his mom had been home for an hour.

This is a mother that I had never met before in person and would never answer my phone calls or return them. In two years I spoke to her maybe 3 times. She never came to the school and it was like pulling teeth to get her to return forms with her signature. And Trains! is so great and has made so much progress these two years. (I would never have thought he would qualify for the promotion ceremony last year and this year it was a no-brainer.) The weird thing is that Trains! doesn't seem to think it's all that weird. I would like to hurt her and he's talking about the camping trip they're going on later this summer. Ack.

Near end round up

2008-06-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the long layoff. To get those who are interested up to date:
1) Got a new student, we'll call him Mario because he loves all thing Mario (the Nintendo game character). He went after a kid at his old school with scissors and when blocked by the assistant principal, he went for him. He missed. The IEP meeting that occurred before he transferred here included 16 people (2 parents, 2 lawyers, assistant principal, school psych, speech pathologist, behavior consultant, autism specialist, case manager, general ed teacher, counselor, occupational therapist, district program manager, me)- usually you have 4-6-ish. He had one blow out so far but as I write this he's on a field trip. Let's hope it goes well.
2) Got word that the magician is moving away. Too bad. We were making some progress.
3) All of my 8th graders are going to graduate and be allowed to attend the promotion ceremony.
4) Found out I have 3-5 new 6th graders for next year. One of whom has a mom who tried to drown him when he was 2. He's living with her again. I had his sister last year.
5) Got offered a position as district behavior consultant. Not sure if I want to leave the classroom yet. We'll see.

More updates about the end of the school year and Mario to come.

Thanks, Mom

2008-05-15T08:30:00.001-07:00

Miss Popularity wanted to be in a program we have at the school for students who are under performing. It's supposed to challenge them to succeed in school while giving them the support they need to do it. She wrote a really great application to the program that talked about how she knows she's screwed up her education and wasted two years of school. She wrote that she thinks she's smart but doesn't think anyone else believes that. She wants to stop messing around and really do well. Sounds great. Unfortunately her mom refused to sign the application - a necessary piece - because she didn't want to commit to coming to the required meetings. Nice.

Piling On

2008-04-30T08:43:00.000-07:00

The guidance counselor got a semi-anonymous call from someone who is a friend of Fake Gangsta's mom. This woman reports that FG's mom's drinking has been out of control. She's been leaving FG home alone with his 2 year old sister for hours at a time, has imposed no curfew so FG is out at all hours of the night, the house is a disgusting mess and they frequently fight loudly. She wanted to let us know and she planned on calling Child Services (as would another friend of FG's mom). Receiving this information made it necessary for the guidance counselor to call Child Services. So I expect this to be a tough week for FG.

You can only hope that state involvement would force his mom to step up a little and really do some parenting. But I'm not holding my breath.

Why is my job necessary?

2008-04-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

Why is a job like mine necessary?
Let's Ride Bikes' mom was a drug addict who frequently left him alone as a child until he was taken away from her.
Math Major's father seems to be incapable of saying a kind word.
Virgil fled an his home country and became a refuge in a boarding country until eventually coming here.
Headache's father is in jail for abusing him and his brother.
Fake Gangsta's mother keeps him up all night watching TV & then let's him wander around town at night by himself - when he's not babysitting his two year old sister.
Trains! has a disappearing/reappearing father and step father.
43%'s mom is unstable and was abused by his father - which he witnessed.
The Magician's mother seems to have 1 method for communicating with him: yelling.
School Much?'s mom had a restraining order against his father - with whom he now lives.

That's just for starters. With most of my students, the history is much longer. I'm sure there's an organic cause for their disabilities but there's no doubt it has been exacerbated by their environments.

Joke, Not Funny

2008-04-11T10:08:00.001-07:00

Fake Gangsta has been been doing great lately. The other day he was working on an assignment that I thought was going to be too difficult for him but, in fact, he completed it without any help triggering the following dialog :

Me: I'm going to lose my job if this keeps up.
Fake Gangsta, with worry in his voice: Why?
Me: Because it seems you don't need my help anymore and my job is to help you.
FG: [Looks at me worriedly.]
Me, hurriedly: Just kidding. I was trying to say you're doing awesome.
FG: Oh.

Beginnings and Ends: The Hardest Parts

2008-03-31T12:32:00.001-07:00

I've written a little bit here about how difficult the beginning of my work with a student can be. Basically, it's a bit of a race as we try to quickly figure out what a student needs, how we can fill those needs, the student's current behavior and the consequences of that behavior. So beginnings are often very difficult here. If we can start meeting needs before the student has burned too many bridges, it will be OK. But if we're trying to figure needs as well as do damage control we'll all have a much tougher go of it.

The other most difficult part of my work is fast approaching: the end of my time with a student. In the best case scenario this happens when a student graduates. The problem is that, as I've written before, the high school program here is not a good one. So as we approach the end of the year, I worry more and more about the students who move on.

A student round up:
Math Major should be OK. He's got pretty excellent academic skills- though he's lazy when it comes to writing. He has the occasional kicking and crying fit but these have become more and more rare. If he finds some friends and gets a little adult support, he should be set. If he alienates everyone with his moodiness and temper tantrums, then he'll struggle.

Let's Ride Bikes should also be OK too. He's got solid academic skills paired with very rare behavior issues. But he needs people around him who he knows care about him. Will that happen at high school? And he needs some decent friends who aren't in a behavior program or living in his foster home. He more or less rises or sinks to the level that is set by the people who care about him.

Headache worries me. He's made tremendous progress since he started here last year. In fact, Headache is an out-dated name for him because he doesn't fake headaches any more. But that's largely because he's grown comfortable here and feels safe. Hopefully he gets into the alternative high school that is a bit smaller and friendlier. Either way, it's not going to be easy for him. With his anxiety ramped up next year, I expect he'll take a lot of days off. Unfortunately he doesn't have the academic skill to keep up when he starts missing days. I can see him spiraling down without enough support and his surliness can push people away that might otherwise help him.

Trains! really worries me. He really needs adults to pay attention to him. Last year before he got comfortable here he would wander the halls if he knew I wasn't going to be in class with him. He used to run away from school the year before that. Also, he never does homework and he works at a snail's pace. His academics are solid but he needs at least twice as much time to do any assignment as anyone else. I don't want to expect a lot of failed classes next year but...it's a real possibility. Will someone take the time to sit next to him as he completes his work even though he can do the work on his own? His needs aren't academic- they're personal.

We've more or less figured all of these students out so that they have near zero behavior issues and they're passing all of their classes. They're feeling good about themselves, starting to make friends (besides each other), and really having unprecedented levels of success. And then we let them go. We move on to other students that come up behind them and they move on to figure out a new school with all new teachers and three times as many kids. It's a lesson in letting go.

This is progress

2008-03-14T08:42:00.001-07:00

Headache was told he wasn't allowed to use the computer in my room because, according to The Wrestler (my assistant), Headache "took the afternoon off" in his classes by not doing any work. He got frustrated and tore up his half-completed math packet. He was then told he had to leave the room and go to the detention room for the period. What would have happened last year and even a few months ago is he would have put his head down in the detention room and pretended to be sick the next day to stay home. Instead, just 15 minutes later, he requested a new packet, got right to work and had the whole thing done before the end of the day. The next morning he tried to explain why he overreacted and then proceeded to have a really good day.

Other signs of progress: The Magician hasn't been suspended in a month. Fake Gangsta is 100% caught up in his school work.

Sign of regression: 43% has been absent 3 days this week.

Mom should definitely know better

2008-03-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

Miss Popularity's mother works for child services. Despite that we've had to call child services a number of times due to her throwing things at Miss Popularity, her access to alcohol and more. Recently, Miss Popularity was kicked out of her home by her mom. She's 12. Miss Popularity can be difficult but she is not a dangerous kid whatsoever. And she's 12 - did I mention that?
So we called child services and they had to assign a case manager from a different county in order to avoid a conflict of interest. The case manager instructed mom to allow Miss Popularity to come home because she has to provide a place to live. That lasted about a week until she got kicked out again and is living with a friend.

Question: How is it possible for this kid to do well in school at this point?
Answer: It's not.

And yet, she's here. She's staying out of trouble (more or less) and getting some work done.

To be continued, I'm sure.

No Trespass

2008-02-29T08:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon Fake Gangsta put someone's backpack in the bathroom at the end of the day in retaliation for the owner of the backpack stomping on his bag. The backpack wound up in the toilet, not by FG's hand - at least according to him. When this incident came to light, FG was already on his bus to go home so the principal pulled him off the bus to deal with the situation. The assistant principal let his mom know that he was pulled off the bus and that he would need a ride home. FG's mom, someone who is not in the running for parent of the year, said he could walk home. Here's where it gets bad.
Apparently, FG's mom came to the school yesterday evening and blocked the principal's car in his space as he was leaving and screamed at him. She told him that next time the principal pulls FG from the bus, the principal needs to drive him home. The principal didn't like that very much. The principal here is really good with parents and kids alike but he's totally done working with this parent who is out of control. In order to prevent her abusing other staff, he's calling home today to let her know she can't come onto school grounds without an invitation. Good times!
The question at this point is whether FG's 2 year old sister was in the car when mom went nuts in the parking lot and if so, whether this warrants a call to child services. I have to say, I have a lot of anger toward this woman because FG he is such a great kid but his mom just doesn't do any real parenting. If she did, FG would be much, much happier. He suffers from her choice to not parent her child. It's not fair to him and he'll carry it with him for his whole life.

Big picture, little picture

2008-02-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

Most of my work is little picture work: how do we use a locker? Why are you yelling right now? Let's get that math assignment done. Can we get through 1 day without being kicked out of a class?

Some of my work ha a wider focus such as when I try to help a particular student's longterm situation by teaching problem solving skills, trying to get some mental health support for him or her, building up academic success so the standard failures that everyone experiences aren't traumatizing... But most of my work barely goes beyond this. It's one student at at time and, for the most part, one day at a time.

I like this work and I know it's important. These students need this kind of help right now. At the same time, it's really frustrating to think that every year I'll just have my 8-12 students who need immediate relief and nothing I'm doing will stem the flow. So while I recognize the importance of this work, it's frustrating to feel like a band-aid.

That said, I've joined a committee that is working on making my district more inclusive. This is partly to comply with IDEA 2004 which calls for more inclusion (which in this case means students with disabilities in general ed classes, with non-disabled peers, with access to the same curriculum, in the neighborhood schools as much as possible) and partially to address the problem of having too many students in a self-contained class (which here means in a separate, special education class more than 60% of the day). The committee needs to submit a plan by April 1st and we've begun collecting input from staff at our schools.

While the idea of this has been exciting, it's largely been met by the staff with responses from cynical to hysterical (with a few exceptions). There is one really rabid teacher in particular who claims that the district is lying about how many kids are in self-contained classes and that it's the fault of special ed that her standards haven't been as high for the last 20 years. In my mind, that says more about her than about her students but, what do I know?

So I'm hoping that doing some work that focuses on the longterm and continuing my narrow focused-work with my students will make me feel balanced. I'm not sure what to do if it doesn't work.

Anguish

2008-02-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

The Magician is my most challenging student right now. He has no idea how to make friends, refuses to work at times, lies, is disruptive, has gotten into fights...the list goes on. (On the flip side, he's super fun and loves attention. He loves magic tricks and will talk your ear off about his favorite magicians. And his laugh is a terrific giggle. ) Due to a serious fight at the bus stop, he's been involved with the juvenile justice system. His first court date was today and because he didn't understand what was happening to him, the court date had to be rescheduled. This made his lawyer, counselor and mother angry. His mother spent the rest of the morning yelling at him and then dropped him off at school.
Upon entering his math class he started pushing desks around. I got involved when I had just sat back down at my desk after getting a student started in another class when I heard someone screeching in the hallway. The shriek was other-worldly and primitive - like a non-human animal in it's death throes. It was the Magician. His face was teary as he stomped out of his classroom and tipped over a chair in the hallway. I gave him a beckoning signal so he followed me down to the office and sat in a conference room where he could be by himself. I reminded him to use his self-calming techniques like deep breathing and counting but not before he let out another anguished shriek to leave him alone.
At that moment, one of the APs asked, "Is that the Magician? His mom is here looking for you." His mom hadn't even left the building yet having stuck around after dropping the Magician off in order to let me know it was probably going to be a really hard day for him. She told me that she had yelled at him from the minute they got out of court until she dropped him off.
This is a really, really difficult kid whose behaviors are aggravating and off-putting. But if you heard the anguish in his voice your heart would have gone out to him. Even his math teacher, who is not the most understanding teacher (to say the least), was really concerned and forgiving of him.
Hi mom ended up taking him home for the day to make sure he didn't get himself into anymore trouble.

What professionals should know

2008-01-15T12:22:00.000-08:00

I don't think anyone ever really says that general education teachers don't really have to teach everyone but that is certainly implied by the dual educational system we have. If there are special ed teachers then they must be the ones who are responsible for special education students, right? So as we all move towards inclusion, as long as there are still special educators the message will still be the same- not all kids are "right" for general education. This message is received by teachers, students, parents and administrators alike- so everyone's on the same page: the wrong one.

As long as this dual education system continues inclusion of special education students will come with an implied caveat that goes something like this: "This disabled student can be in the general education classroom as long as she acts relatively normal and doesn't force me to move out of my comfort zone." "Looking normal" would be something like not behaving or performing substantially worse than the "average" student. A teacher's comfort zone would include the behaviors she can deal with and the accommodations she is willing to make. If these conditions aren't met then the disabled student "just isn't ready yet."

So if I could, I would tell all educational professionals that we have a responsibility to educate everyone who walks in our doors. In fact, that really needs to be said to pre-professionals and then repeated every year until retirement. The problem is that I could say that with words, bu the institution of special ed, by it's very existence, tells them that I'm wrong. Bit of a sticky wicket. So what all professionals should know is that is that a) we have a dual education system and b) this system is unfair primarily to people with disabilities as secondarily to all of us.

Finally, all professionals should know that it doesn't have to be this way.

Make him pay

2008-01-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

So there's a student of mine, the Magician, who is not going to PE right now. He's a very, very heavy young man and could really use PE. But he gets into a lot of trouble because of it because he is very embarrassed about his size, particularly when he has to change his clothes in the locker room (which we've found a way to work around, of course). So I've pulled him out of PE and given up a work period of mine so we can avoid that headache despite the fact that I think PE would be very good for him and that it's a requirement for students (though requirements can be waived in order to accommodate disabled students).

Today I got called out of a class I was working in to attend the weekly team meeting his teachers hold so they could complain to me to no end about his behavior. To be sure, they have plenty to complain about - he's a needy kid. Strangely, they were arguing for him to attend PE and I don't really get why. They say it's because he could really use it for his health. I don't buy their concern - perhaps it's loathing for his size? But one of his teachers is extremely overweight. I think they just want him to suffer a little because he's making them suffer. They'd like to see him get suspended so they'd have a break from him and they'd like to see him have to move to a new placement- which he would never qualify for because his needs are just not that extreme. Maybe I'm wrong about them and I really hope so but I can't imagine what else they're thinking.

I think that really difficult students traumatize us and we start to act like traumatized people. Just like them we use dysfunctional coping skills in order to deal with the "problem." Additionally, these students resonate and like tuning forks, when they start to resonate, so do we. It's so necessary that we interrupt this cycle because it's our job to work with all kids who come through our doors not just the ones that are easy to work with. Teachers who don't get that are going to suffer.

It's very easy for me to listen to their complaints and see how their responses are dysfunctional because he's not traumatizing me (for the most part). It's disappointing that they can't see this though. I expect we're going to be bumping heads all year. I imagine they will eventually become reconciled to the fact that even the Magician - with all of his disruptive, defiant and rude behaviors - deserves an education in a public school. How long will we have to wait though?

"He almost fought me for it" or "Notes from the sub"

2008-01-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

All three of the staff here were out for a training yesterday. Predictably, things were a bit bumpy here. Third period, which is usually a very good period for me, is when I teach social skills (how to make friends, how to have a conversation, etc) to Trains!, Let's Ride Bikes and Headache. Apparently, the Magician came in at the beginning of class (having left his language arts class in a huff) and was really "entertaining". He's a student that can get everyone else off-task while participating in class himself. So Trains! barely did any work because he was paying attention to the Magician, Let's Ride Bikes took apart a ruler and used a piece of metal to tear up paper, and Headache played with a rubber band ball until he dropped it and it was picked up by the substitute. She told him he could have it at the end of class. The sub claims, "he almost fought me for it," at which point she called for an administrator who straightened him out and then he was, apparently, extremely pleasant for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, we learned about the Escalation Cycle and how to interrupt it as well as power struggles and trauma. It was definitely useful.

Break

2007-12-21T10:02:00.001-08:00

It's winter break here. I'll probably be off until at least mid-January.

If you sign it, they will come

2007-12-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Two of my students have now moved outside the boundary lines of the school which should mean that they would attend a different school in the district. These are "behavior kids" so they take up a lot of time, increase the number of referrals and, in this case anyway, decrease the test scores because neither of them are meeting their grade benchmarks yet. So you'd think the principal would be very happy for them to move on. Yet, in the past two days he has been proactive about filling out the paperwork in order to keep them here. He's signed the necessary documents and sent them on to district office. Does this happen elsewhere?

A few of my favorite things

2007-12-11T12:44:00.000-08:00

- When Headache comes to school every day for a week
- When 43% attends school above his 43% average
- When Let's Ride Bikes talks about getting his grades up
- When Headache self starts
- When Trains! self starts
- When any of my students self start
- When I don't see Math Major- for him, no news is good news
- When a team of teachers said they thought they'd be OK with less support for one of our students because they know what to do now
- When the principal talks about civil rights for students with disabilities
- When I met School Much? for the first time
- When Fake Gangsta gets excited about good grades
- When Miss Popularity doesn't get suspended
- When Virgil comes to study hall and works the entire period- which is just about everyday
- When the Magician doesn't get suspended
- When Trains! tries to use "Snoop language" (ex. school = sch-zool, railroad = r-zailroad)- he can't really do it
- When the students are really excited to see me after I've been out for a day
- When the district & principal grants permission for students who have moved to continue attending the school because it's beneficial to the student though it impacts AYP negatively
- When the hype around a student dissipates and the teachers can actually see the student

We meet at last

2007-12-03T12:16:00.000-08:00

School Much? is a student who has been on my caseload for nearly a year but who hasn't attended school here. He's got a laundry list of issues that keep him from actually coming to school but he has been going to the tutoring we've set up for him. So I dropped by a tutoring session (which are held at the local library) last week. He was a very pleasant, quiet and rather gigantic young man. He wasn't totally against the idea of attending regular school at some point. This is progress!

Another thing public education doesn't get right...

2007-11-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

...appears to be climate control. In New York City, my classrooms were generally incredibly hot in the winter. Yes, the winter. The heaters would be extremely overactive to the point that I would wear short sleeve shirts when it was the dead of winter. Conversely, if you were unlucky your classroom would not be used during summer school so you wouldn't have an air conditioner which meant you would be crammed into a tiny classroom with 30+ students in 90+ degree weather. If you were lucky, you'd have an air conditioner that hummed so loud you never got that quiet, everyone at work feeling going and everyone froze because they were a bit too powerful. Additionally, the students always argued over whether it should be on or off. Good times!
Now, 3000 miles across the country, I have a feeling of kinship with my NYC pedagogical sisters and brothers. When I got into my classroom at 7:45 this morning, I was greeted with blasting air conditioning. A quick weather check on the computer reveals it being 33 degrees out this morning. It's parent-teacher conferences here so I'm now writing at 7:22 PM having spent more time in my classroom today than I do in most weeks (due to the fact that I only have 3 conferences scheduled today and I spend most school days all over the building- not just in my room). When the principal dropped by he was pretty incredulous. The heating and cooling is controlled at a central building which is not open at 7:30 at night. So I've got my fleece on (thanks, Dad!) and my winter hat and my hands are freezing. Unreal!

Transitions

2007-11-19T08:42:00.000-08:00

My four 8th grades will move on to the high school next year. This worries me because the high school is 3 times bigger than our middle school. Also, the behavior program staff is the same size but the case load is 100-150% larger. Not good! So we've been talking a lot about what we can do to get our students ready for this transition and honestly, there are times when I feel like the answer is: not much.
I think the high school here is simply not designed for students with difficult behavior. Each guidance counselor has a case load of 200 students or more, with one social worker, one mental health worker and, as I said before, just the one behavior specialist and two assistants. Not exactly a lot of support. In contrast, my 8th graders go to all of their academic classes with an assistant and come to me for another class. The only time they're really on their own is in PE and their elective. I wonder whether the level of service they're getting here is actually a disservice in some ways. But we're able to prevent all manner of trouble they would get into otherwise and generally avoid a 'middle school as hell' experience. How could I justify pulling back?
We are starting to work on what we can do to get them ready to move on to high school and this includes regular visits to the high school combined with a social skills class in which we're working exclusively on how to make and keep friends - this is on top of the study hall they have with me every day. Finally, we're going to practice talking to adults for things like passing in work, asking for forms and requesting help. I'm hoping that between these three things they can start to function a little bit more independently. I worry that it's too soon to expect them to do this because maybe they're just not there developmentally. We'll see.
My students are clearly nervous about this transition as well because they joke about us getting jobs at the high school next year. But at the same time my repeated pleading for more initiative on their parts has gone unheeded- not that I should find that surprising - planning for the future is not something you come to expect from impoverished and emotionally disturbed students. I don't want to imagine a future in which all the work we've been doing with these students doesn't translate into some form of high school success but the reality is that by this time next year they may have given up already.
Though I'm not the most important person in this equation I do have to balance not becoming desensitized to the reality of the situation that many student with behavior-related needs drop out of high school while at the same time not allowing that possible future derail my present day work. I don't think there's a way to avoid this post being a bit of a downer except perhaps to note that my 8th grade students have really made some tremendous growth over the years. We just have to hope that it's been enough.

Redesign the redesign

2007-11-13T12:06:00.000-08:00

The first year I taught in Oregon was the first year my school switched to an inclusive model for their middle school behavior programs. Previously, it was a self contained model in which the students spent all day in the same special ed class. The redesign has been working well at my school. However, there are some strains in the system due to the set up of general ed here. There are 6 academic teams, 2 at every grade level (6th-8th). Generally, students with IEPs are spread out evenly over the teams to avoid ability grouping and over-burdening a teacher with a group of really needy students. That works well for most students with disabilities because their case managers only work with 2 teams each. However, my students are spread out evenly too which means I have students on 6 different teams. This makes delivering service difficult, as you can imagine.
I met with the principal today to discuss a new design for the behavior program for next year. Since there are 3 staff members in the behavior program (myself and two assistants) and 3 grade levels, I proposed that we group the students onto three teams only and that each of us work almost exclusively with one team. That way we could attend all of the classes our students go to as well as well as all of the team meetings and we could even help teachers prepare for classes by planning curricula that is inclusive. Furthermore, we can move to a co-teaching model so that we're not just standing around in the classes we support waiting for someone to need help. We can be an active participant in the teaching.
I know what the teachers are going to say - we don't want all of the behavior students in our classes, we want them spread out. I hope they see the benefit of having another adult with them at all times. I'm guessing that this gets shot down though.

Racing to Know You

2007-11-12T20:06:00.000-08:00

When we get a new student we often have to race to get to know the student before she can shoot herself in the foot too many times. Case in point, my new student, Easy E, started in right away with behavior that's going to get him in hot water. Not only was he disruptive in class but he immediately alienated the kids around him. Double whammy. Easy E came to us having done almost no work last year and having been suspended repeatedly. He's a nice enough kid and quite interesting to talk to but he has no idea how to talk to other kids. He got into a fight at the bus stop the other day that was pretty serious and wound up with a 5 day suspension (to be fair, he thought fighting at the bus stop would mean he wouldn't get in trouble - nice try Easy E). We're starting to figure out what his needs are but he's not making it easy. We're racing to figure him out before he makes enemies with all of his classmates and teachers. Hopefully we win and he does OK here. If we lose, it's a rough year for all of us.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

2007-10-30T13:53:00.001-07:00

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a series of books by Rick Riordan that I've been reading. Actually, I've been reading the first book out loud to an English class I attend to support one of my students. It's a pretty fun book about a kid who lives in NYC and keeps getting kicked out of schools because his ADHD and dyslexia get him into trouble. Then he finds out he's the son of a Greek god. In the world of this book the Greek gods are now in the US because they follow the height of Western Civilization around (which should put them in Sweden, I would think). For instance, you can access Mount Olympus by going to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building and Hades by going to a Los Angeles night club. It's a pretty smart book with some good insider jokes.

The disability connection is that Percy's dyslexia is due to the fact that he is supposed to be reading ancient Greek instead of modern English. His ADHD is blamed on the fact that he's supposed to be out on the battle field, not in a classroom. Since there are many, many demi-gods in the world of the book who are similarly diagnosed the implication is that all kids with ADHD and/or dyslexia may be the offspring of a god.

That's a pretty cool twist for an author to add in. If you're a kid struggling to read it's probably nice to imagine that you're really supposed to be fighting the minotaur rather than getting sent to the principal again. This take on disability misses the point though. Kids with a disability won't be cured and they're not going away. They're here to stay just like they are. What's slightly disturbing is that there's a way in which this book fantasizes their disappearance- though with a positive twist. The reality is that there are kids who can't sit still for long or struggle with reading and they still count as humans. So while it's fun to think of a "last shall be first" world like the one presented here, it's better yet to imagine a world in which atypical kids are are accepted for who they are.

That said, I'm 2/3's of the way through the 2nd book and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

The End of the World (this week)

2007-10-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

Let's Ride Bikes was bummed today. He's not allowed to see his only friend for a while because they were hitting each other. I guess the story is that one of them stayed over the other one's house and the parent didn't like what she saw. So the parents on both sides decided they should take a break from each other. Of course, for these two, it seems like the end of the world. Let's Ride Bikes said to me, "If I don't have any friends, what's the point of coming to school?" True, true.
I set up a meeting with their guidance counselor so that they can talk about how to be friends without getting in trouble- which is going to be really difficult for Let's Ride Bikes. This is something that he, and several of my students, struggle with. Most of us pick up how to get along with folks from social cues but these guys need direct instruction and practice with role playing in order to understand what they should do to make and keep friends.
A tiny ray of sunshine seeped in when I told Let's Ride Bikes about the meeting with his guidance counselor and friend. But for now, he's a very sad boy.

Damn You Creativity! Damn You!

2007-10-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

I love, love teaching middle school. What a perfect age...

Headache is a student of mine who is aptly describe as "unmotivated". He lies and lies about the work that he has done at home, in his locker, already passed in, etc, etc. Also, his nom d'blog comes from how he pretends to have migraines in order to get out of work- usually math class. (Funny how headaches and pre-algebra seem to occur at the same time...) But of course, he's motivated by what he's interested in. To wit, he has created a coded alphabet with each letter being represented by a symbol he created. He hand-copied and passed out code keys to all of his friends and they've been furiously sending notes to each other. This is a student who can't be bothered to write out the words "I don't know" instead abbreviating it as IDK when he's trying to fill in the lines of a worksheet he hasn't bothered to look at closely enough to figure out that he does actually know what to do.

Today, my trusty assistant, Wrestler, got his hands on a code key and made the fact known to Headache. Headache then announced to the class to stop using the current code because he was going to make a new one. How great is that?

Right before we left for the day, Wrestler was uncrumpling a piece of paper he picked up off the floor and noticed it was a coded message. He whipped out his trusty decoder and went to work. The message read: Asshole, you got me in trouble.

Did I mention I love middle school?

File Under: Hard to Believe Yet True

2007-10-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Students who receive special education services have an IEP (indivdualized education plan). This is supposed to be written by a team consisting of a general ed teacher, a special ed teacher, a representative from the district who can allocate resources, any related service providers (like OT or PT), a parent/guardian and the student. The IEP lasts for one year.

Below is a list of things that are supposed to happen at an annual IEP meeting:

Review of the students' present levels of academics and behavior including test scores, grades, recent evaluations, etc.
Review whether the student met the goals on the previous IEP
Writing of new goals for the year
Determination of type and amount of service the student requires
Deciding what sort of state testing is to be done
Deciding whether and how much the student will be removed from general ed classes and why
Deciding which program the student will be placed in
Signing the IEP by all parties

It's a lot of stuff and it takes awhile to get through it all.

Here's the what we did at a recent IEP I was invited to for a student who attends one of my self-management classes:

Review of present levels- grades, and a couple of informal evaluations only
Signing the IEP

At no time did the case manager even crack open the draft she had written other than to have us sign it at the end. It was a mockery of an IEP meeting.

Here's why this is bad. The IEP is the cornerstone of the special ed law (IDEIA). IEPs can be very useful documents in ensuring a student with a disability receives a free and appropriate public education. The idea behing the IEP is that a group of people will craft a plan that will best serve the student. The fact that you have to have a meeting every year and there are mandatory participants is supposed to ensure that no single person is determining what is best for someone else's kid while they're at school. This case manager circumvented this by taking advantage of an ignorant teacher, parent and assistant principal.

I want to complain here that I have to do something about this now and I'm really not looking forward to it. But I know that it's not really about me, right? If it was about me I'd write that if I don't say anything then I have to live with myself knowing that I'm that guy who is in a position to call someone out on their disservice to kids but I didn't. So I will. But because it's not about me I'll just note that I'll do something in order to make it more likely that this kid will get what he deserves.

Don't Believe the Hype

2007-10-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

Students with a history of behavior problems seem to be preceded by a great deal of hype. Previous case managers and teachers often report an extensive list of difficult and out of control behaviors and folks on the receiving end always seem to believe it. I'm trying to remember to disregard these histrionics.

For example, I've gotten two new students in the past couple of weeks with extensive case histories that include residential settings with extreme behavior. They are fine: no behavior incidents so far. A change in environment coupled with whatever progress they made in their previous setting can often spell success. We're talk about case histories which means stuff that happened in the past.

More examples: at the end of last year a 5th grade student with some behavior issues was brought to our attention and his future case manager was all in a tizzy about him. He was supposed to be so difficult and so needy and clearly a candidate for the behavior program or even outside placement. This continued for the first two weeks of this school year with stories about his outrageous antics whenever the new case manager could get someone to listen. However, the other day she told me in passing, "I've got him under control." [Note: Though I object to the language and idea of controlling students, I appreciate that the case manager felt like she was able to work with the student successfully.] It's like he was never on the radar screen.

Now this same case manager is bringing me in to consult on two more students. The first of which clearly has some unmet needs but is very likable and fun. The case manager has already given up on him as beyond reach. The kid loves playing saxophone in the school band. This is not an unreachable, hardened kid. The other student is transferring here from another district. His old teachers are calling us daily with reports of how difficult and needy this new student is going to be...

And he could be. I don't want to suggest that none of the students coming my way are not significantly needy or that their case histories are irrelevant. What seems to worry folks is that these students could potentially demonstrate that they need help by acting out immediately. They might not wait for us as we learn about them. And this makes some folks make conclusions about just what kind of student they're working with - the kind they can't work with. Most of the time though, in my experience, if you can get keep moving forward with learning about a student and then work toward meeting the student's needs, the difficult behavior will decrease. It does take patience on everyone's part and it helps to remember that most students don't live up to the hype that precedes them.

Dependence

2007-09-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

This past week the three adults who work in this program - I'm including myself here - went to a training on working with students with difficult behavior. It's a good training led by a guy who knows what's up. However, it occurred to me that our students have become far too dependent on us. Generally, with my returning students, there are few behavior issues of note. But while we were gone, some of them regressed to pre-us behavior. This not good but not because they're supposed to behave dammit! but because, obviously, we're not always going to be around. In fact, the most dependent students are the ones that are going to high school next year where they won't be able to access nearly the same level of support as they do here because the high school program - and specifically the guy who runs it - sucks.

So the other day we made a T chart of all the things that went well yesterday and all the things that didn't go well. Then the students took turns coming to the board and circling in green what would have happened if we had been here and circling in red what wouldn't happened. And we talked about that for a bit. Then we listed a bunch of ways they're currently counting on us in order for them to be successful. The list had items like, "remind me to stay on-task," "tell me to get to class on time," "get me started on my homework," etc. Each student then chose one item that he thought he could begin trying to do alone. So, among others, I'm expecting Headache to turn in his own work and RB to attempt his homework without prompting. We'll see.

Monday I'm out again to learn about changes in the IEP and how to write IEPs that are compliant with the district's interpretation of the state's interpretation of the federal department of education's updated interpretation of IDEIA 2004. I expect that Tuesday we'll do the T chart. Today I will remind them of what happened and what they can do to avoid it happening again.

The worst thing I can think of is making these students overly dependent on help because not only will they most likely fail in its sudden absence but they'll also feel abandoned. Moving toward greater independence is going to be a major theme this year.

That sound you hear, that's my heart breaking

2007-09-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Twice today. First, at a training on how to make sure we don't get sued I ran into the dude who does my job at the high school. He was telling me about my students who are now his students. He tells me that Z might already be "lost". He was absent all last week. Z has extreme anxiety and zero people skills but is so fun and interesting. I knew high school was going to be tough for him especially given that the first thing the aforementioned "teacher" does is inform his class that half of them won't graduate. Z is going to be a mechanic as an adult and make way more money than me if he can survive high school with some hope intact. Now I have to contact the social worker up there, give Z a call, get some teachers here to call him and try to brainstorm some other ideas for how to keep him in school. If that kid drops out, the fault rests with me in part.

Second, I get back to my school from the training and am informed by my sub that Fake Gangsta's family is being evicted and they have to move this weekend. This kid, whom his teachers said didn't belong in this school, who totally baffled me for 3 months last year, who required a gigantic investment of time on the part of the staff in my program and who we used to hope would be absent every once in a while to give us a break went on to win the most improved student award for his team. He started this year having avoided regressing behaviorally and with an attitude towards school success that I never would have guessed would come from him. This is the poster child for inclusive behavior programs. If that kid moves, I seriously might cry.

Starting Stats: 8-1+1+1

2007-09-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

Before starting the school year there were 8 students on my caseload. One student moved out of district which brought the caseload down to 7. (And the circumstances for her move are tragic: she was placed in temporary foster care that had been ongoing for some time. That placement was the only stable living situation she had known. Her foster mother had been ill for quite some time though and passed away over the summer. She's now living in a group home. This is not a girl who should not have been subjected to one more iota of trauma for the rest of her life.)
One student refuses to attend school (School Much?) and is placed on out-of-school tutoring. So there were 6 students attending the school in my program as of week 1. I have a new student who started today who is originally "from Africa" his therapist tells me- Africa being the most diverse place on the planet and larger than it appears on our US-centric maps, it was disappointing to hear all Africans get lumped in together...but I suppose that's a blog for another time.
Another new student starts next week. Short on details at this point. So, here are the players in our great drama (some of whom you may recognize from last year):

Math Major
Head Ache
Let's Ride Bikes!
Miss Popularity
Fake Gangsta (formerly C)
Trains! (formerly RB)
School Much?
Virgil
New student- as yet without a blog name

w/ Interrupt & Wrestler as assistants and me as myself.

Stay tuned for the further adventures of me and "the bad kids".

The R Word

2007-09-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Some of my otherwise brilliant friends use the word retarded as a pejorative. Many of my students do the same. A couple of years ago I tried to figure out a way to get folks to stop saying it. I first decided to reply to, "That's retarded" with, "Like my brother?" The problem being that I don't have a brother who identifies as retarded - in fact, I don't have a brother at all - and using, "Like my sister?" would have felt weird since I do, in fact, have sisters. I also thought being disingenuous was probably not the best approach. So I've started using, "Like my students?" That worked for a little while because I did teach a weekly literacy class with students identified as mentally retarded when I was teaching in NYC. Now that I'm a special education teacher out in Oregon, I don't actually work with students labeled mentally retarded. I've still been saying, "Like my students?" though because it's easier than saying, "I really wish you wouldn't use that word because it's offensive." Of course, the latter doesn't ruin anyone's day whereas a few times I've dropped "Like my students?" on someone I didn't know well and it really bummed them out and made me seem like a jerk. I don't mind coming across as a jerk for a good cause but I think it was mostly counterproductive. So I may be forced to be all mature about it rather than snarky.

Of course, none of this works with my students who say the R word all the time. They also say, "That's gay" constantly. However, given that my students have a host of problems I generally don't make an issue out of their use of either of these words as epithets. There are bigger (tofu) fish to fry, as it were.

I think I should point out that being literally retarded - slower or delayed when compared to the average - is mostly irrelevant much like being black or gay. But when we say, "That's retarded" or "That's gay" when we mean "That's really dumb" or "That's really uncool" there is no difference from saying "That's black" to mean someone about being really athletic but prone to crime and poor in academics or saying you're going to Jew someone down in order to get a better purchase price for something. So using those words as insults is insulting the millions of people who use those same words to describe themselves. You dig?

Jerry Lewis Renounces Telethon, Cripples MDA

2007-08-31T09:22:00.001-07:00

This post is part of a group effort .

Jerry Lewis, comedian, actor and longtime fund raiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), held a press conference today too apologize for years of insulting people with disabilities during his MDA telethon. The long-running telethon has been criticized for years by the disability communit y for portraying people with disabilities as pathetic and half human. Today Lewis apologized for what he termed, "My enduring ignorance and insensitivity to people with disabilities. I want to stand up and be counted among the enlightened." When asked about the sudden change of heart, Lewis said that, "I was blind but now I can see." Additionally, he regretted the years of "turning a deaf ear and a blind eye" to the disability community's protests.

Lewis has decided to start a new telethon that will work with disability activists to raise money for organizations deemed worthy by the disability community rather than himself- a non-disabled person. Lewis commented, "It's time I took a stand alongside all of my wheel-chair using and otherwise disabled friends to fight against the medical model of disability." He added he "had been paralyzed with fear for years" by the possibility of becoming disabled but has come to realize that disability is natural. Additionally he noted that he looked forward to "opening the ears" of the non-disabled to community to his new understanding of disability.

Lewis said will omit any use of disability simulations on his telethon because many people with disabilities object to them on the grounds that one cannot simulate disability anymore than one can simulate being black or gay. Instead Lewis pledges to show videos such as "Talk" by the Disability Rights Commission in the United Kingdom which portrays the discrimination faced by people with disabilities in social situations such as dining out, professional ones such as applying for a new job and even within metropolitan infrastructure such as inaccessible public transit.

The MDA responded to Lewis' press conference by issuing the following statement: "Wanted: One famous person to run a telethon in order to raise money for a group of people by insulting them in order to pursue ends they largely do not support. Qualifications: Know little to nothing about disability but have a great many opinions about it. Position open immediately."

Lewis directed his final words during the press conference to the people he has offended in the past with his telethon: "No longer will I portray people with disabilities as pathetic because that's a really retarded thing to do. It's crazy to think that disability is anything other than a social construction. I know that may leave some of you speechless but I believe that all of us normal people will come to see the light and stop being so lame."

New School Year

2007-08-31T08:55:00.000-07:00

As it stands I have 7 students on my caseload to begin the year with one student most likely beginning the year on tutoring - which means he won't attend my school. All of the students are returning students, none of whom are particularly difficult. I have one new educational assistant that seems like she's going to be pretty good and one returning assistant who, if God existed, would be God's gift to me.

I've also been selected to mentor a couple of teachers in my district who do my job at other schools. These are folks who are not new to teaching but new to the district and, I think, new to working with kids in a behavior program. It's quite possible that they have a good deal more experience than me in teaching and almost certain that they've got more special education experience since this is only my second year. My selection as their mentor speaks more to the fact that the pickings are slim for people returning to the job in the district.

There are two new assistant principals at my school this year since one of ours retired and the other was hired as a principal elsewhere. One of the new APs is new to administration and the other is a veteran. Seems like this is going to be OK too.

There are close to 20 new staff members at my school (out of 60) so there are a lot of new faces. My school is supposedly the toughest school in the district- which means most diverse really - so we had a lot of turnover.

I've got things pretty much together at this point. I'm enjoying my last non-contract week day (holidays aside) until June.

This will be my eighth year teaching. Here we go.

Gilliam does disability wrong

2007-08-26T19:29:00.001-07:00

(Note: The following bit of writing contains spoilers regarding the movie Tideland)

Terry Gilliam, a director who has made a slew of great movies, including Brazil, Twelve Monkeys and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, also wrote and directed Tideland which I just got around to seeing this past week. The movie was largely panned due to its graphic content - though I found it approximately as controversial as Sesame Street.

I did however find its treatment of disability disappointing. The movie ends with Dickens, a person with a developmental disability, blowing up a passenger train that runs near his house using dynamite he stole from a construction site that he had been holding on to in order to do just this deed- which, according to the film, is because Dickens doesn't understand what he's doing. Not only has he most likely killed dozens of people, he too seems to die in the explosion. I'd like to do a little unpacking of two points.

1) The implicit message is that people with developmental disabilities are a threat to the (so-called) non-disabled world. This is a classic in film and literature (see, for instance, Of Mice and Men) and is the exact opposite of reality. The non-disabled world daily visits horrors upon people with disabilities and generally seeks a world devoid of "them". But film and literature would have you believe the opposite - that the disabled world seeks the destruction of the non-disabled world (see, for instance, The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Personally, plots to kill the able-bodied world by someone with a disability is not something I spend much time worrying about. It's disappointing that Gilliam would subject his audience to such malarkey.

It is the case that Dickens is in need of help. We could blame him for making errors in reasoning except that we know that his reasoning is atypical which makes those around him complicit in his acts. We could blame his sister, who is his caretaker, but she appears to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to the death of their mother and disappearance of her lover. As always, we need to look at the lack of social services available to the majority of people with (and without) disabilities in this, the richest country in the world. We can, for example, give billions of dollars in "aid" to Israel and Saudi Arabia (and in this case "aid" means "weapons to kill people with") but we can't get a respite care worker to aid Dickens and his sister.

2) That Dickens dies implies that he simply cannot live in this "able-bodied" world. There is no place for him in the world that Gilliam shows us in Tideland. Again, this is a common theme that goes something like, "The safest thing for 'us' and the best thing for him is that he should die so he can never hurt anyone else." (Again, see Of Mice and Men for another "fine" example of this.) Gilliam, and the rest of us, should at very least become reconciled to the fact that the difference we label as disability has always existed and always will. We may be able to kill "them" off in film and literature (and we may attempt to do so in real life- see, for instance, the Nazis) but "they" are here to stay. When we accept that we might be able to start figuring out how exactly "we" are going to have a society that considers "them" as more than an after thought we'll be getting somewhere.

Audience in Performance

2007-08-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

When I started playing music in middle and high school I was playing in bands that wanted to "rock" the audience. The music was designed to be audience friendly- though of course, we found it fun to play as well.

In college, when I started to play more difficult music (as in, difficult to listen to), I dismissed the audience as irrelevant. This was useful because when you play difficult music you can't count on an audience to respond positively to what you're doing so convincing yourself that you don't care what they think and that you're playing the music solely for your enjoyment is a practical defense mechanism. Though the music I played at the time was intensely personal in many ways and it was satisfying to play it in rehearsal with my band mates and we could even play shows to no one and still have fun, it was still obviously a lie that the audience was irrelevant.

Now that I play improvised music that is, by definition, different every night, I've started to rethink my ideas about audience. In improvised music, unlike in structured music, the audience can truly change the performance. For instance, if you're playing a structured song and you see that people are enjoying it- singing along, dancing, etc - then you might get excited and play your part more intensely or jump around but the music itself doesn't change much because it's preplanned. However, if you're making it up as you go along, as we do in my bands, and the audience (if we're lucky enough to have one) is visibly or audibly excited, it can literally change the music by affecting the decisions we make about what to play as we're playing. Case in point: when we played a punk show in Salt Lake City, we weren't sure if any one there was going to enjoy it. Five minutes into the first piece people in the audience were yelling encouragement and had their fists up in the air like they would if a punk band was playing. That's a shot of confidence that has to affect to music.

Furthermore, when we play different venues we have a lot of options for how to present the music. For instance, when we play a gallery show, we can assume the audience will probably have more patience and we can take advantage of that by allowing the music to develop more slowly. If we're playing a punk show, we generally plan to present our most intense and chaotic side more quickly. If you have a set of songs you play each night, you don't really have the ability to do this.

The reason I've been rethinking the role of audience is because I don't know whether it's a good thing to consider audience or to allow yourself to be affected by them in performance. Does it make it less honest? Or is it just a lie to attempt to ignore audience? How do we acknowledge the role of audience while still playing music that is true to ourselves?

Inclusive classrooom set up

2007-08-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

An inclusive classroom set up should be uncrowded. I mean this in a few ways:

1) Students, regardless of whether they are typically mobile or use wheelchairs or other assistive devices, should be able to get around the whole classroom easily. The reality is that it's not always possible to do this because most schools were not built with inclusion in mind. We can do our best with what we've got by removing any furniture that isn't directly useful to our students. This means that if space is tight we toss our bulky teacher's desk and cabinets of materials that only we use. We make the aisles wide and try to create some open spaces when possible. Again, the reality is that most of us teach in classes that are too small for the number of students we have and as teachers we hate to get rid of anything. However, it's imperative that we do what we can in order to make it possible for all students to attend and be included in our classes.

Another word about why this is important: We've all felt like so much cattle in a pen when we've been squeezed into a tiny space with a large number of people. This is insulting just about whenever it occurs but extremely so when it's in an educational setting. Overcrowding in schools sends a terrible message to our students about the value of their education. Furthermore, when students with emotional and/or behavioral issues are added in, we have to assume difficult behavior will be the result. And it would be unfair to entirely blame a student for acting out in this situation.

2) Though hanging up posters and charts is very important, it's also important that it is clear to all students where they should be focusing their attention. I like hanging up charts to remind students of what we've been working on and as references for them. However, too many make it so that some students just block them out entirely as they home in on the salient information while other students who find it difficult to determine saliency (students with learning disabilites, ADHD, etc) lose their focus. Aside from being careful with packing our classrooms with furniture, we must be careful of packing our classrooms with visual stimuli.

3) Much has been written about the arrangement of desks in a classroom- whether all desks should be in rows or cooperative groups and whether the classroom should be arranged so as to clearly channel attention toward the front where, presumably, the teacher is standing or so that students are facing each other. In my experience it's important to pick a method and stick with it so that students are not wondering/worrying about where they will be sitting as they're walking to your classroom. Being able to balance students' needs for accessing other students at times while being able to work privately at other times is important and being able to make the transition between the two predictable and smooth will help many students shed their anxiety over seating.

As with all planning, we must considering that any student, not just the typical ones, may come to our classrooms and it will be our responsibility to include them to the full extent possible.

Mind Set

2007-07-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

Part of the reason why I've met with some success as a teacher is because of the mind set I have. I don't think that the following is the only way to think about about work with students with diffficult behavior (SWDB) but it's been useful for me to do so.

Teaching generally, and students with difficult behavior specifically, require a lot of patience.
SWDB test limits again and again for various reasons. Some want to see if you can set limits and stick to them. When you do so you're creating a safe place for students and that helps many students avoid acting out. On the other hand, if you make a rule and then allow students to violate the rule, the implicit message is that there are no rules. Additionally, if you have a short fuse and blow easily students feel unsafe because an angry adult is often an unsafe adult. It seems reasonable for students to think that if you can't keep your own emotions in order how can you maintain order in the classroom?

SWDB also want to be in control. This is a typical characteristic of students labeled emotionally disturbed in particular. One way of being in charge is by being able to make the teacher upset. This provides these students with a feeling of power. There's nothing wrong with this impulse- we all want to be in charge at times and we all like to feel powerful. As an educator it's my job to provide these students with authentic opportunities to make decisions and feel empowered. This often cuts down on the number of times a students will try to gain control over the class- the need for control has been met elsewhere.

How to be patient with these students? It must be acknowledged that it is extremely difficult to be patient with SWDB because their behavior, by definition, is challenging. We can't let this be our excuse though because I would argue that it's more important to be patient with these students than with typical, unlabelled students. These students are more fragile and often more prone to even more extreme behavior when confronted with a power struggle with an adult. In some ways I find it easier to be patient with SWDB because these students are difficult for good reason and often without choosing to be so.

Without fail, the SWDB have baggage. As the social worker at my first school liked to say, these students come to our classrooms with heavy baggage that they set down next to their desks and start pulling stuff out of when class starts. It's been important to me to find out what their lives have been like before they get to my classroom. This is so because it turns my students into real people rather than a mere warm body and it's much more difficult to mistreat people whose history you know because you can't help but feel some compassion for them. This is why dehumanization is an integral part of sexism, ableism, racism, slavery, genocide and all other forms of discrimination and prejudice. You can't perpetrate these sorts of horrors on those that you know and accept as human. So when I know that Math Major's father is extremely grumpy and mean all the time, I can have a lot more patience for his need to have my attention all the time. When I know that C's house is absolutely vile and his mother does nothing resembling parenting, I can easily understand why behaves in seemingly bizarre ways.

So the mind set is that I must have patience with these students. I know them as people and I have compassion for them. Patience flows naturally from that position.

Soccer Round Up

2007-06-04T14:06:00.001-07:00

We interrupt this blog for a summary of my indoor soccer career to date:

Games played: Approximately 25

Injuries: torn left quad, torn right quad, sprained right ankle, sprained right knee, broken right index finger, pulled right and left hamstrings

Injuries found debilitating: Both quad tears for a total of 6 games missed

Gear purchased: red jersey (from Goodwill), blue shorts (from Goodwill), turf sneakers (from Sports Authority), soccer socks (from GI Joe's), shin guards (from GI Joe's), 3 Ace bandages (from Fred Meyer), two leg braces (from GI Joe's), ankle brace (from Rite Aid)

Goals scored: 3

Goals intentionally scored: 1

Goals let in playing goalie: Upwards of 12

Conclusion: I am not 18 any more

This is why I teach middle school

2007-05-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

Tuesday: Math Major is telling Who Me? all of the Spanish he knows. He then gets very quiet so I won't be able to hear what comes next- except, of course, I can. He says to Who Me?, "And puta." Who Me? asks him what it means. Math Major replys, "Either the 'B' word or queer."

Note for our non-Spanish reader: Puta means prostitute.

Wednesday: KO is doing his math homework while repeating to himself in a sing-sing voice, "Poopy, poopy, poopy, poopy, poopy...." in an attempt to drive everyone crazy. He succeeds at this so I ask him to stop. A couple of minutes later, still working on his math, he starts to say to himself, "buttocks, buttocks, buttocks, buttocks...."

Role call: additions and subtractions

2007-05-07T11:03:00.000-07:00

    Z
    CC
    ACDC
    Math Major
    Let's Ride Bikes
    Head Ache
    C
+  Miss Popularity
_____
       7 - starting point

+   Who me? (new eligibility as ED, added to my caseload)
+   Slick Rick (Returned from longterm suspension)
+   TS (moved into district)
______
      10

-    Slick Rick (placed at day treatment center following repeated suspensions)
-    TS (non-attendance following being kicked out of Dad's house)
+   TS (re-enrolled)
-    TS (moved)
+   TS (re-enrolled)
-    TS (dropped out/moved/refused to attend)
______
      8

+ RB (moved in from different district)
+ School much? (Moved in from different district)
+ Mike Tyson (transferred from different school following total of 14 days of suspension)
+ WW (moved in with Dad following running away from bio-mom in different state)
______
     12

-   Who me? (moved in with Dad in different district)
-   Head Ache (moved to different district - mom lost Section 8 housing)
______
     10 - ending point?

(Possible additions: Jehovah & Smiles, transferred to my caseload following new eligibilities)

What do I teach?

2007-04-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

On my way into the school today, a student I don't know asked me what I taught. It's a good question that I didn't have an answer for. I didn't want to say, "special ed." I also have abandoned my previously prepared answer of, "I help student learn who have a difficult time behaving in school" because I don't want my student labelled as "the bad kids." What I should have said was, "I help make the school a place where everyone can learn." That thought occurred to me a minute later. And then I thought of a diagram that describes what I do:

Special Ed Life

2007-04-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Z is a gas. He's fairly incapable of interacting with most people, even those he knows really well. Every day I greet him warmly and he says, "Be quiet." Which for him means he's doing all right. He's been in a behavior class for several years now and believes that he's been victimized by the situation because he feels he hasn't learned all that much. This is probably true and I've told him so. But he also refuses to do his work a lot of the time. He'll sit there for 45 minutes until the period is over because he thinks he's getting revenge on you. He's also really afraid of failing and gets frustrated easily when he can't do the work.

Z has made tremendous strides this year. Last year he was a desk thrower and would pound his head against the wall when he was frustrated. He spent a lot of last year in an office cubicle because that's where he felt comfortable. He refused to go to mainstream classes and there are some amazing stories about his interactions with his mom on school grounds. This year, other than a little binder slamming and stomping around, he's had zero intense behavior issues. He goes to all mainstream classes and does well for the most part.

We've arranged various modifications and accomodations for him this year. One of which is that he gets excused from an assignment every time he does another assignment - it's a two for one deal. Between his work refusal, below-grade level achievement and frequent absences, he just can't keep up. When he sees that he's missing 14 assignments in one class he can't see that it's largely of his own doing and he just wants to throw in the towel. So, we've got this accomodation worked out to keep him motivated.

One of his teachers really feels like this is doing a diservice to Z in some ways because we can modify and accomodate until we're blue in the face and then eventually he's going out in the world in which there are very few accommodations for people who don't fit the mold. Obviously, this is not the way we want it to be, but he's right to point out that this is the way it is. He's getting special ed schooling but there's no special ed life out there. He's going to have to show up for work and finish jobs as they're assigned. He's not going to be able to berate people for not knowing how to do something and he's going to have be somewhat personable to his employers. If not, it's unlikely he's going to be able to participate meaningfully in society. Z's issues are compounded by the fact that his disability is "invisible": he has some intense anxiety issues and victimization issues but he looks like a typical person - albeit a bit withdrawn and quiet.

Some folks, like the above mentioned teacher, just don't see that he's disabled and he's not going to magically be "cured". This is who Z is. And he rules. He's hilarious and smart. He knows way more about cars and all things mechanical than I ever will. It's too bad that most people will write him off for being a difficult person because he's got a very rich personality and it's been rewarding to know him this year. More than likely he'll be a mechanic of some sort when he gets out of high school and make more money than any one who ever tried to teach him.

Rational Response Vol. 2

2007-03-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

I got a new student two months ago that I'll call RB here. RB came to us from a nearby district but it was quite some time before his file arrived. This is worrisome with students who are in a behavior program because the behaviors can vary from "Why is she in a behavior program?" to "How is he not in residential care?" So it's good to receive a file beforehand so we can have some idea of what is difficult for a student and know what sort of behaviors are typical.

Well, RB started without the file in hand and he did great: completed classwork, participated in class, wasn't disruptive at all....pretty impressive. Most students start at a new school like this so I knew it was just a matter of time before we saw what landed him in a behavior program. Sure enough, after the first two weeks I noticed he had stopped handing in work. Then I noticed that the reports of his excellent behavior were somewhat exaggerated- he didn't disrupt class but he also didn't really do much work. He flew under the radar as it were. And then I got his file.

The file noted that RB had been a runner at one of his schools. By this I mean that when he got frustrated he would leave school and run away. This is why it's important to have a file ahead of time -I would never have pegged RB as a runner and I hadn't planned on this possibility. Thankfully, he hasn't run yet and says he doesn't do that anymore. Instead - he just refuses to do work at times. He has a hard time getting along with an educational assistant that is pretty much loved by all and has gotten himself kicked out of several classes for simply sitting there without even looking at the work he's been assigned. RB also has some severe attentional issues. When you're talking to him you can see his eyes glaze over after saying literally one word to him. I'm not exaggerating here. I've said, "RB," to him to get his attention. He'll look at me and than before I can get the next word out he'll already have a far away look in his eye that I know now means he's not listening anymore.

In sum, he has a history of running from and cutting school and being extremely disruptive and disrespectful. He's currently refusing to do work (even with help from assistants, myself and his teachers and with modified work) and he's not making friends even with several students making friendly overtures.

Here's why this is rational: his father has disappeared from his life as of a year ago, his stepfather just left the family, his mother is completely disengaged from parenting, all three of his older brothers hit him at times, one of his brothers was removed for abusing RB and has just come back home, RB has received no counselling for what happened, the brother closest in age to RB (just one grade above him) does the parenting. Refusing to care about learning pre-algebra or the Greeks seems really rational to me.

The Rational Response

2007-03-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

A therapist conducted a home visit in order to begin serving a student of mine whom I'll call C. C has struggled in school but his general trend this year has been up and up- which has been really gratifying given that his regular ed teachers wanted to give up on him immediately and seek outside placement. C has needs that stretch outside of the school setting so I referred him to a program that is a "wrap around" service- so-called because it covers what the school isn't covering thus providing service in areas that would otherwise be left open. When the therapist left the home after the interview he immediately filed a report with child services because the home is a complete mess and the baby in the family - whom C deeply loves - was gnawing on an oil bottle. (I know, it seems unbelievable but that's what he reported.) Most of my students have issues of neglect at home and though the extent of the neglect in this case is extreme the presence of it is not surprising. What is surprising is how C has been responding to it.
Lately, C has been amazing. He hasn't been suspended in months and months. He's been on time for classes and he's currently passing all of his classes. His behavior has been such that you would never guess that he is in a behavior program or is labelled as emotionally disturbed. This seems irrational to me. If I were going home to what C goes home to I wouldn't take the time to learn how to find the area of circles or how to conduct a scientific inquiry. I would break things. I would hit people. I would curse/cuss/swear at the principal. That seems like a rational response to the situation to me.
Two points here: when C does exhibit odd behavior (growling, foaming, disrespectful/foul language to adults) it's rather easy to have a lot of patience with him because I know what he has to live with. Also, we have to accept that learning capitalization or how to multiply fractions isn't going to be that high on some students' priority lists and it's for good reasons.

On Not Feeling too Good

2007-03-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

For most of my students, I'm the only responsible adult in their lives. By responsible I mean different things for different students - being consistently present, being patient, attending to their needs, etc. Since I know that I do a lot for my students and that they're all doing better in school than they would otherwise it would be easy to get a big head about this and congratulate myself for being such a hero. Fortunately for me my students rarely say thank you. They rarely ask politely for anything. They'll be really upset if their flavor of granola bar is missing rather than being psyched they're getting anything. And this makes sense, I think. You really shouldn't have to be grateful for being fed. You should actually feel entitled to help in school. I don't think my students are unreasonable when they aren't thankful because they're only getting what they deserve. So this keeps my ego in check (somewhat, anyway). There's not much need for congratulations when a kid gets what he or she needs.

3 for Electives

2007-03-01T14:19:00.000-08:00

Three of my students are getting out of one of my two periods with them so they can attend an elective class. It's difficult to get extra services to kids in the school day without removing them from something but it's too bad that they have had to miss elective all year. Fortunately, they're been doing so great that they're going to be able to spend the last third of the year in a tech-ed class that they all really like.

The silly thing is that this technically changes their placements - which is a big special education deal. Right now they all receive regular education with 21-60% special classes. The change would drop them to under 21%- technically a different placement. So I have to notify their IEP teams (a gen. ed teacher, parent, district rep. and me), revise their IEPs, send home meeting notices, hold the meeting, finalize the IEP and send the letter home that says we did what we said we were going to. All for what amounts to a schedule change. And it's OK of course. I've actually done every thing except for the actuall meetings and send the follow up letter but I did all the prepatory stuff instead of going to class with another student.

This is not to say that these things aren't important- having a process can help prevent abuse. But I called all the parents to see what they thought, I spoke with their teachers & administrators and we're all on-board. We stil have to have the meeting and do all the paper work that comes along with it. I don't mean to whine but my eyes are going to fall out of my head if I have to look at a computer any more.

ED or CD?

2007-02-27T15:58:00.000-08:00

I have a new student who, like most of my students, is labelled as emotionally disturbed. He mostly maintains in the classroom fine but he has conflicts with male peers that lead him to some extreme behavior. This behavior has manifested as this student causing serious injury to other students as well threatening students, staff and parents (with some truly vile language). Because he is a student who qualifies as needing special education a school's ability to punish him is limited. Basically you can suspend a kid for ten days after which you need to determine whether his behavior is a result of his disability. If it is, you can't suspend, never mind expel the student.

None of that is terribly interesting to me because I'm not much for punishment since it's mostly a form of revenge. However, the rub is that if a student as violent as this one gets into trouble with the law he would then be able to access all sorts of resources that he would otherwise not be able to access. So, there's been some discussion of reevaluating this student to determine if he truly is emotionally disturbed. It could be the case that he simply has a conduct disorder. The former is a label served by special education, and thus protected by that ten day suspension rule I mentioned, and the latter is not. So you can suspend and expel a student labelled as CD but not one labelled ED. Makes perfect sense, right? It gets worse.

If he's labelled CD the county would have to pick up the tab on whatever services he receives because it would be outside of school. This is strong incentive in a school district feeling a pretty serious economic crunch. Also, there's the possibility of this student ending up as part of the juvenile deliquent system. And there's some suggestion that this may be what he really needs. It's hard to argue with that when you read what he's done to other kids. But it's not hard to argue with that when he sits in your class and smiles at jokes in the novel we're reading.

Home friends, school enemies

2007-02-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

I have a very social phobic 8th grader and a far too social 6th grader. They can't really be in the same room together without lobbing comments at each other because they make each other so anxious. I always try to avoid having them in the same place at the same time but today there was some overlap. So one started to say something about the other being crazy and the other says something about hurting the first one, etc, etc. I got the 6th grader calm enough to go to his next class which quieted the 8th grader down. However, he was still too anxious to do any work so we just talked for 20 minutes.

When I asked him about why he doesn't like the 6th grader he told me that they get along fine when P. is there. I asked him to explain and he told me that the 6th grader and their mutual friend P. often stop by his house on the weekends and they all play or hang out or whatever. It turns out that they all live quite near each other and spend a lot of time together away from school. I found this all so strange- they're buddies at home but foes at school. What could cause this?

My hypothesis is that they do things at home which would get them into trouble at school and that makes them nervous. Also, the 6th grader is relatively popular while the 8th grader isn't. It wouldn't be "cool" to be seen hanging out in school together. Or something like that. Though it's my job to seek to understand the minds of these students, in social situations like this, they remain obscure.

New Students

2007-02-12T13:28:00.000-08:00

I'm getting two new students. One has already started and seems like a very sweet kid. His file reads like he's got some serious behavior issues and he's coming from a private school paid for by his previous district. He says "please" and "excuse me." Not typical for most students with behavior disorders. Today's journal question was, "Would you rather be twice as strong or twice as smart as you are right now?" He said, "Twice as smart because I come from a difficult background."

My other new one hasn't started yet but he's a 13 year old, 180 pound 6th grader with a history of drug use and who is under investigation for arson. Sweet. More to come I'm sure.

Fruits and vegetables are the new candy

2007-01-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

Many of my students come to school without having eaten breakfast (and sometimes dinner). This is a need that I can help them with. I've been buying granola bars by the ton in order to combat their hunger. I have them in a cabinet where students can help themselves. I get the generic version of the Nature's Valley granola bars that you can get just about any where. It's kind of a pain because they're a bit expensive and they're tasty so I think students eat them when they just feel like eating rather than just when they're actually hungry. And I sometimes eat one at lunch though I bring plenty food to eat- just something to do while I do paperwork.

Yesterday, the only variety I had left were "Honey & Oat" - an unpopular flavor. One student who was having a really rough day told me he hadn't really eaten in the last 12 hours but he didn't like the granola bars. I told him the only other thing I had was an apple. He was psyched to eat an apple and devoured it. So I cracked that I'll just buy apples for everybody from now on. This was met with, "Yeah!" 's all around. Then another student said, "And celery. I love celery." Followed by, "Broccoli would be good too. But keep it in the fridge."

So today I'm going to buy a bunch of apples.

Bribery

2007-01-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

In the parlance of behavior management systems, rewards or incentives are code for bribes. "If a student gets an A she is rewarded with a sticker. In order to have control of your class, you should have an incentive system in place." These systems are quite common place and they generally fades out quickly after elementary school as most teachers and administrators favor moving toward intrinsic rewards for academic achievement. (Or at least that's what they claim. An 'A' on a report card isn't exactly intrinsic.) However, the use of incentives is widely accepted and encouraged in behavior programs of all ages and grade levels including the initial design for the program I currently teach in.

I see most of my students twice a day- the first period we work on self-management skills and the second period, which is the last period of the day, we work on some basic study skills and we do homework. Originally, the last period was conceived of as 'reward time' for those students who earned it. A student would earn this reward time by meeting a goal of attaining a certain number of points that are given out by their teachers throughout their day and recorded on a behavior communication form. I was supposed to have games and computers available for the students and I could allow them to break school rules regarding use of portable music and video game players. But we haven't really ever gone there because of this guy whose writing hipped me to the fact that rewards don't really work the way we want them to. So initially, I was running the program with zero rewards. Things have changed a bit since then.

My students have to travel throughout the day with the behavior communication form so that there is a record of quantitative data of their progress towards the goals on their IEPs- which are reflected by the goals on these behavior sheets. A problem I had run into though is because I wasn't rewarding them like they were used to there was no motivation to actually complete the form. So I made the decision to institute a reward system for turning in a completed behavior communication form with a parent signature. Students earn points toward rewards that they have selected. For most students these rewards are small toys, candy. magazines or soda which they can get right before lunch or at the end of the day.

This worked pretty well so I began to rewarding points for other similar activities: writing down their homework in their planners and preparing their own behavior sheets with their individual goals ahead of time. I reasoned (rationalized?) that these are all behaviors that don't really translate to any thing meaningful outside of school so there shouldn't be much intrinsically rewarding about them. Thus, extrinsic rewards should be OK. I drew the line at rewarding students for their actual classroom behavior.

But two students continued to be completely unmotivated by academic success and continuously got themselves into trouble. Their teachers and parents were getting tired of it. One parent even started to talk about requesting a publicly-funded private school setting for her child. At this point, with...encouragement from the guidance counselor and school psych I began tallying up all the points the students earned throughout the day on their behavior sheets. What had simply been data for use in tracking progress toward goals now became part of a token economy. So quite clearly, these two students are being bribed to behave.

Discussing the merits of incentive systems is not of interest to me at this time. Suffice it to say that I believe they should be avoided. Yet, here I am, running a reward system in my own classroom.

It's my hope that I can phase these rewards out and that the the young age of most of my students gives me enough time to expose them to academic and positive social success so that these become the incentives and not Skittles. Until then, the bribery will continue.

Motivation

2007-01-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

Apparently my school hires a motivational speaker every year. Last year a person who was born without arms due to exposure to Thalidimide spoke. He also played drums and piano in front of everyone. Folks were amazed. This year they hired a person with spinal cord injury who uses a power chair with mouth controllers. He had some good messages, including how terrible Million Dollar Baby is, but overall he was so-so.

It's hard for me to decide what to think of this speaker. This person overcame some serious adversity to rejoin the workforce, become a husband and father and generally get on with his life after an unplanned life-changing event. Unplanned life-changing events are what most of our at-risk students struggle with. The speaker's message was that problems can make you stronger or bitter. OK, true.

But this person only became a motivational speaker when he couldn't get a job as a school counselor (after fininshing his master's degree in that field). So...he's using his disability to make a living in the only way that the non-disabled world will let him. Good for him to find a hole to sneak through but that's not actually the way it should have to be. Furthermore, he wasn't a very good motivational speaker and he leaned on some traditional tropes that the non-disabled world pushes when gazing at people with disabilities (fear of dependence being the primary one). The students were extremely respectful and many students went to speak to him afterwards so I guess they found it worthy of their time.

It seemed to me that the message overall was that despite his disability he was happy and productive. Seems obvious to me but I guess it hasn't always been so and everyone has to hear this somewhere. Still, all those kids staring at the person in the wheelchair....

Tone

2006-12-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

Through speaking with people who know me it's become obvious that this blog is a bit of a downer. I don't know how to lighten the tone and I don't want it to sound like this job is always so heavy. I work with middle school kids because they're hilarious. My job involves hanging out with kids all day. And I don't even have a set curriculum that I have to get them through. I'm not held accountable for their test scores. And their behavior is not thought of as a reflection of my work. Like everyone I would rather work less - 30 hours a week would be about right - but I love my job. There's no other career type of job I can imagine having. So, no worries about me. I report to you what may be heavy and tragic but there's a lot of laughter and fun. My job rules.

Slow Week

2006-12-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

There were no real emergencies this week but a slow week here is rather eventful anyway. For your enjoyment and edification (and edubacation), what follows is a list of things that happened during this uneventful week to the ten students I currently have on my caseload:

- a student who had been spitting out his meds decided he was going to take it now because he could notice a decline in his behavior when he was off his meds
- a student asked if he could have his schedule switched so that he would have no classes with his best friend because now, after failing every thing in the 1st marking period, he wants to get good grades and can't do that when his best friend is around
- 4 students caught up completely on all of their missing work
- a plan was formulated with an outside agency to get one student help with drug use
- I was called an idiot 4 times by a student who loves me (He didn't understand his math test; he completed it later following some reteaching.)
- two students came all week without their meds - this caused endless quiet cursing on the part of one and chasing, spitting and general over-excitement on the part of the other
- a student was able to attend the holiday dance for the first time in three years
- two students attended principal's lunch on the recommendation of their general education teachers
- a parent told me her child could decide for himself whether to take his meds or not and she was only doing it to satisfy "outside sources"
- a student became the highest achiever in his math class to date for the 2nd marking period
- a student received in-school suspension for wearing gang related apparel to school
- a student was suspended for two days for threatening and intimidating another student
- a student received five stitches when another student kicked open a door that smacked him in the face
- our most notorious work avoider completed the final draft of a major project in his humanities class
- a student couldn't stop talking about getting to visit his dad this coming week
- ditto for another student but his mom
- a student made a song using Garage Band and played it for me

And more, always more.

Return to Medlandia

2006-12-08T15:47:00.000-08:00

I asked a student to promise to stop by the nurse's office to take his meds on his way from my class to lunch. This is a student who doesn't like to take his meds and whom I've had to walk to the nurse's office in order to ensure that he got there. Before I started escorting him he would skip it and have to be called out of his class and to the nurses office following lunch. Though he promised he would actually do it this time, I found out he skipped the office and went straight to lunch when I stopped by the nurse's office five minutes later. So I tracked him down in the cafeteria where he was chowing on a plate of nachos. I asked him why he didn't stop by the nurse's office to take his meds and he said, "Because it's Friday." That seemed reasonable to me. I suppose I could have coerced him into leaving the cafeteria right then or told him he couldn't go to recess now or taken some other form of revenge. But I just asked him to take his meds before he went to his class after recess. He did.

Meds? Meds. Meds!

2006-12-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

One of my students takes a very small dosage of meds for ADHD. This student just told us he has been faking it for the past three weeks. He says that when he takes the meds he can focus but he can't do any thing. When he doesn't take his meds he can learn and do whatever he wants. This is true, I think. He's one of those rare people who can actually multi-task if one of the tasks is listening and the other doesn't require much concentration. The part he leaves out is that he gets frustrated and destructive when he's off his meds. But he sat in the office and cut box tops for an hour quite happily. At that point he could talk a little bit about what got him removed from class. Today I bought a football to play catch with him when he needs to have something in his hands when he's frustrated. We'll see.

Another student is perfectly well behaved and hardworking here. At home he throws things, yells at his guardian, walks out of the house and possibly hits people. Apparently he takes his meds regularly.

A third student had a very long history of violent incidents and was 5 years behind in reading and math. He recently was transferred to a therapeutic day program. He's never been on meds.

Nice try?

2006-11-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

One of my students has been having a serious attendance problem. Working with him we rearranged the schedule so that this student would be an office aid first period and miss a class with a teacher this student dislikes. The receptionist has plenty of help first period but she decided that this student needed the support so she would find something for this student to do. I worked it out with this student's teachers, administrator and guidance counselor. The guidance secretary immediately changed the schedule and I gave the brand new schedule to the student 8th period yesterday. The student was psyched. The student didn't come to school today.

UPDATE (12/5/06): The student came today after missing 5 days. Right away he learned how to find the slope of a line and finished the homework the math teacher assigned. I made him promise that he would come in again tomorrow.

12/7/06: Three days in a row! Also we've arranged to have help from outside agencies come to the school for his mental health and attendance issues.

Triage is the New Revolution

2006-11-22T09:16:00.000-08:00

As a proponent of a more...er...progressive political ideology than the Democrats I was surprised to find myself rather ecstatic about the results of the recent election. Democrats truly do not represent progressives so I only vote for a Democrat when it's a very tight race with a Republican. And even then I usually don't feel good about it. I'm looking forward to the day when I can make a choice for actual progress but for now I'm just hoping that the bleeding can stop. Literally and figuratively.

Some will say, "What about the plan for universal health coverage & raising the minimum wage? That's pretty progressive." If we consider helping folks when they're sick and making sure that people are adequately remunerated for their work progressive then we are in trouble. It's 2006, not 1906, right? The labor movement happened, didn't it?

I don't think we ought to boast about no longer committing human rights atrocities after decades of doing so; we ought to boast about proactively addressing issues before they ever become human rights atrocities. The fact that a person can work for under $6/hr. in this country is absurd. The fact that that same person can work forty hours a week, get $240 (gross) and then not be able to take her child to the doctor is immoral.

Conclusion: It's great the Dems won because ending what should be considered despicable violations of the rights of every human being is better than continuing them. But we should do better than that.

Yeah triage! Woo hoo...

Providing a Person with SDI

2006-11-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

SDI is specifically designed instruction. This is usually indicated on an IEP in an area a student has had difficulty accessing general education curriculum. For instance, if a student with a learning disability has particular trouble with reading she may be alloted 90 minutes of SDI in reading a week. This means that a special education teacher must provide curriculum tailored to this student's needs, modify/adapt general education curriculum and/or modify instruction/delivery of general education curriculum in order to make it more accessible to this student. An example of modified curriculum would be that our student with difficulty in reading might get phonics during independent work time when everyone else is working on making inferences in the novels they have self-selected.

Another method of delivering SDI would be to work with general education teachers to alter delivery of instruction. Some children with a learning disability have a very difficult time understanding oral instructions but when they read instructions they can do the work. So you might work with a teacher to make sure all of his instructions are written somewhere - on the overhead machine or on chart paper for instance. Another example would be that a particular student might need to only receive one step in a series of directions at a time. So you work with a teacher to make sure that this is happening.

Now here's the tricky part: If the teacher is now providing instructions in written format on the overhead, this is accessible to all in the classroom. This will probably make it easier for any number of students as well as the child labeled LD. But since it's used by the entire class it's no longer considered SDI by the Oregon Department of Education because it's not S and more. Which means you're no longer providing that child with her legally required SDI in this way.

You might say, "Wait a minute, that makes no sense." And I might reply, "You're damn right." But it would be true nonetheless.

What are the implications?

1) If the student starts to perform better and no longer needs support in that class to work at grade level because of these class-wide interventions (and if this were to happen it would be because of a series of similar interventions and not just the two listed above) you could have a team meeting and alter the IEP to remove the SDI in that subject area. In some ways this student is no longer disabled in reading because she is accessing the general education curriculum with no help from support staff. (So she's no longer disabled in reading...?)

2) Since altering the IEP is unlikely (in some instances parents won't want that because they want to make sure their child is receiving necessary supports OR it's next to impossible to get the parent in AND these meetings are time-consuming and teachers are overworked) one must conclude that passing good teaching techniques on to general education teachers is punished.

There are whole programs built around serving high needs students by altering teaching techniques that are very successful - Mel Levine's "Schools Attuned" is one. I'm a much better teacher in general and specifically to high needs students because of this. But in NYC we weren't punished for adopting good teaching techniques.

The Caste System

2006-11-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

Any one who has looked at disability rights can see that people with disability are treated as, at best, second class citizens. And anyone familiar with Disability Creep knows that you too can be denigrated if you associate too closely with a person with a disability. (Note: Disability Creep has been used in different contexts to mean different things but this is the usage I find most...Useful.) Special education teachers, among many others, experience disability creep by being excluded in any number of ways from the goings-on in schools because we "got some on us". As advocates for those who are excluded and as those who are excluded ourselves, it seems to me that we should know better than to create hierarchies among school staff. Yet, in my experience, it's quite common to find special educators and other staff excluding educational assistants/paraprofessionals (EAs/paras).

My experience in New York City, which was limited to working with under 10 para-professionals in 6 years, was that the paras were more or less lousy which might excuse their treatment in some minds (though I'd be willing to bet that it was the treatment that caused the behavior and not the other way around). Where I am now in Oregon, it's been my experience that the educational assistants (same job, different name) are excellent and still they are treated badly. For instance, presence of EAs at IEP meetings is strongly discouraged at every level. But some of the EAs who work here have been working with students for 2 or more years whereas, in my case, I've been working with these students for two months. It makes sense no me to exclude those staff members who are most knowledgeable about a student when planning that student's individual educational program.

Unlike many other schools, teachers here are routinely recognized for excellent work. However, EAs are often excluded from recognition even when their part in a project or response to a situation was much greater than that of a teacher's. Also, the principal here is in most ways excellent. But he has a very clear negative disposition towards EAs...and the principal has a background in special ed and talks about special education as a civil rights issue.

I guess I'm surprised by this because I see such a clear link between imposing hierarchies on people with disabilities and hierarchies between staff members at school. I mean, it's right here in the same place! But it goes unseen or it's somehow justified. I would think it would induce cognitive dissonance but instead it's ignored. And we wonder why our student have cliques and mini-hierarchies amongst them.

How many educators does it take to make you emotionally disturbed?

2006-11-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

The other day I participated in a meeting in which we (the school psych, two special ed teachers, a general ed teacher and the assistant principal) decided that a student was emotionally disturbed. The student met the qualifications set by the district for this label. Now the student can work with me on improving his/her behavior in school. This was the 3rd of three meetings we held - none of which the parent attended though the parent told us she/he would attend all of them. So the five of use sat together and determined that this student is no longer learning disabled but emotionally disturbed. Why did I agree? It was going to happen either way because I wasn't a required member of the team. And I actually think we're going to help this student now. Or more specifically, I'm going to help this student now. His previous casemanager was useless. So when we hear that someone is emotionally disturbed or autistic or retarded or learning disabled we need to remember that it's just a little group of people who sit around and decide that it's so.

So...what do you do?

2006-11-19T14:09:00.000-08:00

I have to explain my job a lot. When I tell people that I work with emotionally disturbed kids I can't imagine what they think. Or, I can and I want to dissuade them that it's any thing like what they think. It's not some altruistic service that I do because I need to feel good about myself or pay penance for my privilege (though we do need to pay penance for our privilege). Mostly I do the same thing I did when I was a general education teacher when I worked with these kids but now it's my sole duty rather than a sideline that was time consuming, necessary and satisfying.

Since my school more or less does inclusion I spend 3 periods teaching a small group of kids. Two of those periods we do self-management skills like anger control, empathy training, bullying awareness, etc. One period each day I try to fill in some basic academic gaps like how to memorize information, how to read a chart or map and how to take notes. Then we do homework for the rest of the period. For two other periods I work in classrooms with students on my caseload making sure they can access the curriculum by monitoring their behavior and modifying curriculum. For two other periods in the day I do paperwork, meet with staff, make phone calls, plan curriculum and put out "fires". The two educational assistants I work with spend all day in general education classes making sure the curriculum is accessible to our students. Sometimes students misbehave, sometimes they get frustrated and sometimes they get themselves in hot water. Most of the time they do what they can despite the overwhelming obstacles they face.

Working with students classified as ED it has become clear to me that most of the disability they are classified as having is environmental (which would call in to question whether these students are actually disabled...although, that's true for most disabilities, right?). For instance, one of my students was removed from his parents at a young age due to drug use and has spent time with innumerable foster parents; another has no father and the mother provides almost no oversight; another lives with both parents but has had all other siblings removed due to neglect and comes in having not been put to bed and wearing extremely dirty clothes. Still another student has grown up in a house where the parents scream at each other and have extreme social phobia; another is dirt poor and seemingly unloved; and another is continuously told by the mother that school is a waste of time. The student I have with the most extreme behavior lives with an adoptive father who has an occasional relationship with a woman who may or may not be the mother who spends most of her time wandering the streets trying to score whatever drug she is currently addicted to. This father doesn't clean, put to bed or take any educational interest in the child. He also calls his "grandmother", who carries a gun, over when he misbehaves and beats him up when called. So, why are these kids misbehaving I wonder? I believe it when it's said that most misbehavior is a response to unmet needs.

So when I tell people what I do I might say I work with the bad kids - emphasizing 'bad' so it's clear I don't actually think they're bad. And sometimes I say, "emotionally disturbed" kids because the label ED causes most people to take notice pretty quickly. Other times I just say I teach or that I teach special education. But if you want to know what I really do, I'll tell you right now: I try to make a few hours of each day that I work with my students better than they would be otherwise in whatever way makes most sense at the time. And hopefully, hopefully this leads them out of where they are and onto something better where they don't have to pay for the mistakes of their parents, often caused by factors out of the parents' control, for the rest of their lives.

LRE as LEE

2006-10-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is a measure built into IDEA that protects a disabled student's right to receive an education with non-disabled students whenever possible. Essentially, the student should be placed in as close to a regular setting as possible. Sometimes the least restrictive setting that is appropriate is a very restrictive setting. For instance, a high school aged student with with severe mental retardation coupled with numerous physical impairments might be best served in a separate school designed to help prepare this student to live as independently as possible. That's pretty restrictive because there are no non-disabled peers in that setting but it's probably appropriate.

Just as LRE is sometimes MCE it is also LEE - Least Expensive Environment. The district office has denied a transportation request for cab service for a student for whom we have serious safety concerns. They say it's because they are concerned that it's too restrictive and there is no data to back it up - which, by the way, is false. It seems to me that it's much cheaper to plead LRE in this case than to pony up the dough to get this kid to school in the way that is safest. If, as a parent, I knew what the situation with this students was, I wouldn't let my child ride that bus.

Update 11/20/06: This student called the bus driver a terrible name, called all the kids on the bus the same name, was reportedly harassing a female student and was reassigned to the mini-bus. Two weeks later we got a risk assessment report back from an outside agency that recommends that this student NOT attend the home school due to the high risk factor. This student has since been placed in a private therapeutic setting.

Why I oughta...

2006-10-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

I was absent from school on Tuesday at an all day training that was actually relatively useful. Apparently, the substitute was a wheelchair user. When I came in on Wednesday a teacher said to me, "I thought it was ironic to have a substitute in a wheel chair with the behavior kids." I think she meant something about the blind leading the blind...wait, that's abelist....but you know what I mean. I wasn't sure how to respond without ruining my working relationship with her. I just said, "Oh yeah?" and let a long uncomfortable pause sit there between us. As she was walking out the door she mumbled something about chasing kids down the hall in a wheelchair. Of course, no chasing went on of any sort and everyone reported that she was quite competent.

FAPE 'em

2006-09-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

Recently I noticed a colleague heard FAPE used as a verb. Free appropriate public education (FAPE) is mandated in IDEA for students with disabilities. This was the first time that it was made explicit in federal law that students with disabilities had to be educated at public expense in an appropriate manner. And remember, IDEA was passed in 1990 so...rather recently. As noted elsewhere, the word "appropriate" is rather, well, inappropriate because it's so open to interpretation. However, what might be even more inappropriate is the use of FAPE I have recently heard at meetings of the special ed teachers in my district. The usage went like this:

"So what happens when a student attending private school does not come to the nearest public school for his special education services [as mandated in our state guidelines]?" asked one special ed teacher.

Replied the special education program manager, "You FAPE 'em. Send the FAPE letter [a district-wide standardized letter] indicating that we stand ready to provide FAPE whenever he might begin to show up for his services."

And that made me think that's what we're doing to our students all the time - FAPEing them. Modified your curriculum! You've been FAPEd. Provided alternate setting for your test! Consider yourself FAPEerized! FAPE up to the facts!

Note on 10/6/06: Earlier this week at a district training of all SPED teachers and related service providers the phrase "Fape 'em" was used repeatedly by folks at all levels. So clearly this is part of the lingo that as a newbie I'm just not familiar with.

Most Convenient Environment

2006-09-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

A major section of IDEA is the Least Restrictive Environment clause (LRE). LRE is defined as the educational setting where a child with disabilities can receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) designed to meet his or her education needs while being educated with peers without disabilities in the regular educational environment to the maximum extent appropriate. This means that we can't have self-contained classes of students with disabilities unless less restrictive settings are inappropriate. You can seee that you've got that mushy word "appropriate" in there which can, and does, cause all sorts of problems. It seems to me that "least restrictive" is often reinterpreted to mean "most convenient" and not for the student but for the teachers. It's inconvenient to have a student in your class that learns differently and/or acts differently from most other students because that means you might have to change your teaching. It's that or move the student to a different class. Which one happens most often, I wonder?

So, in my district, it's no wonder that there is a good deal of resistance to the push to include students with disability in mainstream classes by ending self-contained classes that took students away from their home schools and relegated them to spending the whole day with one teacher and a bunch of other "high needs" students - a recipe for disaster if there ever was one. That and the district office keeps reminding everyone that we have to do this because it's part of No Child Left Behind that is being enacted this year and the district got in trouble last year from the state department of ed. for having too many students in self-contained classes. Notice that no one mentions that inclusion is more ethical, leads to better educations for all and the LRE for the vast majority of students.

Special Paperwork

2006-09-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

So I had to change a kid's transportation from the mini-bus to the regular bus today because his very upset mother called me at school today to request this. He was riding the mini-bus to another school last year because it wasn't his districted school so the regular bus didn't go there. This year he goes to his districted school, with his brother, so the regular bus works for him. The busses all arrive and leave at the same time from the same spot at the school. So theoretically he would just follow his brother to his new bus without an issue. Easy enough, right?
Below is what I had to do to officially change his transportation placement:
- speak to the vice principal that manages this kid's team to find out how to make this happen
- speak to my special ed mentor in order to figure out the official process for doing this
- fill-out a special ed action prior notice form, send the one to the district office, one to his parents and add one to his permanent file
- fill out a request for transportation form, send one to the district office and add the other to his permanent file
- rewrite the first page of his IEP to reflect this change and send one copy of this home and add another copy to his permanent file
- call the district office twice to get advice on how to do this properly.

This was, literally, hours of work. I didn't see a single student in their general education classes today. Not a good day for "servicing" students.

How to Flirt in Portland?

2006-09-07T18:59:00.000-07:00

I must preface this by saying that as a married man I don't, as rule, flirt.
___________

In NYC, the slightest interest you showed in another person would properly be construed as either A) flirting or B) confirmation that you're not from these here parts. For example, if you go to a coffee shop, a typical, non-flirtacious interaction would be as follows:

You (standing in front of the counter waiting to be served: ....
Barista (standing behind the counter, looking bored and not showing any real interest in you): ...
You (giving a clear motion with your head that your attention has now been turned from the menu to the barista): ...
Barista (spoken with a carefree inflection): Hey.
You: Hi. Could I get a large soy latte?
Barista (nodding slightly and walking to espresso machine): Yup.

This, mind you, is an example of a rather friendly barista.
The following is an example of an extremely flirtacious and almost aggressive barista:

You (standing in front of the counter waiting to be served): ....
Barista (seeing you she/he shows a hint of a smile): How's it going?
You: Not bad.
Barista: Alright.
You: Could I get a large soy latte?
Barista (nods slightly and walks to espresso machine): Yup.

In the above situation, the barista has made it clear that she/he is in to you. However, I have found that in Portland it is common for a barista to ask you all sorts of questions about yourself with real interest and...a full-on smile! At first I thought I was being flirted with ceaselessly. But then I figured out that it's the near excessive niceness of the people in Portland that causes baristas, and everyone else here, to act this way. Which is fine. Until you start wondering about how actually to flirt with someone. It was so easy in NYC. You could just ask how someone was doing with interest and you'd have made it obvious what you were thinking. Here, that's common practice with everyone you meet any where. I began to think you had to ask really probing questions or be super forward in order to make your intentions clear. However, my new theory is that you have to show some disinterest. If you act cool and distant you may seem intriguing to someone who has learned to be open and kind at all times. I hope someone can try it out and get back to me on how it works.

Earth plus Sky equals Food

2006-08-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

I have tried to remain aware of the fact that as a New Yorker I, more than most people, am divorced from the source of the food I eat. It's not so bad as the scene in Feed (M.T. Anderson) when Titus visits a fillet mignon farm (or possibly veal farm) where all the meat is growing out the ground) and says, "I really like to know where things come from." But still, it's pretty bad. Driving through Indiana and Illinois this became utter apparent to me. You just drive through mile after mile of corn and soy bean fields - especially when you get off the Interstate and drive on smaller roads. And I know this is obvious but it was still heavy. Food comes from the earth. The sky and the ground get together and make plants that we can eat. There it all is. No packaging or preservatives or signage or any thing. Just food coming up from the ground. That's how it's worked out so we can manage to live. And there it all was stretching out on either side of us as we drove. I was amazed and humbled.

Philadelphia - Gotten to know you

2006-08-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

Though we're in the midst of moving 3,000 miles away I still feel like Philly is a natural place for us in many ways. East Coast, mid-sized, music and activism in abundance, we have good friends there, affordable housing. I don't even know what it is about Philly that appeals to me so much because there are certainly other cities with the above credentials. Perhaps that it's a scaled back version of a large city like NYC but not Boston - a city I never see myself living in. It's somewhat large, somewhat cosmopolitan...but not overwhelming. This is quite possibly academic because a move back east is at least 5 years away I think.

"Me and Mike Watt playing Guitar"

2006-07-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

Watched the Minutemen documentary, "We Jam Econo," the other day. I am re-psyched on these guys. Such timeless music. And Double Nickels on the Dime is one of the greatest records ever. But what it mostly made me think of is playing music with Christopher. I've been fortunate in that I've basically only ever been in bands that have been populated with my best friends. I'm not really sure how else to make music (though I guess I will learn when I get to Portland). Being in That's All She Wrote with Christopher was very much like taking all of the experiences you had as a teenager, adding a dose of broadened musical taste and making a band out of it. There's something about being in a band, and all the component parts of that (practicing, writing, touring, etc), with people you love and you've known for a long time that elevates the experience to another level. Truly a beautiful thing. So if some day it's possible I hope to be able to make music with Christopher again.

The End of Fire&Flux

2006-07-29T13:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago Fire&Flux played what may be its last show. I would like to think this is not true but we'll be living 2000 miles apart so that makes it rather difficult to get together. That said, Rich is still planning a tour for us some time in the winter. Sounds good to me.

The last show was pretty fantastic. Christopher came down from Providence to play and Chris J came in with his new girlfriend Teresa. Some other excellent individuals came out too. We played well I thought though I don't know if it sounded as good to other people as it felt to us. It was a pretty intense set with some really screaming sections. Chris took 200 pictures of the event so it's rather well documented.

Throughout our set I did my best to forget that this was it, this was the last time we're going to play together. Improvised music really requires one to focus in a way that other doesn't - at least for me. So focus is always an issue and always something I'm working on. Those moments when you can forget yourself are the best moments of playing. And living. In scenarios like this, when there's substantial subtext to the playing, it's hard to get your mind in the position of only thinking about music.

Christopher's set was awesome. Intense and beautiful like all his music. Some dude got on stage afterward and tried to embarrass him though. I kind of flipped out at him afterwards cursing him up and down. There was definitely a part of me that wanted him to hit me so I could feel free to hurt him. It's the same thing as always: he hurt me (by trying to hurt Christopher) so I wanted revenge. There's part of me that thinks this is totally wrong and part of me that thinks people have to know what they can't get away with.

So it was exhilarating and sad and fun and exciting. Enough people showed so that I could give Christopher a non-embarrassing amount of money to get home with and we all left relatively happy. And then that part of my NYC life was over.

Reynols from Argentina

2006-03-15T06:46:00.000-08:00

Saw a documentary over the weekend about a band called Reynols from Argentina. They play improvised avant-rock music (more or less). They are known mostly for having a singer/drummer who has Down Syndrome. The documentary was not well-made; the translation for the subtitles were particularly poor at times. It was certainly a unique topic though. Not sure I know what to think about the documentary or the band but it's another way that my interests seem to collapse into a single point. You know? You can look for Reynols on the Internets but it's difficult to find any thing on them that is useful. But do look.

A Guinea Pig is Not a Guinea Pig

2006-01-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

Someone in Sound and Fury (a fascinating - albeit not terribly well-made movie - about the rift in the deaf community caused by cochlear implants) said, "a child is not a guinea pig!" And it occurred to me that a guinea pig is not a guinea pig. Know what I mean? The definition of this animal is to be experimented on. Ummm...need more be said?

Short term Immediate Relief (purgatory) vs. Long term Structural Change (Academia)

2006-01-16T15:19:00.000-08:00

I've thought about the relative benefits of being part of projects that provide immediate relief and benefits to people (volunteering in soup kitchens, teaching, direct action) vs. working toward long term structural change (working in academia, politics, administration positions, etc). Despite regarding various activists as heroes (Malcolm X, Emma Goldman, Weather Underground, etc), I've always been drawn to long term projects. These long term projects almost invariably remove one from the community of people that you want to support. They are also comfortable and deceiving and often turn a radical activist into an armchair radical. And yet, a life of the short term is somewhat purgatorial. This is the connection I've just made today.
You can run the most amazing soup kitchen in the world and you will help many people and that is above reproach in every way. But for me, I just see the endless number of people that will need to be fed because of the structural elements that cause hunger. I think that people who do what I'm calling "short term" work (and I understand that working in a soup kitchen, for instance, is not necessarily accurately called "short term" - but feeding people is a shorter term goal than ending the causes of hunger) believe that it will be someone else's work to develop structural solutions to the problems that they are addressing in an immediate way. That is right. But I find this personally frustrating. I could teach for the next 25 years (and I might) but that probably won't cause an end to a racist, ableist, classist educational system that supports a social system I think should be dismantled.

I want to be clear in my unequivocal support for teachers, soup kitchens and the like and my unequivocal skepticism of politicians, academics, administrators, etc. However, I think sometimes that I want to attempt to change things so there will be no need for soup kitchens rather than spend a life spooning out food.

I think sometimes that I just want this in order to have an easier job - but I think the "easier" part of it is the possibility that things might change in part because of my work. As a teacher I believe that I contribute to change but I also know that the form of change I'm involved in is the 100 year kind in which I'll never see it myself (except in individual students - perhaps that should be enough).

So far I've taken the balanced road. Teaching is not terribly immediate and it is somewhat comfortable. I do some more immediate activities and I'm also more involved in academia. But this balance leaves less time for the rest of my life. Unless this is the rest of my life. And that's no so bad.

By Any Means

2006-01-10T14:10:00.000-08:00

By Any Means- 1/8/06

While I imagine many people went to this show to hear either Rashied Ali (last drummer for John Coltrane) or Wiliam Parker (the IT bassist in the NYC downtown music scene - and for good reason), I went to see Charles Gayle, a saxophonist who has been around since the inception of free jazz but spent most of his career in complete obscurity, including many years without a home. What I find intriguing about Gayle is that he has historically been a big talker on stage. He was reviled for conservative views on abortion and talking about Christ on stage though he spent quite a bit of time also talking about inequality, homelessness and poverty - or so I've read. This led to his exclusion from the music scene to a large degree and only recently has he started to come back onto the radar.

Gayle is a monster player, part John Coltrane, part Albert Ayler mixed with bop technique, Gayle's music makes for great listening. Live he creates intricate and beautiful lines as well as screaming noises. What's also interesting about him is that he has abandoned free jazz at times in order to play gospel music - something he felt was more appropriate in order to revere God. Thankfully for us he seems to have decided that free jazz is worthy of God. There's much reading to do about Charles Gayle if you Google his name. You can also check him out in a great free jazz documentary called Rising Tones Cross. It was somewhat dissapointing that he said nothing at the show and the group was a little tentative at times. However, when they got going they made quite a beautiful ruckus. And they have a great name.

On Novels

2005-10-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

For the most part, I stopped reading novels about six years ago. I have a degree in English Education and I teach eighth grade English Language Arts but I almost exclusively read non-fiction. I've thought a lot about why I do this and there are basically two reasons:

1) I get obsessive about particular topics. Right now it's disability. Before that it was anarchism. Before that it was sixties radicalism - mainly the Black Panther Party and SDS and before that it was String Theory. In the past year I've read about ten books and probably 50 articles on disability. When I've occassionally allowed myself to read something off topic it's been very rewarding. I bought and read most of a book that collected Robert Creeley's poetry. I also read Life of Pi this past summer. But other than these and a few others, it's been all disability, all the time. I did read one novel that was disability-related: "The Body's Memory." That was a nice intersection. I should maybe think about doing more of that.

2) I feel like one can study novels the way I study particular nonfiction topics. I've actually done this a bit. For a while in college I was really into mid-late nineteenth century American Literature - Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, etc. However, since this is a whole project onto itself, I stay away from novels all together. If I was going to read fiction well I would have to study it - I'd have to do author, period, style, or genre studies. That sounds fun but I've got disability to work on right now and I feel like reading novels now would be a distraction, a guilty pleasure - one that I shouldn't, for some reason, afford myself.

And anyway, fiction is so much harder to read. There's usually so much more you have to keep track of and it takes interpretative skills that I've allowed to get rusty. So the more I do stay away from novels, the more I will stay away from novels.

That said, my favorite books are all novels.

Starbucks and Disability

2005-10-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

Standing in front of the 1st Starbucks I was thinking about how it didn't look at all like the other ones I've seen. All over the North West for the 2 weeks I was out there I was able to visit so many excellent, unique coffee shops. I thought a lot about how these were the 3rd places for the people in the surrounding communities. And I thought about what happens when everyone's 3rd place becomes the same. When your 3rd place is everywhere you go, you must feel less of a connection to the one at home - and the 3rd place is not really yours any more. It's a false 3rd place because it doesn't reflect your community or your home town at all. The original Starbucks looks right at home in Pike's Place Market, the other ones all look like boring iterations on a tired theme. Anyway, it seems to me that our desire for every thing to be comfortable and familiar does us a disservice in the long run.

Here is the connection to disability: we don't just want famililarity in our coffee houses, food (McDonald's, Taco Bell, etc), news (Fox) and shopping (Walmart), we want it in our people. It's so much easier to interact with people who remind us of ourselves just like it's so much easier to hang out at a place that reminds of us the places we hang out at home and just like it's so much easier to eat food that reminds of (or is exactly like) the food we eat at home. I won't go into the way in which this erodes the culture of the places that are overrun with chain stores or the way it erodes our experiences of travelling when we visit these places because you could read about that more thoroughly elsewhere. It does seem to me that our experience of other people is less interesting when we surround ourselves with people who look just like we do. The interest in not allowing ourselves to experiences differencel and in fact degrading difference makes for a much less interesting lived experience in the world. It seems to me anyway.

Peace (& Freedom?) in Aceh

2005-08-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't been following this as closely as I wish I had been but I saw this today which gave me a lot of hope. Having known (very slightly) someone who died in the Free Aceh Movement I guess this makes me feel like his work continues to be meaningful. Though this peace deal is clearly problematic it seems like it's moving in the right directions more or less. It's still painfully disgusting that Aceh is still not free.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-indonesia-aceh.html
http://newsc.blogspot.com/
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/15/144204

Taking Their Lives Off the Table

2005-08-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

I continue to be uncomfortable with the intersection of disability rights groups and the far right in physician assissted suicide and similar cases. I wonder what makes disability groups comfortable with this union. I appreciate that the value of a disabled person's life is questioned when we indiscriminately allow (and encourage) people with disabilities and illnesses to kill themselves. But I also believe one has the right to kill one self if one chooses. One also has the right to seek help to do so if one requires help. That said, I also recognize that the environment in which we live makes a burden out of people with a disabilities when no burden actually should exist and this often causes a person with a disability or illness to kill him or herself.

With all this said, I wonder if we can take this "negotiation" of the value of the lives of people with disabilities off the table. If it was the case that the life a disabled person was as valued as the life an "able" person, would disability groups no longer object to PAS? I don't know. But until the value of life is considered equal it won't be surprising to see ties created between groups whom I mostly support and groups whom I abhor.

The Basic Idea

2005-07-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

In order to take advantage of someone you must other him or her. This is a required part of hierachical structures like, for instance, capitalism. We don't take advantage of people we identify strongly with. For people to play their part in a system of control we must look for and create reasons to separate "us" and "them". This othering of people allows to do nasty things to each other without the cognitive dissonance that would occur if we did these things to people that we thought were much more like us than not like us. We cannot treat people like machines when we think of them as people just like us.

Disability is a very important othering to undo. It's from disability that we take our most fundamental (and incorrect) measures of man [sic]. Our physicial prowess and mental capacity are accorded greater value than something like honesty, loyalty, humanity, etc. If these latter qualities were more highly regarded then we would have to stop othering people with disabilities. And then we would have to stop oppressing them.

Disability Socially Constructed?

2005-06-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

Nah...

http://www.rightwheelchair.org/

I was blind to that

2005-06-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

For years I've been calling religion a crutch. And I've taken from a movie with the guy who played Kramer on Seinfeld that it's OK to use a crutch if you need it. The other day I was writing this down in a assignment for a class and I realized that this too is abelist language. I imagine I'll be rooting out this language for years.

The Normal Pill

2005-06-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

The question of whether people with disabilities would take a pill to make them "normal" if it was available has been asked at various times of various people with disabilities. It's interesting that a lot of them say no, particularly when they don't have access to resources that help mitigate some of the social factors that make living with a disability so difficult. It never occurred to me to flip this question on its head: Would I take a pill that would make me accept people for who they are? "I suspect that given the choice of taking a pill to become normal or giving normal people a pill to accept differences, most people with disabling labels would choose the latter." - Herbet Lovett.

Acting Like Animals - If Only We Would

2005-05-21T01:49:00.000-07:00

Today I listened to a presentation about Jose Saramago's book Blindness. When everyone goes blind in the book the social order breaks down. People do terrible things to each other: raping ,starving, defecating any where, murdering, etc. Someone in the group said, "The people started acting like animals." I know it's been said before but clearly it's worth repeating: Non-human animals don't do the horrifying things we do. Certainly one could find all sorts of examples of non-human animal behavior that is shocking to us but it's fairly obvious that you could easily find examples of human behavior that go far, far beyond what any animal has ever done or will ever do. Someone in this same session said something about our humanity separating us from the animals. And that's right, but not the way she meant it. Our humanity is both one of caring and compassion but also of unbelievable destruction and genocide. Animals don't committ genocide; it is a strictly human trait and thus part of this thing we speak of reverentially called "humanity". If humans did act like non-human animals when the blindness stikes in Saramago's book, we wouldn't be shocked and outraged. It wouldn't be a story about how low humans can sink. It would be about adjusting to new circumstances and continuing to live in a sustainable way as best as one could. If only we would "act like animals" more often we all, human and non-human animals both, would be much better off.

Spring

2005-05-16T15:43:00.000-07:00

This feeling has been creeping up on me. It has come up so gradually that I didn't really even notice it until this past week. Now I feel completely mired in it. It's strange to have this happen because I feel like I'm in pretty good touch with my emotions. I guess I always feel like that and then I realize I have no idea. Anyway, I've been overwhelmed with optimism lately and it's been absolutely beautiful. I feel like I've become a really sound teacher. I feel like I'm becoming a strong musician. It seems as though I'm becoming a better friend, son & brother...and all because the weather is nice. Honestly, it just seems like I can become the person I've always wanted to be. All winter I felt like I was struggling and struggling to keep my head above water, to remain happy about who I've become. Now that we're a few weeks into nice weather I can hardly remember what all the struggle was about. This happens every year and I never catch it until after it's already happened. Now I just want to sustain this feeling forever. If I could always feel this good about myself who knows how happy I could be?

Guaguas & Privillege

2005-05-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things I enjoyed most about DR was travelling by guagua. Guaguas are like minibuses that seat about 24 people and travel between different cities and towns. To get on a guagua you just stand on the side of the road you want to travel on and flag one down. When you want to get off, you just shout "afuera!" and the guagua pulls over. They are ridiculously cheap to use (for us anyway) and they're fun. I really liked travelling on the equivalent of public transportation.

Some time during a trip on a guagua it occurred to me that it was a privillege to travel this way. Guaguas are totally inexcessible to people who have mobility disabilities. This made me think about how I would have enjoyed the trip if I was in a wheelchair. It would have been difficult. Traffic laws are less formal, sidewalks are narrow and obstructed, accessbility laws are either non-existant or ignored. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. Laws can be changed and enforced, rennovations can be made. Often I'm so impatient with these kinds of situations in the US. The newer city buses are very accessible and the older ones are not. I can't stand that not all of the older buses have been replaced by the newer. An elevator is being installed at the subway on 125th St and it's frustrating that it's taking years (literally) to complete. These changes are occurring (though at an absurdly slow pace).

But I must confront my privillege once again here. It is only the privillege of living in a country like the US that makes me assume that these sorts of changes should come about now in order to reduce the ways that inaccesbility is built into our environment. In a country like DR, long exploited and colonized and now extremely poor, what hope is there that public transportation will be made accessible, curb cuts & other simple yet necessary modifications will occur.

After continuously confronting my privillege for years and years I am still taken by surprise at times by the sheer extent of my privillege.