Your Personae is Driving Me Crazy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.