When I was a little girl, my parents appeared to take their parenting responsibility seriously. I was fed three meals a day, usually containing some nutritional content. My clothes fit and were seasonally appropriate. I never got lice. They signed forms and returned them to school, attended meetings when required, came to concerts, and gave me the choice of buying or bringing my lunch each day, even giving the choice of PBJ, bologna and cheese or salami sandwiches. My brother and I were not allowed to watch horror movies, anything rated R or anything that involved sex. My mother still firmly believes that "fart" and "crap" are full on curse words, despite the fact that in the last year she's learned to drop the appropriate F bomb here and there.
Husband and I attempt to do the same sort of parenting for our daughter, and I'm sure that will continue when her sister is born. Something inside us just tells us that it's our job to provide food, shelter, clothing and guidance for our children. Among my circle of friends who also have kids, this seems to be the going trend of parenting: actual childcare. Are we mutants? It appears so.
Why do I think so? Well because in the last couple of weeks it has been made clear to me that I have been placing far too many expectations upon myself! I need to take it easy! How have I learned this lesson? Why, I've been taught by the parents of public school students!
I don't actually HAVE to feed my child 3 meals a day despite the fact that we can afford healthy, nutritious and often tasty fare. And if I'd rather not be responsible for that, the school system will just do it for me.
And returning permission slips? Unnecessary. That is, unless I decided at 8:45am the morning of a field trip that leaves at 9:30 that I'd rather not pack my child's lunch despite saying I would beforehand. If I just give her a few dollars to take with her, SURELY the teacher can stop and pick up something for my child to eat, right? If not, he can just eat her sandwich. She has a job after all and gets 3 months off every summer, I'm sure she can afford another one.
Maybe my daughter only speaks in monosyllabic whine and has a recurrent case of head lice? Well, if I was a good parent apparently I'd just wait until the school wanted to take care of the communication problem with some free therapy, and as for the lice, can't the nurse just pick it out for me?
And now that the weather's changing and it's in the mid 40's in the morning when my child heads off to school, I don't really need to worry about whether or not she has a jacket or coat. If she shows up in 48 degree weather in shorts and a t-shirt shivering, they'll just give her a new outfit at school.
And now that The Squirt is on the verge of turning 2, we have that whole potty training issue ahead of us. I THOUGHT that was going to be something we'd need to figure out and get cracking on, but as it turns out, she doesn't actually have to be potty trained to go to school. At least apparently not, as we have a half dozen students in Kindergarten and first grade who regularly urinate and/or defecate in their pants. And that's ok, because the school will just take care of it. They'll clean my child up (but they BETTER NOT SEE HER NAKED OR I WILL SUE!!!), give her new clean clothes, evaluate her to see if she needs medical attention or special education theraputic services and just take care of that little problem for me.
I dunno, mutant or not, I still feel somewhat compelled to, oh, I don't know, CARE FOR MY CHILD. And I am increasingly disturbed at the dwindling pool of parents who seem to believe that this is what they're supposed to do as well.
Showing posts with label unfair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unfair. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Failure due to Red Tape
As a kindergarten teacher of many students who come to school with little to no preschool background, I am often the first person to identify what often becomes a special education need for a child in my class. Since I spend 6 hours a day with a child, I have a lot of insight into whether or not a child who came without any experience with the material in the curriculum (lettters and numbers) is progressing at a normal pace or not. However, today I encountered my third experience in just two years with a child that every teacher can see has an issue that needs specialized instruction and support but whom the formal diagnostic process fails miserably.
Last year I had a young man who was obviously suffering from some emotional developmental delays. He was just vacant most of the time, and compared to his peers he made little if any progress towards mastering any concepts in the kindergarten curriculum. He would sit on the carpet during story time and rock back and forth with a shoelace in his mouth. Honestly, he seemed drugged. After "showing my ass" so to speak in a meeting with the diagnostic team, they agreed to evaluate him for possible learning or emotional disabilites, but in the end despite the fact that this child was OBVIOUSLY in need of intervention in as many ways as possible, he was deemed "ineligible" because he hadn't been in school long enough for us to really KNOW that he wasn't learning. He has since been to about 4 other schools, had a full psychotic sort of break, kicking, biting, basically gone off the deep end.... and I KNEW he had an issue, but what I know didn't matter- all that mattered was that he hadn't had "adequate exposure" to curriculum.
Another guy who is a redshirted kindergartener was in a similar situation. His teacher last year, a 20 year veteran of kindergarten, could tell in SEPTEMBER that he would need to be retained because not only did he come with no prior knowledge or developed skills needed for kindergarten, he was unable to develop and retain the knowledge and skills that he was being taught at a rate that was acceptable to the rigors of the kindergarten curriculum. So, again, the diagnostic team failed this young man because despite the fact that he obviously needed specialized support and could have gotten it, they dismissed the veteran teacher's concerns with the "adequate exposure" clause all over again. So now his parents have demanded an evaluation, and frankly I won't be terribly surprised with a pronouncement of ineligible because instead of comparing him with a student his own AGE, they insist on comparing him with a grade level peer, or a first month kindergartener. So this child will likely not get served with intervention that I cannot do by myself for him until 3rd grade or later when the problems become so pronounced that he is several grade levels behind in reading and math.
And now I have another one. Every time I pick my class up from Art, Music, Library, Computers, or PE the teacher asks me what is wrong with her. She doesn't seem to understand anything about what she's supposed to do. She copies others, and when she can't do that she is completely lost and oblivious. After 5 weeks of DAILY one-on-one interventions she still doesn't recognize her own name, nor can she name any individual letter in her name. This despite the combination of the interventions she's already had PLUS the fact that the entire first hour of my school day revolves around letters and letter sounds. One member of the team observed her for about 10 minutes today and pronounced her "without concern." I wanted to scream! This child is in desperate need of more help than I can give her. I have 22 students in my class and she has already monopolized every resource I have available to help any child who struggles. Her attention issues are so profound that she cannot work in a group with other children receiving help because she distracts them so badly. She is usually unable to string more than 3 words together to form a sentence. Like a toddler, her first instinct is to hit or spit at others when she feels threatened (including phantom threats like someone is sitting where she wants to sit on the carpet).
This whole situation frustrates me to no end. It's as if because I got a degree in Education rather than Psychology, my own knowledge, observation and plain gut instinct are immaterial in these cases. You're telling me that 10 minutes of observation by someone with a psychology degree trumps 6 hours a day of agony in dealing with this child who I simply cannot help on my own. And so then I am stuck between a rock and a hard place: I am obligated to invest all the time and resources at my disposal to help her, but if I KNOW there is something wrong and that the time and energy expended will be wasted on her, then I'm denying another child who COULD made adequate progress with just a little intervention the chance to get that help. Why should one child be able to monopolize everything I have to give when I KNOW that there's something wrong that falls outside the realm of what I'm able to handle on my own?
It's a catch-22..... I'm supposed to be "highly qualified," highly educated, a professional educator, yet I'm not deemed qualified to identify when a child's needs are beyond my help. Wouldn't I know better than anyone what's beyond my help?
Last year I had a young man who was obviously suffering from some emotional developmental delays. He was just vacant most of the time, and compared to his peers he made little if any progress towards mastering any concepts in the kindergarten curriculum. He would sit on the carpet during story time and rock back and forth with a shoelace in his mouth. Honestly, he seemed drugged. After "showing my ass" so to speak in a meeting with the diagnostic team, they agreed to evaluate him for possible learning or emotional disabilites, but in the end despite the fact that this child was OBVIOUSLY in need of intervention in as many ways as possible, he was deemed "ineligible" because he hadn't been in school long enough for us to really KNOW that he wasn't learning. He has since been to about 4 other schools, had a full psychotic sort of break, kicking, biting, basically gone off the deep end.... and I KNEW he had an issue, but what I know didn't matter- all that mattered was that he hadn't had "adequate exposure" to curriculum.
Another guy who is a redshirted kindergartener was in a similar situation. His teacher last year, a 20 year veteran of kindergarten, could tell in SEPTEMBER that he would need to be retained because not only did he come with no prior knowledge or developed skills needed for kindergarten, he was unable to develop and retain the knowledge and skills that he was being taught at a rate that was acceptable to the rigors of the kindergarten curriculum. So, again, the diagnostic team failed this young man because despite the fact that he obviously needed specialized support and could have gotten it, they dismissed the veteran teacher's concerns with the "adequate exposure" clause all over again. So now his parents have demanded an evaluation, and frankly I won't be terribly surprised with a pronouncement of ineligible because instead of comparing him with a student his own AGE, they insist on comparing him with a grade level peer, or a first month kindergartener. So this child will likely not get served with intervention that I cannot do by myself for him until 3rd grade or later when the problems become so pronounced that he is several grade levels behind in reading and math.
And now I have another one. Every time I pick my class up from Art, Music, Library, Computers, or PE the teacher asks me what is wrong with her. She doesn't seem to understand anything about what she's supposed to do. She copies others, and when she can't do that she is completely lost and oblivious. After 5 weeks of DAILY one-on-one interventions she still doesn't recognize her own name, nor can she name any individual letter in her name. This despite the combination of the interventions she's already had PLUS the fact that the entire first hour of my school day revolves around letters and letter sounds. One member of the team observed her for about 10 minutes today and pronounced her "without concern." I wanted to scream! This child is in desperate need of more help than I can give her. I have 22 students in my class and she has already monopolized every resource I have available to help any child who struggles. Her attention issues are so profound that she cannot work in a group with other children receiving help because she distracts them so badly. She is usually unable to string more than 3 words together to form a sentence. Like a toddler, her first instinct is to hit or spit at others when she feels threatened (including phantom threats like someone is sitting where she wants to sit on the carpet).
This whole situation frustrates me to no end. It's as if because I got a degree in Education rather than Psychology, my own knowledge, observation and plain gut instinct are immaterial in these cases. You're telling me that 10 minutes of observation by someone with a psychology degree trumps 6 hours a day of agony in dealing with this child who I simply cannot help on my own. And so then I am stuck between a rock and a hard place: I am obligated to invest all the time and resources at my disposal to help her, but if I KNOW there is something wrong and that the time and energy expended will be wasted on her, then I'm denying another child who COULD made adequate progress with just a little intervention the chance to get that help. Why should one child be able to monopolize everything I have to give when I KNOW that there's something wrong that falls outside the realm of what I'm able to handle on my own?
It's a catch-22..... I'm supposed to be "highly qualified," highly educated, a professional educator, yet I'm not deemed qualified to identify when a child's needs are beyond my help. Wouldn't I know better than anyone what's beyond my help?
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