Topic : School Issues

This is so true! I am an adult that works in a major school district in Houston, Texas. I left a job at the elementary level that I loved, to transfer to my daughter's middle school, because there are some teachers' that just don't care. I am a paraeducator(para) and I sometimes joke that I'm just there for the paycheck, but really I'm not. That's what separates me from some of them. I CARE! I can't help it. I have been reading the message boards on "school issues" and I can see that schools around the country need to get a clue. With the doctors diagnosing autism and other disorders better than they have in the past, gone are the days' when we  thought "little Johnny" was just a slow learner. I have been told by a fellow para that one of my daughter's teachers said this,"If they need any help at all, they shouldn't be in my class at all". This teacher teaches an upper level class in 6th grade and said something to me as a parent , that maybe in the on level classes that my kid would be able to keep up better. WRONG. There is a para in there now( as per her modifications states in the first place) and she has made everything so much better . All she needed was a little help and she wasn't the only one! 

I also think the schools should get back to teaching the basics. In Texas all they do is teach the kids how to take "THE TEST". If you live in Texas you know what I'm talking about !  Well, with all these kids' with Asperger's syndrome(a form of high functioning autism), ADD/ADHD, OCD, CAPD(central auditory processing didorder), dyslexia, TBI( traumatic brain injury), bipolar disorder, etc., and the anxiety that all these kids go through on a regular school day( and trust me, they suffer more than the average kid) these schools and some of those teachers' better start DEALING WITH IT! whew! - that was a mouthful. 

So when your kid says that a teacher is out to get them, you had better check it out. And let the  teacher and the school FEEL your presence. There are a lot of people that really shouldn't be teaching out there, and there are probably some of them at your kids' school!  

I know exactly what you're talking about.  My sister is from Texas and she has been telling me for years about teachers teaching to the test.  Now, with a President and the Secretary of Education from Texas, the whole country gets to deal with this mind-set more than ever.  I live far from Texas, but I see the trend in education going backwards rather than moving forwards. 

I also have a son who has Asperger's and I can tell you that the schools have done a lousy job of addressing his weaknesses.  According to one autism expert, what distinguishes all people with autism-spectrum disorders is that while they may have strong "absolute intelligence" (i.e., memorization of rote facts like they teach in school), they have weak "dynamic intelligence" (i.e., the ability to adapt to changing situations, etc. that is essential for human interaction).  If it were just up to the school staff, my son would have never been identified as having special needs.  In their eyes, he is a model student.   

I also wanted to say that there are teachers out there who care--I'm one of them--or at least I used to be.  The problem is that the System often prevents caring teachers from doing the job the way they feel it should be done.  Teachers are forced to teach curriculum, rather than focusing on meeting the needs of their students; their success or failure is determined solely based on test scores.   

I'll give you a very personal example.  I was a Title 1 reading teacher.  My personal goal was to figure out why each of my students was struggling with reading and address it in the best way possible.  If I felt they needed help that I personally wasn't qualified to give, I would refer them to someone who could help them.  That's what I would want my own kids' teachers to do.  Well, it turned out that one of my students had a vision disorder that wasn't identified on the (useless) school vision screenings that are routinely done.  But because I had done a lot of reading on vision disorders that relate to reading problems, I recognized the symptoms and attempted to share this information with the child's parents, his classroom teacher (who was erroneously calling him "dyslexic") and the principal.  I was basically told that I should stick to teaching phonics and assessing reading comprehension and that I was wrong to refer this child's parents to outside help.  Believing that following this directive and teaching this kid phonics (who already had a good grasp of phonics and knew that reading also has to make sense) would do him more harm than good, I resigned.  Now, I'm not teaching at all. 

I have a son with Aspergers' (a milder form of PDD) who USED to have a lot of sensory issues to deal with.  But there are therapies out there to deal with Sensory Processing Disorders.  Occupational Therapists can help.  For my son, it was crucial that we deal with the sound sensitivity, so he also had Berard Auditory Integration Training.  He also had vision therapy supervised by an optometrist who is a Fellow of the College of Optometric Vision Development. 

I can't say that any of these therapies were a cure-all.  My son still has Asperger's and needs help developing social skills, but he is able to get through the day with much less stress and needs a lot less support than he would have otherwise.  (His only modification is extra time for tests and he rarely sees his consultant teacher.)  He can also enjoy activities that he would have totally avoided before--such as being a statistician for the high school basketball team.  (He wouldn't have been able to tolerate going to a basketball game before, due to the overstimulation.) 

I am totally frustrated that treatments that I have just described are so hard to get (you often have to pay for them out of your own pocket, like we did).  Meanwhile, it's a lot more expensive for schools to pay for the additional support (special education teachers, speech services, 1:1 aides, etc.) but they do it anyway.