Inclusion

There have been threads about full inclusion over on the Teaching bb. Basically, the teachers who post there have said it doesn’t work for many children. Certainly in the situation you are describing I would seriously doubt that your son’s academic needs would be met.

Have you considered homeschooling? Typically it’s a more efficient means of meeting academic needs because of the one-on-one teaching and the ability to hand pick curriculum materials. Also, socializing with homeschooled children tends to be a much more positive experience because hs’d kids tend to be much more accepting of individual differences.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket, but it does not sound like a good situation to me.

Mary

…but we have gotten very accustom to eating on a regular basis and living indoors. I am divorced from Sam’s dad. Even though I have re-married, it is the responsibility of paying for Sam still falls equally between me and Sam’s father, so I pretty much have to work outside of the home.

Thank you for your input. No need to appologize for being a wet blanket. I am looking for honest assessments.

We are in a similar position. My dau will be entering 3rd grade and will be starting with a NEW inclusion model (new for the district). At her IEP meeting in May I asked MANY questions. She was receiving 2 sessions a day of 1:1 witha resource teacher and in the inclusion room, will no longer receive resource. I asked if we would be able to request to change her placement during the year if we felt her needs were no longer being met. They gave us the song and dance about team meeting and team decision, but I also told them that we would TRY it, but with alot of reservations. We are hoping for the best, but I will be watching for any regression and at the first sign, we will be getting the team together to make some changes.

Good luck!!

Hi Folks,

I can understand why parents go to homeschooling but I have hard time understanding how any parent can teach their own child - as far as school/academics goes - skilled LD teachers get years of specialized training - do most parents have this background and education?

As far as inclusion goes, yes the basic intent is good - problems are teachers are not trained to teach so many diverse learning styles and the number of students in classrooms are generally way to many to meet their individual needs. It works sometimes when the numbers are small and the teacher has specialized training and experience in your child’s specialized instruction and accomodations. Watch carefully and do a lot of ongoing homework. Inclusion is not always what is cracked up to be, but the law says least restrictive and along with free and appropriate it can lead school systems to lump students together and they call it inclusion saying it will be great. Some schools will even place 2 teachers in one room, but often the numbers are so high folks end up just really teaching 2 rooms in one. A few folks out there are doing good things but they are hard to find.

is not as difficult as it sounds, especially in the primary grades.

LD kids respond much better to one-on-one instruction (which provides immediate feedback and correction, immediate adult responsiveness when some concept or point is not clear, etc.) than even small group instruction (which is what most special ed teachers provide at school).

Most LD kids also respond much better to curriculum materials that are hand-picked to meet their needs. There are wonderful curriculum materials available to the homeschool market, in a wide variety of approaches, and they are often better than what teachers in schools have available to them. A parent can find a lot of good information on the internet about curriculum materials, and is free to drop something that doesn’t work and try a different approach — something schools often can’t do, because they are often locked into specific curriculums and approaches.

We are accustomed to thinking in terms of teaching, in which case we see the need for a trained professional. However, if you think about, education is really about learning, not teaching. Homeschooling works because LD children tend to learn much more efficiently when they are taught one-on-one with hand-picked curriculum materials that meet their needs. A parent with patience, interest, a basic education, and good curriculum materials can work wonders because, when all is said and done, the training of the teacher isn’t the critical element in learning.

Mary

It was posted in the last message,
“A parent with patience, interest, a basic education, and good curriculum materials can work wonders because, when all is said and done, the training of the teacher isn’t the critical element in learning.”

The training of the teacher is one of several critical elements, if you are not “trained” how can you even begin to “teach”, how will you know what methods, how will you know the curriculum, how will you know about… ? You’ll learn this where and how and for how long have you “trained”? An effective teacher takes experience and education in education!

An education beyond “basic” is a must and a concentration in teaching a person with special needs is needed as well as compentency at the grade level . As students get older the curriculum demands are more and more, the teacher needs the knowledge in the subject areas. Homeschool parents must be SuperMan or something, you folks can teach K though 12?

I strongly disagree with you. If a teacher without “training”, and I’ll add little experience too, along with a basic education (no college degree in education and sp.ed) taught my child - we would run for the hills. I don’t agree that children should be taught by folks without a teacher certificate from their state, the same requirements should be for parents who chose to education their child at home for the folks teaching in public or private schools. If the parent has the degree and qualifies for teacher certification then allow it - it is mindbending that parents are allowed to “teach” at home with only a basic education and rely upon internet info, homeschool groups-literature, etc.. How come public and private schools require certified teachers with degrees? Hmm

Actually, private schools in our state are exempt from using certified teachers. I think that is true in most states.

My daughter was in a private school that failed to realize she is dyslexic, so she was still not reading in 2nd grade. We homeschooled 3rd grade and brought her reading level up to a fluent 4th grade level in one year — using information on the latest remediation and therapeutic approaches. Our most valuable source of information was the internet, not the professionals we consulted. Most were lagging 5 to 20 years behind published research on learning disabilities.

All 50 states have laws that permit homeschooling. Studies comparing homeschooled and public schooled children consistently show substantially higher achievements among homeschooled children, even when the parents are not certified teachers.

Homeschooling is not for every family, and not for every LD child. If it’s not for you, that’s fine. It works for us, and my intent was to explain why I think it works.

Mary

jo jo wrote:
>
> It was posted in the last message,
>
> The training of the teacher is one of several critical
> elements, if you are not “trained” how can you even begin to
> “teach”, how will you know what methods, how will you know
> the curriculum, how will you know about… ?

The training of the teacher is not a critical element. In fact,
it has been my experience that the “training” of the teacher has
been a hindrance…if the sped people had been allowed to control
my daughter’s education (10 years, Down syndrome), then she would
most definately be mentally retarded. Instead, she functions at
grade level for some subjects (math) and slightly behind in others. Her decoding skills are at the 6th grade level and she
knows all her multiplication and division facts. We fondly refer to her as the spelling queen because she rarely misses a word.
She taught herself how to write in cursive. She speaks appropriately in conversation. In addition, since we homeschooled, she has become proficient in both ballet and tae kwon do. Most people who meet Cristen are more than mildly amazed.

Homeschooling was the best thing we could have done. Parents care about their kids for life and MAKE the time to learn necessary subject content and continually learn methods applicable to their child’s individual needs. Parents know their child’s strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else.
The reason they are so successful is because they usually teach
to the child’s strengths and try to remediate weaknesses. The public school system simply identifies problems (most of the time
inadequately and incorrectly) and then attempts to manage them
instead of trying to resolve the underlying conditions.

The sped teachers may be slightly educated in the area of different labels, but they have a long way to go in their approach to the remediation of weakness and working individually
on children’s strong areas. They utilize a one
sized fits all protocal to pigeon hole children into compartments
of learning disability. Then they apply an already established
as well as outdated methodology. Children with LD’s rarely
outgrow their disability. On the other hand, I have seen many
homeschooled children with learning disabilities go on to outgrow
their disabilities and actually become acceleurated learners. The reason is because the parent has more patience to sit and do
the one on one instruction necessary for the child to be successful. In addition, homeschoolers, as a population, seem
to be more solution oriented. If something doesn’t work, they
chuck it and move on to something that does. They don’t stick
to the same failing approacth because it is in the established
curriculum approved by the county. Sped people seek to “manage”
the problem without really fixing it. It is actually to their advantage to keep a child in sped because the school gets more
state and federal funds for a sped child than a regular child.
Does the school spend that extra money on the child…on a program tailered to his individual needs? (not usually)

I have honed my math skills since homeschooling. I was terrible
in math and avoided it like the plague. My son (8) just got
a perfect score on his Stanford nine test. He got the highest
score in his class because he didn’t miss any! His teacher (me)
was a math flunkie that had to re-take logic three times before
she passed. Now, not only is my son a math whiz, but I have
also come to appreciate and it. I have learned the conceptual
behind the computations and love the orderly but creative way
our Creator invented math. I have also come to see that the United States’ approach to teaching math is significantly inferior to the Asian approach. Frequently, math is sacrificed
for language arts in the early grades. I chose to develop
the logical side of my kid’s brains (the left hemisphere) first
with intense mathematics. I will never regret it.

As students get older the
> curriculum demands are more and more, the teacher needs the
> knowledge in the subject areas. Homeschool parents must be
> SuperMan or something, you folks can teach K though 12?

As students get older, most homeschooled students teach themselves because they are so hungry and thirsty for information. Some of these go to school and are very successful
because they have been taught HOW to learn and not WHAT to learn.
None of them seem to be socially deprived either.
>
>- it is mindbending that parents are allowed to
> “teach” at home with only a basic education and rely upon
> internet info, homeschool groups-literature, etc.. How come
> public and private schools require certified teachers with
> degrees? Hmm

I would bet that Mary MN knows more about LD than your average
sped teacher in my county based on what she has learned on the internet and through teaching her own child at home.

JoJo, not all parents should homeschool their kids, it takes
a special kind of committment. But it is that committment that
determines success, not the individual education/training/experience of the teacher.

Melissa
http://www.erols.com/bames

I have to chime in with MaryMN here, Jo Jo — one-on-one or small group tutoring is not the same as teaching a class under the restraints and demands required by the public school system. If you check into volunteer community literacy groups, you will find that a great deal of very effective teaching goes on with very little formal training being done. Many retired business people and average citizens have educational backgrounds, knowledge, and skill sets very similar to teachers — sorry, but we are comparing apples to oranges here.

Plus, how much real training above a basic university/college education does a first year teacher have — I realize many first years make mistakes they won’t make ten years down the road — but they do plenty of effective teaching as well, otherwise the student teacher apprenticeship period would be far higher than it is!

MaryMN could teach my kid anytime, one-on-one — she has natural ability, a sound background of appropriate training, experience, and DESIRE — what more could one ask? I don’t expect the state to give her a job, because they must require standard credentials and operating procedures to ensure quality within a huge bureaucratic institution. But that doesn’t mean that MaryMN wouldn’t be a highly effective teacher. It just means she has no acceptable certification to teach for pay in the public school system.

This does NOT in any way devalue your hard-earned credentials — but if you are going to teach “special ed”, flexibility and an open mind will be GREAT assets to your other qualifications…
best wishes,
Elizabeth

Hi Folks,

Still think your “missing the boat” with the teacher experience and the education thing, although I understand why some parents might opt for homeschooling. It’s a choice that your able to make but I question it in many cases (from first hand experience, not as an observant).
F.Y.I., I am not a teacher by prof., have not taken an education course in my life…, but value an education, experience and training for anyone in any field. “Winging it” would not be an option for me for my child’s education, but again that is my choice right? Maybe next time when my child is sick I’ll opt to read the internet and plan my own treatment, hmm maybe that trip to the Dentist I could just skip and do at home myself , just a thought… .

Folks, a well qualified educated teacher is what makes education happen, don’t fool yourself.

JoJo