Resource

Heather,

My experience with sped has been less than delightful. My 10 yr. old son had been in NI classes since K. He is not taught to his strength which is math he is slowed down with the rest of the class. His reading is 2 grades behind he can read the books but he has to keep reading the same little book for a week.

He wants to learn. I request he go in reg ed math they said no he couldn’t do the reading part. It is a vicous circle. I have him tutored in reading that is the only reason he learns anything.

Sorry, but in my 4 years experience I only saw one kid moved to a reg ed class and he failed that grade. I worry my self sick about my sons future.

Keep your good attitude and help the kids as much as you ca

EXCELLENT! Where are you at, we are moving! (just kidding) but I would love to know that sped teachers have that goal, to teach them the skills to become independent. That is exactly what I want for my son, instead they are giving him less spelling words, number of math problems to do, less reading than the rest of the kids, etc. What is that teaching him? (definitely not skills, but maybe how to get by). This keeps me up at night. Maybe you could help us (parents). Is the obstacle the administration, the personal philosophy of the sped director, lack of specially trained teachers? My hunch is that the problem is trying to fit the politically correct agenda of INCLUSION. Inclusion and IEP is like oil and water. It just does not work if you are a student in 4th grade who reads at a 2nd grade level. You need to master the basic skills before you can move on (crawl before you walk). How can educators effectively provide an Individual Education Plan (IEP) in the midst of 25 other children. The precious time that these kids are sitting there lost, because they can’t keep up, could be spent working on what they need individually. Instead, we put our energy into treating them like everyone else, whether they truly benefit from it or not, and obviously they are not like everyone else. But of course I do not have to convince you of this, do I? I wish I could offer some advice from my experience, but I am battling the same problem only from the other side. How do parents make enough noise to make the changes that would be effective and put teachers like you in the position to actually give our kids what they need instead of pretending like we are helping them. What do you need? Please tell us even if you have to describe it as your “ideal” situation. Most parents believe that the situation they are in is “just the way it has to be” but if they only realized that they had the power to change things, maybe more positive and effective things would happen.

Lisa, many of us WANT very much to teach our students the skills they need. Our situations are frequently almost impossible to manage. H.S. resource is frequently a joke. A H.S. resource room, during any given instructional period, will have a range of students in there for a range of needs. It is a glorified study hall.

In elementary, I am fortunate. The general ed. teachers I work with want me to remediate as much as I can, so I remediate. I am not an assignment tutor. I know that sounds cruel and heartless, but general ed. assignments are rarely apprpriate to the IEP goals. thank heavens at my school the teachers understand. So, I work all year very hard on teaching reading, math, writing.

The other thing that is making it much tougher to service students adequately, at least at my site, is the increasing number of nonLD youngsters who are ending up in resource. These Asperger’s Syndrome, aphasic………don’t usually need the intensive structured phonics, they need language, they need social skills. Then the ADHDs need organizational skills, behavior goals. We are literally all over the place, running to get every IEP covered in a day, sometimes there is just too much to do well, so then we modify and pinch a little here and a little there to create the time we need for that new demand.

OK, phew, I’ll stop now. Believe me, we are there to TEACH.

Hello!
I have a few things I would like to say regarding the past posts…
Yes, Resource should definitely be there to teach the kids how to learn, how to read, and how to do math etc. We should not be a glorified homework tutoring session!!! You are right to be upset! Unfortunately, oftent he “powers that be” are not willing to change for whatever reason. My district changes when the stat jumps in and comes for monitoring. I must s ay, though, I am impressed with the majority of my CST team. Mind you, I teach in elementary school. I had a principal who left the district a few years ago who wanted me to modify the gen ed curriculum…basically to read it to the kids and help them answer the questions. Then another one who thought that teaching Special Ed. was no different than teaching reg ed because a former spec. ed. teacher told her so!!!! How wrong is that??? Our kids need as many approaches to stiumulate, educate, and teach as possible and each and every child is different no mateer what age, and their needs should be addressed. My goal , and the goal of every special ed. teacher (or should be) is to teach our kids HOW to learn on their own - especially if they are in the “inclusion” classes - which I find to be horrible for most of the kids who are 2 or more years behind and a disservice to them. The kids need to learn using their strong learning style, support thier weaker ones and build, build, build skills so that when they leave the Resource room, they can still have success in the classroom. Special education is called “special” because we are supposed to be trained in teaching methods that are successful to kids for whom the “ordinary” teaching methods have failed them.

As far as modifications go- The modifications made in the reg ed class can be a fewer number of spelling words, math problems, but they should be graded accordingly., The fewer number of words or problems should be for a reason, not simply because the child has an LD. The reason could be that the child take longer to finish work, but can do the task if allowed time, or perhaps the child panics if the visual info is too much for her. Again, there are as many reasons as there are LDs, and each modification should be addressed on an individual basis.

Parents really do have a lot of control and power in their children’s education. You have to be strong, though, and be willing to make a lot of noise. Educate yourself and go prepared! You will be heard, but you have to speak up. Sometimes, numbers are more impressive. Try to get other parents to go and address the BOE.

Keep the passion! Don’t give up folks..parents and teachers alike! OUr kids need us to keep cool heads, and informed heads. Perhaps you can bring up a discussion about the REsource Center in you r school to your CST members and see if theyare will ing to change. If not, look into help from the local university, see if they can make a “partnership” with the school district that provides training for their student teachers and THE RESOURCE teachers as well. You will get expert advice, and helping hands.

PLease, I am not sure how to delicately say this, so I will just go with it. When referring to the students with different types of Learning Differences, please do not refer to them as “the ADHDs” or any other specific difference (“the Aspergers”). They are children first, not a LD first. I know people don’t mean harm and are simply trying to explain a situation, but I think as educators and advocates for our kids (and, for that matter, our adults) we need to be sensitive to this. I prefer the term, Learning Difference, although my district doesn’t use it, because the word “disability” implies that the kids cannot learn (dis. meaning ‘not’)
Perhaps it is only semantics, but lets be careful.

I teach at a middle school. The students were I teach are fortunate because we not only provide remediation but also tutorial support for inclusion classes. I teach reading, language and math to students with learning disabilities. Another special ed teacher does inclusion and has a tutorial support class to help with assignments, studying for tests and she teaches organizational skills and study skills. Our students must give up an elective class but this year we have only one student who is not passing all of his regular ed classes and this with minimal support. They have tests read to them in her room and more time to complete assignments but otherwise do all of the regular ed assignments. It can be done if the school and staff are committed to making inclusion work.

I truley have a situation that I don’t know how to deal with.
Maybe someone can give me someone can give me some insight.
First of all I am in Texas.
My son is in highschool (Sophmore) I am currently going thru
a battle with the school diagnostion and her boss.
The want a pyscologist that they use for the school to evaluate my son.They told us that they feel they have given my son to many services thru special ed.These services were:1.Counseling once every 2 weeks.2.Time to study in content mastery for the credit
by exam test that he will be taking.
3.And juggling his schedule to put him back into resource classes
because he wasn’t doing well in regular classes.
They feel something is wrong with my son because he can’t get the work done.I feel they don’t teach him correctly.He has many leaning disabilities.So really the bottom line of the whole thing
is they want to try to lable him emotionally disturbed because
of these extra service they feel they have given him.
I am at a constant battle I don’t know what to do.
They tell me it is in the law they he must be evaluated if they
tell us.I asked them if they were trying to fix there
paperwork by giving my son this label and they told me yes.But if
your son would do the work here we wouldn’t worry about it.
So please someone tell me why this school stuff is so political
and what they might do.They also said they didn’t want to threaten us but if we didn’t do what they wanted the next step is arbitration. My son now feels that he wants to be homeschooled and theres no way to do that.Thanks,Julie

The label should *not* dictate the services. A person does not have to have an emotional disturbance as the “primary disability” in order to need counseling and schedule-juggling and whatever else.
You could have them clarify in that IEP that his primary disability is a learning disability, and that this (and frustrations with school) has caused behavior/emotional problems that need to be addressed thru counseling.
It really sounds like it’s a bad fit, though :( and that your son has given up trying to please them, so extra time, etc. isn’t going to help anybody. What if not homeschooling would motivate him? Any way to work with him and figure out something that he would be “on board” with?

I am a middle school inclusion/resource teacher. I am really looking for ways to improve our current program. Tell me more about the way things work at your school. We currently have three resource teachers for 2 grades (7-8). Two of us do inclusion and one does pull out. Please hsare with me.

Well, my bottom line is that if the kids don’t have the skills — reading & math — then “park and pretend” inclusion is doing them at least some disservice. If they’re the lucky learners who really can absorb things by being there, great! At least they’re not wasting their time, though skills do make rather a difference later in life.
. Successfully plugging in some words on a worksheet and learning to find the sentence with the same big words in it is not to be confused with learning in my opinion. The “at least I’m exposing them” rationale assumes that somehow they will make all this stuff ‘click.’ There’s no reason to think that happens — generally it doesn’t.
I approach content areas with the idea that I”m going to make sure they learn certain stuff — and it appears again and again until they understand and know it well.

Sue, I like your bottom line. That is exactly how my son completes homework, he is completing the work, but learning nothing, I have tried and tried to tell the school, it is a waste of time. We spend time doing busy work,when we could be learning.