A few months ago I got a new, female student in my middle school severely handicapped special ed class. Initially, she was very shy and quiet and spent a good part of the day with her down on her desk. Then, things changed and she became a little terror. Now, she screams, belches loudly (to attract attention), runs around the room, and is very troublesome. I have two aides and twelve students and this girl gets a disproportionate amount of attention from one of the aides. When she gets too troublesome, the vp sends over a student to work with her. Amazingly, that quiets her down. This girl is 14, but her psychological tests show her to be at a kindergarten level. In her previous district, she was in RSP and had a one-to-one aide. Unfortunately, my district will not do that for her. My guess is that her actions (what I call behaviors problems) are her way of communicating and attracting attention, since her language skills are quite limited.
My question is: Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to deal with/educate a student like this?
Shay (off topic)
Do you have a snow day today, too? We had sleet so the roads are very bad. I imagine you got tons of snow!
Janis
Re: Shay (off topic)
I have at least three feet of snow here, drifts up to about 5 feet. We have just been informed that we don’t have school tomarrow. I bet that we don’t go back to school until Thursday or maybe next Monday. The news says that the storm is over, but it is still snowing heavy here in the mountains. It is beautiful here! I am now just going to try to get out of my house. I am really concerned about all of the stray cats that are around us. I think that they are living under our porch at this time. I have food at different places around our home. Thanks for the post. The weather forcast calls for warmer conditions by the end of the week and rain next weekend. Then, we are probably going to have water in our garage. Can’t win!
Re: Shay (off topic)
Oh, Shay, I know that must be a beautiful sight! Be careful and thank you for feeding the stray kitties!
Janis
Re: Girl with Behavior Problems
The girl came to me about three months ago from Guam. As I mentioned, before she came to me, she was in RSP with her own aide. What they did with her there is beyond my knowledge. I would like to be able to help her, but I am faced with the extreme bevior issues which we are trying to overcome. That was the reason for the post.
Re: Girl with Behavior Problems
For starters CA and federal law would probably require a functional behavior assessment, followed by a behavior intervention plan.
You are bloody lucky (maybe you are not, but your district is) that the parents didn’t insist on your district duplicating the same program she had in her last schol. I teach RSP and oh, boy, full-inclusion for kids with the degree and severity of academic and behavior problems you have reported…….
Anyway, ain’t nothing we can do anymore. We have to educate all kids, no matter the severity, no matter the issues, no matter whether or not we have the resources and the training. Of course, IDEA simply puts forth that we get the training.
I am sorry, this sounds very challenging. Truly the FBA and BIP are the only way to go and usually, at the very least, do help. She may continue to need intensive adult supervision and she may be a huge time taker. Even in RSP we get these situations and they can and do impact our ability to provide services to the remainder of our caseloads. Not a pretty picture.
Re: Girl with Behavior Problems
Shay, he said he teaches a severe SDC class. This almost always means, in CA, very significant “mental retardation.” My supposition would be that she has a very low IQ score in addition to her behavior problems. We don’t place LD kids in “severe” classes, no matter their reading level.
Re: Girl with Behavior Problems
You know, there are so many acronyms out there, can’t keep up with them all! Please tell me what these mean? Isn’t there a residential placement possibility for this child? Does she have her own behavior plan, although if she is at home, it is pretty hard to do a behavior plan unless it is coordinated with the home.
Re: Girl with Behavior Problems
It don’t work like that, Shay. I had kids released from inpatient care in psychiatric hospital units simply because insurance had used up their 30 days — so the school did a quick re-eval to “discover” this kiddo’s primary “disability” was not emotional but an LD… and into my resource class he came. The school did not want to pay for residential. And that was in the *better* Virginia county (relatively speaking — not NOrthern Va). Down in the swamplands the school was used instead of jail for violent teenagers — they just had a “self-contained” class with bathroom & all so that hypothetically they weren’t out amongts… except of course when they walked out anyway to go punch out a window or do heaven-knows-what to otherwise innocent people in the halls and bathrooms. (But they had to sell their wares somehow, right?)
This kiddo sounds like she could be taught to be less of a constant demand drain… a good FBA is a good idea, and it is good to know that at least something works, but if you don’t get a handle on it, who knows for how long! I don’t have *much* experience with that population, but my rule of thumb is to find something that the kiddo thinks she’s good at, has success with, whatever, some connection, and start from there.
You say that her scores are at a kindergartner level? No wonder she is such a problem. What are you doing to remediate her reading, writing and math skills? What programs are you using. Since she quiets down when working with a student, this shows that she wants to be able to learn but noone is teaching her. What, if anything, has anyone tried to do with her remedially all of these years? If nothing has been done, why not? If not, seems abusive to me??