Soon y'all be the majority!

“…but I can assure you they will be facing the same problems as ld.”

Not to be aguementative BUT they will not be facing the same problems AT ALL.

They will not have spent a lifetime being told they are dumb, they are lazy, and they are the outcast.

They will not have self esteem issues because they are different then their peers.

THEY WILL BE ABLE TO LEARN TO READ in a relatively short period of time.

They will be able to fit into the mainstream.

Its a big problem, yes, but a very different problem.

Barb

I did not mean to offend anyone so apologize to you. I am not making light of ld my son is ld and I am well aware of problems and feelings.

However, not being able to read and understand is a crisis also.

The truly sad underlying message is that if a Principal can and is “writing off” whole groups of students in ‘regular’ classes, how easy will it be for them to “write off” kids with LD’s?

If students that have a “normal” (sorry for term) capacity to learn and are being short changed what hope is there for the kids that NEED spec ed??

r.

marion

I have often wondered; in terms of policy, treatment, instruction and economic issues; what a school can do to help children with their various learning problems. I believe, with hindsight being 20/20, that John Doe who sat at my right in one of those non-college tracked classes in junior high was having abuse problems at home. And that Jane Doe sitting at my right was DD, not LD. I hated being a member of that classroom, a majority of people haveing learning problems not necessarily caused by Learning disabilities.

God bless those children. I couldn’t help them, they couldn’t help me. More importantly, the instructor couldn’t help anyone. Now it seems we have another class of children who are behind in school for some other reasons. Perhaps it’s cultural: culturally induced ADD and all that.

What’s a LD child to do when he/she is placed in a class that is further diluted with children who suffer from different kinds of learning problems needing different kinds of instruction and discipline? What’s a teacher to do? Is seems to me that this problem of a new class of children having reading problems will only further the difficulty of diagnosing and helping LD children.

Just thinking out loud this morning

Sinserley Greg

Hey Ball, do you EVER have something positive to say about anything??? no.

ball

I guess what I was trying to convey is the difficulty that parents can have helping their LD child when even more children are having problems in school. I don’t like labels either but it becomes practical when a parent doesn’t want their child of average to above average intellect in a class with someone who acts out because their being abused at home or with someone who is developmentally disabled. What they need is not what a LD child needs.

If these children tend to gravitate to the same classrooms (and I believe that they do), how are even the most competent and caring teachers going to help them, particularly if they are simply reduced to children having problems in school?

I don’t advertise my LD and only have just begun to understand and deal with it in a healthy manner. If a scarlet LD on my forehead would have helped me realize that I was a child of normal intellect and different from the children acting out because they were being abused at home, I think I would have accepted that label.

Simply, LD children are not having problems in school because they are developmentally disabled. And they don’t necessarily come from abusive families. What’s wrong with making that distinction? What’s wrong with realizing that the help a LD child needs is different from the help other children need.

Greg
Ball wrote:
>
> Educators are part the problem. They are clueless
> baffoons. A kid can’t be evaluated to see if he is college
> material until the 9th grade. The content of K-12 is pretty
> much irrelevant, so what’s all the fuss? Is it the ridiculous
> standards that scools demand of students. Is it poor
> parenting. Is it true that 12% of kids are defective and need
> drugs.
>
> This will probably get erased but if ADD ADHD and LD are not
> just made up lables then could it be most likely that
> enviroment is the cause?
>
> We really need to step back and look at this insanity and see
> it for what it really is.

Nicely said, Greg!

You know Kath, I can see your point but I dont thinck we see the hole picher. Could Ball simply be playing the devela advacet, trying to get all angels of the topecs brout to light?
It seams to me that the day we stop questoning the pouler balefs is the day we become nothing more than sheep. Esaly led
You are completly right, Ball can come off negatevly, thoue you may want to give him a little understanding. We have all been there or will be. 95% of all houmer comes from pain and anger. Its all a very natural part of copping. I can see a point to him questoning every thing. In school most of us were told that thats just how it is, bequiet and go with the flow. With no real consern with what we would do after school. It semed they just wanted to puch us throw and get us out off there hear, that can mack any one upset and want to be shour that every one knows what they are doing. Not letting the sistom get away with swepping another person under the carpet.
I hope you dident tack this the rong way. I wanted to bring a nother prospecteve. Thanck you for being brave unugh to expres your self on the bord. Toni in Cal.
Ball sorry if I bluw your cover or got it all rong.I like the debate you bring to the chats ckepps me sharp LOL

Greg,
I dont necessarily agree with what you have to say. Labels make people stick out more. yes, its nice to know whats going on and how to help. Whats wrong with a child who is LD/ADD being in a class with those “above average” kids? Dont you know those most of those developmentally delayed kids are above average. I dont know what would have happened to me in my life if i wasnt treated as if i was above average despite my problems. Teachers and professors respected my intellect while working iwht me individually to handle my learning differences. it has made a world of difference

OK, I guess the scarlet LD comment was a bit dramatic. It just seems to me that it’s preferable for LD kids to know their LD and that it might be hard to realize that in a classroom filled with problem student. . I was as stealthy as I could be about my difficulties in grade school and college. A bit difficult if you’re called upon to read out loud from a text or write on the black board. Of course at the time I thought I was just simply not working hard enough or dimwitted. . To answer your questions regarding what’s wrong with LD children being with above average students I would say nothing. Your experiences in school not only testify that there is nothing wrong with it but that it has every advantage to the LD student. Maybe even to the advantage of none LD student.

I think if you were in classes that had a mix of kids with learning problems because they were below average in intelligence, mentally ill, drug abusing, or just plan scary it would have made a world of difference to you. Do you think your teachers could have given you competent individual instruction under those circumstances?

My understandings of people who have leaning disabilities are that their problems are not related to intelligence. So a LD person would have average to above average intelligence. I didn’t know that most “developmentally delayed kids are above average.”

Sounds like you had a wonderful experience at school.

Respectfully Your

Greg

ashleigh wrote:
>
> Greg,
> I dont necessarily agree with what you have to say. Labels
> make people stick out more. yes, its nice to know whats going
> on and how to help. Whats wrong with a child who is LD/ADD
> being in a class with those “above average” kids? Dont you
> know those most of those developmentally delayed kids are
> above average. I dont know what would have happened to me in
> my life if i wasnt treated as if i was above average despite
> my problems. Teachers and professors respected my intellect
> while working iwht me individually to handle my learning
> differences. it has made a world of difference

I think one of the primary issues this thread is touching upon without it really being said, is the issue of “streaming” versus “destreaming”.

Should students be streamed into classes of like ability/disability? Or should they be destreamed into general population classes.

The regular classroom was a battlefield inwhich I always felt at disadvantage - the remedial classes I was pulled out to were safe havens. You can not put 30 kids in one room with one teacher and MAYBE a TA where the kids range from Advanced, LD, Average, Troubled, Physically Disabled.

It always reminds me of the “Fair does not mean equal” saying.

There IS a method of reading instruction the schools can use to teach ALL their students to read - without sending everyone to an overwhelmed, underresourced special education classroom.

It is called Orton-Gillingham. The problem is that, despite its proven success with all sorts of “poor” readers, there are few teachers who know how to use it (or even know about it). The problem for most of the children who fail to learn to read in our schools (including most private schools) is that they are undertaught, not that they are dull or slow or learning disabled.

Get the other parents together and pressure the school district and your school board to institute Orton-Gillingham instruction in your schools. Insist that they throw out whole-language reading programs - these don’t work for nearly half of all students.

Contact the International Dyslexia Association (addresses on the web and there is probably a local chapter listed in your local phone book) for information, for classes, for tapes and reading materials, for instruction in teaching by Orton-Gillingham methods.

Don’t accept the principal’s excuse for not teaching your children to read or his non-solution to the problem!

Deby

wow! Talk about having three different subjects to talk about:-)

Numero uno,
Marion this principal,in regards to his very public statements violated three sections of IDEA Least Restricitve Enviroment( SPED IS not A PLACE,IT IS SUPPOSE TO BE A PROGRAM)
the definition of disability( let’s not forget how incredibly difficult it can be to actually get your kid to meet eligibility criteria!)
Eligibility,Evaluations( which state must not be because of lack of instruction in things like reading)

then he went and violated the very defining reason they put together the NCLB Act (no child left behind) the jest of the whole law is that NO child shall be left behind ld or not!,especially in regards to skills such as reading)http://www.ed.gov/legislation/ESEA02/pg2.html
and lo and behold most of this law discusses things like having scientifically proven reading programs and ( Hello!) qualified teachers.

Then he discriminated against all disabled people everywhere by making verbally abusive staements like,”we will put them in sped” which to me smells an awful lot like a punnishment,and an undesirable place to be,etc.

Now that I got that off my chest,go get this jerk! Marion. For all sped students in that district.For all students struggling to read,for that matter.

I take offense to the Us vs them attitude taking place. No one said not being able to read is an easy thing to overcome,no one said being ld isn’t hard to deal with. But the very idea of “us” or “ya’ll” will be the very reason kids will continue growing up thinking they are on the outside looking in.

More and more kids are being placed in the waste land of the resource room. Ironicly after laws such as IDEA were reauthorized stating how this should not be happening anymore. But who is standing up and demanding that it doesn’t?

I went to school before IDEA reuathorization,I suspect Greg did also. Then we had Public law 92 which stated they MUSt allow disabled in school at all! Let us not forget that guys,kids before laws were in place were NOT allowed in school at all! So then ,we sat between varying exceptionalities,( I sat between a kid in a wheelchair and a blind girl,who could still read! She had braile!I didn’t) So what did our country do? we made even more access laws stating kids should be taught in a way that suits them,unforetunately no one is either aware that these laws exist or do not demand that they be followed.

Everyone is different,everyone has something they find difficult to learn,are we going to draw a line between ourselves and ?

Now speaking of the cookie baking days. The “good” old days,the days when it was even more acceptable to beat a kid into submission,to break their spirit,to discipline them. the days when my very ADHD husband got locked into the coat closet of his classroom,he still grew up and did lots of drugs….