Hi Everyone,
I am new to this forum, I need some help. My son Isaac has ADD. This is his first year in middle school and he is not doing so good in two classes, I just received a letter in the mail that the teachers of these two classed would like to meet with me again for a Parent Teachers Conference, this is the second meeting with these two teachers. What concerns me is he has a resource counselor she is suppose to be monitoring him, If she is monitoring him why is his grades so bad shouldn’t she caught the problem before it’s a problem? Can someone help me with some websites or other resources to where I can get some help or can you give me some advice as to how to go about solving he problem of his resource counselor that is suppose to be monitoring him not doing her job. I am so mad. My wife and I work with him at home and he is now turning in all his home work but he is still doing bad on all his test, we can’t be at school helping him so we thought that his resource counselor would be there for him but she has not even sent any notes home or contacted me. It would seem that if she is monitoring him she would be asking the teachers how he is doing, and then when she finds out that he is not doing well on his test at school that she would offer to give him his test verbally or something.
If you have any thing that would help me solve this problem I would very much appreciate the help.
Thanks in advance, Scruby
Re: Need help the resource teacher is not doing her job?
I think I’m with patti on this.
I have a number of students who tell me everything is “just fine” — they have failing grades on their report cards, their teachers are sending letters home, their parents are fighting with them for hours a night on homework, but they are “just fine” and don’t see any need at all to change their habits, they *like* to write that way. I get after them for this, not a way to win a popularity contest but that isn’t why I’m here. If your son is refusing to go to the resource teacher or once there refusing to admit there are any problems, first of all there is little she can do, and second she may think that it is time he learned a basic life lesson that he has to face facts — he canlt solve a problem as long as he is pretending it isn’t there.
I’m not sure what you expect the resource teacher to be doing. Perhaps she could do a better job of supervising and communicating, getting test grades from the class teachers and passing the grades on to you. This is a harder job than you might think as teachers don’t do everything on a fixed schedule — and I salute those that put teaching before testing — but yes she could work on communicating.
Other than that, it isn’t the resource teacher’s job to change those failing grades to passes. Students fail tests either because they don’t know the material or because they can’t communicate what they know. If your son doesn’t know the material, he needs some help to learn it — not just yelling at him to study more, but someone either at achool or home or both spending time reading and discussing with him. If he can’t communicate the answers, he needs some help on writing skills or whatever. The resource teacher should be trying to get him any help he needs; that is her job. But if he refuses that help, he needs to face up to the consequences.
Thanks, I will call the RSP today.
You are all right on. I spoke to Isaac last night and I think he is telling the Resource person the he is doing fine. I will call her today to see if that is true, I will also work closer with his teachers and resource personnel.
Thanks, Scruby1
if you need help just holler
I live in CA…and I am familiar with the curriculum in the middle schools. Not to mention….I really understand as a parent and as an educator…
The other thing that occurred to me is you can e-mail the teachers every week. I did that when my own daughter was failing math and spanish this last semester in high school. She ended up passing them both but I really had to keep on top of things becuase she needed a lot of extra tutoring on the side. She has a FABULOUS RSP teacher who stays on top of everything but my daughter’s language needs interfere with her comprehension and test taking skills.
It isn’t as cut and dried as you may think it is…Has he had a speech and language eval? Maybe he has some underlying speech and language issues that are interfering with his test taking skills? One of my son’s still does a lot of the things like your son is doing now in high school and college. He did a heck of a lot better once he got on meds, got a part-time job with responsiblity….these steps…alll made a huge difference for him.
But here is a sample of what I go through on a daily basis as and SLP in middle school….I collaborates with RSP and SDC teachers every week. I have a bunch of kids on my caseload who are ADD. One in particular is driving the RSP and I up the wall as he will not take responsiblity for his actions, let alone his homework. I have talked with the RSP teacher as she didn’t know he was failing english, he kept telling her he was doing “fine” and didn’t need any “help”. Once I brought this to her attention… she got right on it but we can only do so much without the support of the parents.
You are doing the right thing by supporting him at home, teachers can only do so much especially with kids who don’t want to take the effort to be held accountable for themselves…
This is what I did to help organize this kid with his ADD and I had another student who is also ADD and I have worked with for a long time model what she does just so he would realize you can be ADD but also be organized and successful…
We made him a homework folder, helped organize his assignments, scaffolded an outline for a writing assignment with EXPLICIT instructions step by step and how he was to complete it when I wanted it back so we could correct the errors…He came back last week to speech and he had done NOTHING after having almost 2 weeks to do it…Instead he came in with excuses of why he didn’t do it after I had given him all the support he needed to be successful…he chose to just blow it off.
When I blew a gasket during a session because of his insolence…one of his peers got on his case for expecting me to finish his latest “fire” in during our speech time for his class right after speech…but get this… he didn’t even have colored pencils, crayons, marking pens for it he just expected that I would have it…You should have seen the dirty look I got when I said…”I don’t have colored pencils, where are yours??? What about his being responsible to be prepared with his own supplies?? I AM NOT THE RSP teacher, I am only a cog in the wheel of support for this kid.
I can guarantee it is just going to get worse until your son is held accountable for his choices. But I think he needs to learn first we do our job and then we play…i.e., video games or whatever he enjoys doing.