This week I have finally become the one to challenge a parent with mental illness. He has been diagnosed by an MFT who works for us and has dealt with him. We have been trying to get his son into a classroom and provide services for her for months, but in each IEP he brings a huge amount of confusing information forward and is not sure what he feels she wants. Any questions for clarity bring a defensive attack from him at which point he simply gets up and leaves the room. He then follows this with emails that are accusing the district of all kinds of perverse activities. Apparently, we have been involved in everything from group sex to beatings in the classroom when she was here. We also have been, allegedly, lying, cheating and stealing (OK, so that's not a unique accusation) and sit around discussing just how best to make her life (and of course, his) miserable.
So, setting aside the difficulty of dealing with a parent who is not tethered to the pole, let's talk about the common accusation that we, as special educators, do nothing more then sit around developing new ways to be mean to kids and dishonest to their families. In fact, let me check...YES! My Masters degree states right on it that I have earned the right to be dishonest and to be mean to kids. I remember that day, the one where I earned my degree. There stood our august professor, dressed in her cap and gown, warning us of the dangers of honesty and integrity.
"Go out there and hurt kids," she said, "For it will be much more fun. This work is about cruelty and punishment, and you must uphold the great tradition of lying to families and restricting access to resources. Good luck."
So where does this come from? Part of it is the structure of special education, where we are set against families when there is disagreement over the distribution of resources. Part of it is that we have not served certain students well, either due to an incomplete understanding of their needs or a resistance to accept the reality of what they require. Of course, there are some educators who seem to really dislike kids. That I don't get.
Now I need to figure out how to work with this parent who is not only mentally ill but wants us to provide some bizarre program that no one understands. Well, I think I'll just take President Bush's advice; when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. Buy for now!
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
How to Handle That Workload
Why did I take this job? It's impossible! Being the Director of All Things Special in a medium-size district is a 24/7 job. I know my desk is an iceberg, nay an ice field, and they forgot to issue me an icebreaker boat to navigate it. About every three weeks I get approximately 3 hours to do what is on my task list for that day. Other than that, the constant stream of phone calls, people who need a decision, and emails constantly interrupts me. Oh, and the superintendent wants another meeting. And the HR Director needs to discuss staffing. And the same parent that called yesterday is now calling with her attorney's name since I did not respond within twelve minutes. (my favorite message: "I've called you three times since yesterday morning and you have not called me back. That is SO inconsiderate.")
I started out sure that I could make everyone happy, that I could keep the parents, staff and my supe satisfied and aware that I was on the job. Well, that didn't last long, but most folks are still satisfied, at least that's how I read it when the number of complaints drops. Now my skin is thickening and my understanding of the work has improved to the point of not reading my composite of laws book just before sleep (generally that's at night, though not always). I've been at this job for 1 1/2 years.
So how do I balance work, family, and other interests, which include some kind of exercise to keep me from going all blubbery and reading anything that is not related to education? I realized before I actually started the job, after talking to several friends who are Directors, that the job could easily eat me alive. So I declared to myself, in the presence of my dog Myron and my wife, that I would leave my job every day at 5:30 and not bring work home or work weekends. After 1 1/2 years, I am still able to do that, and find myself working at home about 2 evenings a month. I have gone to the office on Saturday exactly three times. The result is that I am present for my family (and Myron) and have at least some time to do what else I want to.
This has been very difficult to maintain. The pressure to join more committees, to respond at once to all calls and emails, is huge. But I don't. Every day I prioritize and answer what I deem to be imminent. Then, at 5:30, I go home!
I started out sure that I could make everyone happy, that I could keep the parents, staff and my supe satisfied and aware that I was on the job. Well, that didn't last long, but most folks are still satisfied, at least that's how I read it when the number of complaints drops. Now my skin is thickening and my understanding of the work has improved to the point of not reading my composite of laws book just before sleep (generally that's at night, though not always). I've been at this job for 1 1/2 years.
So how do I balance work, family, and other interests, which include some kind of exercise to keep me from going all blubbery and reading anything that is not related to education? I realized before I actually started the job, after talking to several friends who are Directors, that the job could easily eat me alive. So I declared to myself, in the presence of my dog Myron and my wife, that I would leave my job every day at 5:30 and not bring work home or work weekends. After 1 1/2 years, I am still able to do that, and find myself working at home about 2 evenings a month. I have gone to the office on Saturday exactly three times. The result is that I am present for my family (and Myron) and have at least some time to do what else I want to.
This has been very difficult to maintain. The pressure to join more committees, to respond at once to all calls and emails, is huge. But I don't. Every day I prioritize and answer what I deem to be imminent. Then, at 5:30, I go home!
Monday, November 19, 2007
RtI: Response to Intervention or Really Tough to Implement?
By now, unless you are living under a rock, or in Alaska (sorry Alaska) you have heard of RtI. The "t" is lower case as one doesn't capitalize "to". The acronym is short for, officially, Response to Intervention, but since so many people are writing about it there are new versions of it: Response to Instruction, Rejection of Instruction, Really Terrific Instruction, and my own, Really Tough to Implement. At the risk of repeating what you and your whole extended family have heard before, here's my two cents. This is a Really Terrific Idea! It is a paradigm shift, not just a new way of distributing resources. Here's how it works.
You can think of RtI in terms of a three tiered pyramid, with the bottom tier being what kind of instruction occurs across the school academically and behaviorally. This first tier is the basket where all the RtI eggs go, in that this process is predicated on general ed being the way to resolve lots of special ed issues and any other related special program concern. In this tier resides top quality, evidence-based instruction and data collection. This tier contains leveled reading and math, 6-8 week data review by a trained staff in grade level teams, social skills instruction, explicit instruction of school and classroom behavioral expectations, and a problem solving strategy that allows for constant adjustment of the delivery of services.
Above this first tier is the next egg basket, designed for those kids who do not respond well to the general ed instructional regime. In this tier, knows as the targeted tier to many, small groups are created and focused on more intensive versions of the core curriculum, be that reading or social skills.
On the top of the pyramid is the third tier, knows as the intensive tier to many. In this tier, we have 1:1 tutoring, intensive interventions, and special education. We also have individual behavior support plans.
The theory is that if we set up the school this way, we will have many fewer kids in special education and thus free up the resources to work with those kids who really do need it. This process is researched and developed to serve kids with reading issues primarily. The common wisdom these days is that over 50% of the kids in special ed are there due to poor reading instruction, not due to some neurological issues. The math is simple; teach them better and your rolls will halve! Nice way to improve the system!
So where is the downfall? Well, it's bloody hard to implement. The issues are manifold: you have to get a building's staff to buy in to doing things differently, as it's about changing what the adults do. You need to have good enough leadership at the site to allow for creative problem solving and flexibility in moving kids around. You need a good relationship with the union so this is built collaboratively. You need to work with the resources you have as no new funds are coming to assist this process.
But the potential payoff is fantastic!
Many of us have griped for years about the need for general ed to take more responsibility for special ed kids. Under RtI, there are no more "our" kids or "your" kids. They are all our kids. The discussions are about what to do within general ed instead of how do we get this kid to special ed. It's about time.
You can think of RtI in terms of a three tiered pyramid, with the bottom tier being what kind of instruction occurs across the school academically and behaviorally. This first tier is the basket where all the RtI eggs go, in that this process is predicated on general ed being the way to resolve lots of special ed issues and any other related special program concern. In this tier resides top quality, evidence-based instruction and data collection. This tier contains leveled reading and math, 6-8 week data review by a trained staff in grade level teams, social skills instruction, explicit instruction of school and classroom behavioral expectations, and a problem solving strategy that allows for constant adjustment of the delivery of services.
Above this first tier is the next egg basket, designed for those kids who do not respond well to the general ed instructional regime. In this tier, knows as the targeted tier to many, small groups are created and focused on more intensive versions of the core curriculum, be that reading or social skills.
On the top of the pyramid is the third tier, knows as the intensive tier to many. In this tier, we have 1:1 tutoring, intensive interventions, and special education. We also have individual behavior support plans.
The theory is that if we set up the school this way, we will have many fewer kids in special education and thus free up the resources to work with those kids who really do need it. This process is researched and developed to serve kids with reading issues primarily. The common wisdom these days is that over 50% of the kids in special ed are there due to poor reading instruction, not due to some neurological issues. The math is simple; teach them better and your rolls will halve! Nice way to improve the system!
So where is the downfall? Well, it's bloody hard to implement. The issues are manifold: you have to get a building's staff to buy in to doing things differently, as it's about changing what the adults do. You need to have good enough leadership at the site to allow for creative problem solving and flexibility in moving kids around. You need a good relationship with the union so this is built collaboratively. You need to work with the resources you have as no new funds are coming to assist this process.
But the potential payoff is fantastic!
Many of us have griped for years about the need for general ed to take more responsibility for special ed kids. Under RtI, there are no more "our" kids or "your" kids. They are all our kids. The discussions are about what to do within general ed instead of how do we get this kid to special ed. It's about time.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Why do they hate me?
I am sitting across the table from a group of parents who are ready to do what they seemingly relish in these monthly “collaborative, advisory” meetings. Start to grill me, as the school district special education director, about why nothing is going right in my district.
The federal special education law provides for participation of parents of students with special needs in advising the district. There is a formal body, called the Community Advisory Committee, or CAC, that meets monthly to hear reports from the special education administrators and to give feedback on policy and programs. More often than not, these sessions are bitch sessions concerning how we have failed each parent’s kid, and what is remarkable to me is how this becomes how we don’t serve any child well.
On this day the usual parents have brought in several more who don’t usually attend. Their mission today, it seems, is to tell me how my budding program for kids with autism is an abject failure. One father begins by saying that special education is so impossible to do that all the good teachers leave and all we are left with are people who don’t really care about kids and put all meaningful curriculum and instruction on the back burner. He is ignoring the presence of four current or former special educators around the table who I know are exemplary in how they work for students’ benefit. Then a mother chimes in to say that the school, when it was testing time, moved all of the special education students out of their classroom so other kids could be tested and simply put them on the playground. She claimed that the teacher asked her child what he wanted to do during an activity. “He can’t choose, he needs to be told,” she said. This parent then asserted that this is how it always is and always has been; the teachers don’t know what they are doing and so they ask the kids.
The absurdity of this galls me. I know this family’s last teacher who not only used top level curriculum but understood both autism and the needs of parents of these kids. Nevertheless, these parents complained constantly because on some measure they chose, their boy did not do well.
And then other parents chimed in, saying things like “When is the district going to do it’s part…we are!” Or “no one is paying attention to the teachers. You let them do nothing and don’t supervise them.” Or “There is no training offered for staff, still” It is all I can do to not get up and scream. This is my second year as Director of Special Education. In the first year I started a task force to determine how to set up a program for kids with autism. We had these same parents on the task force along with teachers, administrators, speech therapists, and psychologists. We made a plan, and we are slowly implementing it. Nothing like this has been done in this district for kids with autism. I am shocked at the fact that the biggest barrier to moving this program along is these parents constant criticism. It’s as if they don’t want us to succeed. They seem hell-bent on portraying us to all who will listen as cold-hearted bumblers who only care about our paychecks.
This past year, I have set up four trainings for staff on autism, the first training in the district for years. I have sent staff to many more trainings in other areas to get wisdom on autism. I have spent a huge amount of time with the staff of the school to get them up to speed. I have lobbied hard for money for staffing and for materials, a difficult thing to do when the district’s budget is so tight. The most angry parent at this meeting had a terrible teacher last year and complained constantly about him. We couldn’t tell her of course about personnel matters, but we worked hard on his case all year, ultimately getting him to resign, as it is almost impossible to fire a tenured teacher. This was a great victory for us, but this parent can’t understand why, just as she can’t acknowledge that “no training” is absolutely flatly wrong, as is the level of supervision we give our staff.
What these parents are right about is how difficult it is to get quality staff. It is rarer these days to find good special education teachers in California because the job is hard and the pay low. Most new teachers quit within three years. Their biggest complaints? Number one is the paperwork and handling the meetings, number two is dealing with the parents.
The federal government established the Education for Handicapped Children Act in 1975 with a promise of funding 40% of the states’ cost of special education programs. Congress has never authorized more than 17%, and currently it is around 13%. It costs a district in California up to $275 per student in the district over and above the money the federal government provides to offer these services, and this money comes out of a district’s general fund. So then you get a division within a district’s management over “encroachment”. “If your program didn’t cost so much money we could do that innovative program,” is a common refrain. In some districts, the word has gotten out that they can’t have a music program due to special ed encroachment, or they can’t have art classes, or they can’t serve Lobster on Thursdays.
My god people! It’s the cost of doing business! It’s the cost of serving these kids as the law forces us and best practice often dictates.
The federal special education law provides for participation of parents of students with special needs in advising the district. There is a formal body, called the Community Advisory Committee, or CAC, that meets monthly to hear reports from the special education administrators and to give feedback on policy and programs. More often than not, these sessions are bitch sessions concerning how we have failed each parent’s kid, and what is remarkable to me is how this becomes how we don’t serve any child well.
On this day the usual parents have brought in several more who don’t usually attend. Their mission today, it seems, is to tell me how my budding program for kids with autism is an abject failure. One father begins by saying that special education is so impossible to do that all the good teachers leave and all we are left with are people who don’t really care about kids and put all meaningful curriculum and instruction on the back burner. He is ignoring the presence of four current or former special educators around the table who I know are exemplary in how they work for students’ benefit. Then a mother chimes in to say that the school, when it was testing time, moved all of the special education students out of their classroom so other kids could be tested and simply put them on the playground. She claimed that the teacher asked her child what he wanted to do during an activity. “He can’t choose, he needs to be told,” she said. This parent then asserted that this is how it always is and always has been; the teachers don’t know what they are doing and so they ask the kids.
The absurdity of this galls me. I know this family’s last teacher who not only used top level curriculum but understood both autism and the needs of parents of these kids. Nevertheless, these parents complained constantly because on some measure they chose, their boy did not do well.
And then other parents chimed in, saying things like “When is the district going to do it’s part…we are!” Or “no one is paying attention to the teachers. You let them do nothing and don’t supervise them.” Or “There is no training offered for staff, still” It is all I can do to not get up and scream. This is my second year as Director of Special Education. In the first year I started a task force to determine how to set up a program for kids with autism. We had these same parents on the task force along with teachers, administrators, speech therapists, and psychologists. We made a plan, and we are slowly implementing it. Nothing like this has been done in this district for kids with autism. I am shocked at the fact that the biggest barrier to moving this program along is these parents constant criticism. It’s as if they don’t want us to succeed. They seem hell-bent on portraying us to all who will listen as cold-hearted bumblers who only care about our paychecks.
This past year, I have set up four trainings for staff on autism, the first training in the district for years. I have sent staff to many more trainings in other areas to get wisdom on autism. I have spent a huge amount of time with the staff of the school to get them up to speed. I have lobbied hard for money for staffing and for materials, a difficult thing to do when the district’s budget is so tight. The most angry parent at this meeting had a terrible teacher last year and complained constantly about him. We couldn’t tell her of course about personnel matters, but we worked hard on his case all year, ultimately getting him to resign, as it is almost impossible to fire a tenured teacher. This was a great victory for us, but this parent can’t understand why, just as she can’t acknowledge that “no training” is absolutely flatly wrong, as is the level of supervision we give our staff.
What these parents are right about is how difficult it is to get quality staff. It is rarer these days to find good special education teachers in California because the job is hard and the pay low. Most new teachers quit within three years. Their biggest complaints? Number one is the paperwork and handling the meetings, number two is dealing with the parents.
The federal government established the Education for Handicapped Children Act in 1975 with a promise of funding 40% of the states’ cost of special education programs. Congress has never authorized more than 17%, and currently it is around 13%. It costs a district in California up to $275 per student in the district over and above the money the federal government provides to offer these services, and this money comes out of a district’s general fund. So then you get a division within a district’s management over “encroachment”. “If your program didn’t cost so much money we could do that innovative program,” is a common refrain. In some districts, the word has gotten out that they can’t have a music program due to special ed encroachment, or they can’t have art classes, or they can’t serve Lobster on Thursdays.
My god people! It’s the cost of doing business! It’s the cost of serving these kids as the law forces us and best practice often dictates.
It's all about me!
Welcome to the special edification blog. This is a place where you can hear me rant about special education law and practice, staff and families, and working conditions. Despite the fact that this is one of the most difficult professions in America, I still like it, most of the time. I mean, we're not in it for the money, are we? But doesn't the money look good? Damn, I could have been a banker!
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