Wednesday, May 9, 2012
PS- the kids hit us. When are we going top talk about MY kids, PartIII
Special ed teachers have the challenge of teaching academics to a wide variety of students with disabilities and abilities. In District 75, all the schools are specialized schools. That means in order for a student to be placed there, they have had to exhibit physical, behavioral, or academic deficits so severe that they cannot be supported in another type of special ed classroom.
The special ed teachers in D75, therefore, not only have to implement "rigorous" academic instruction, but also plans for instruction in behavior, social skills, activities of daily living, even toilet training. It's a lot of work,. a lot of trial and error, and a lot of just thinking to make a plan that addresses all these areas for 6,8, or 12 students that's do-able.
Especially when the kids hit us. Or scratch us. Or push us, or throw chairs at us. Or other students. Or punch out the glass in a window.
Sometimes the student may not understand what they are doing, but sometimes they do. And hit a teacher intentionally. Or scratch one intentionally, Or push one, or throw chairs at one intentionally. Or call a teacher a "fucking cunt" intentionally.
Sometimes there's a gray area where a teacher can't quite figure out if it's intentional or not.
But we get hit. Often.
And from what I've been reading lately, there's been an awful lot of 911 calls from community schools who do not have the supports in place for an out of control student. Often the student is taken to the emergency room but is not admitted and in school the next day. Maybe after several incidents the student may be transferred to a D75 school, but I'll tell you what - we don't have the supports either.
The way the system is set up, it's becoming increasingly difficult for teachers and schools in general to keep staff members from getting hit. We are not supposed to restrain a child, so what are we to do when they beat us and smash their fist through glass - all the while calling us names that even make a person who calls herself "Miss RIM" blush?
And even if we could "just hold him down for like a 1/2 hour" like a parent suggested to me once, how are the other students in the class supposed to get the rigorous, highly effective instruction I have to develop and deliver in order to keep my job?
No one says this. No one outside education acknowledges that we go to work knowing that students verbally and physically abuse each other and the staff. Bill Gates doesn't go to work and get smacked. If that happened to Geoffory Canada at the Harlem Children's Zone or Eva Moskowitz at Success Academies, the student, oops, pardon me, "scholar" would receive demerits and be "counseled out"....(then be "our problem") If some kid called Michelle Rhee a "fucking cunt", they'd get tape over their mouth.
What gives? With all the hullabaloo starting a big national conversation about education, let's have this conversation.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
When ARE we going to talk about my kids?...Part 2
Today I decided to support the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing. http://timeoutfromtesting.org/nationalresolution/
I support the resolution because I feel the same way most teachers do about high stakes testing. I also wanted to take a moment to describe how the testing culture trickles down into classrooms that serve students with more pronounced cognitive limitations...you know, my kids.
My kids have to complete a NYS Alternate Assessment Datafolio. Each grade level has "alternate level grade indicators." (AGLI) Teachers choose 2 ELA, 2 Math and for some grades Social Studies and/ or Science in elementary school. In high school, it's all subjects. We can chose discrete trial samples, video evidence or work samples to prove progress in each AGLI. There is a handy manual about 1000 pages long with samples of tasks.
Sounds reasonable so far, right? Unfortunately, it never seems to go as simply as it should.
First of all, most AA teachers will tell you that working most children to complete a worksheet is like pulling teeth. Gathering video evidence requires parents of the student AND their peers to sign and return a consent form. That's harder than you think. Using work samples is the most simple way to complete a datafolio.
Secondly, one can't just take a few samples of work the students are already doing. Teachers have to be sure that each work sample has directions written on it in the exact same language as the state. And of course, sometimes the language is nebulous. "SHow you can distinguish fact from opinion by selecting and identifying statements of fact and opinion from a fact based text." True story - a coach told me that the fact based text I chose for this one wasn't good enough, because the fact based text I used wasn't cited. The facts I was trying to get the student to identify were: A weatherperson tell us the weather. They will tell us if it will be hot or cold. I had to design a new task.
Also - teachers are charged with scoring these pieces of work with a % of answers that are correct AND a level of independence. The levels of independence are from 0 to 100. What does an independence level of 47% mean vs. 54%?
And yes, they do "count" on a school's report card and stuff.
WHen the datafolios are sent to the state, students scores can be thrown out if a teacher misnumbers the pages or even if a student makes an errant mark on the page that a teacher didn't write "student made errant mark" and does not initial it. The scorers do not have access to the students IEPs or any other evaluations.
So, if I choose simple AGLIs without weird language, give the kids work that's easy for them and they can do independently, give them a fresh sheet if they doodle on it, and number the pages correctly....they get 4s. Or, I could give them difficult work and do it hand over hand and then they get a 4 for correct answers and a 1 for independence? Or I could just lie. Or even do it myself - we can give them tasks that are cutting and gluing. Then I look like a highly effective teacher and maybe get a bonus!
Not only is this process really easy to skew, it's more a test of the teacher's ability to dot bureaucratic i's and cross bureaucratic t's.
Finally, it's also gigantic time consuming, money sucking, tree-killing pain in the ass.
Friday, December 16, 2011
When ARE we going to talk about my kids?... Part 1: My kids
Months ago, I was inspired by a Ms. Katie, a special ed teacher who had such a perfect title for her blog entry that I just had to rip it off.
Read it in it's entirety here
The very eloquent Ms. Katie poses the following question: What do we do with the disruptive, most-difficult to educate children?
Well, I'll tell you - they come to someone like me in a District 75 school or they come to someone like her, a teacher on an inpatient psychiatry unit.
Inspried by Ms. Katie, I have decided to write several entries about where "my kids" fit into the national conversation about education. I would like to begin by describing them and a typical "week in the life" of a special ed teacher in a D75 school - I think it's important to know how seriously "disabled" the children are before beginning the conversation. Subsequent entries will be dedicated to what does or does not work, what may or may not work, and general grumbling and harrumphing about specifics.
District 75 - for you non NYC DOE people out there -is a citywide district of specialized schools for special education students. It includes a number of different special ed classifications, students with autism, mental retardation, physical disabilities, emotional disturbance, and "other" (yes, there is an "other") To my knowledge, a few of the schools serve students with one or two types of disability, but most of them serve an array: I work at a school that has 5 sites, serving kindergarten through 12th grade, students who participate in the state wide "tests"- referred to as standardized assessment and those those cognitive disabilities preclude them from participating - referred to as alternate assessment. (more on the joke that is a NYS Alternate Assessment in the future!) Again these students are the most disruptive and / or most difficult to educate children in the NYC DOE.
Sometimes, I come home from work in need of serious de-compressing and it has become a bit of a ritual in our household for me to give Mr. Rim a list of the day's "atrocities." (A bit of hyperbole, there, forgive me) I think the best way to give readers an idea of the students we special educators choose to serve is to simply list this weeks "atrocities:"
- Monday / Tuesday: 10 year old Student with MR refuses to transition to classroom (on 4th floor, no elevator) from the b cafeteria or gym on 1st floor. Flops down on floor, refuses to move for 45 minutes to 1 hour - rolls around in various sticky things stuck to the floor. Crawls under difficult to move cafeteria tables. Get's into the bathroom, locks herself in a stall, curls around a toilet, rolls around in someone else's urine. This student is also able to burp and fart AT people. teacher has to leave the paraprofessional behind in order to monitor her. It takes a good 45 minutes or so to get her to tranisition to the classroom - if her behavior plan is followed correctly. Behavior plan involves ignoring. Many other adults stare, try to intervene, dangle food in front of her, even though teacher and para specifically ask them to stop, because it escalates the behavior. Other adults ignore these requests, which results in this student "flopping" around for about 2 hours or so.
-Monday 9/ 10 year old students with emotional disturbance have an argument in class about one of the "bothering" the other. Student A grabs a pair of scissors and threatens to stab Student B. Student B grabs a pair of scissors and threatens to stab Student A back. A chase ensues. The other students in the class begin to takes sides - anarchy. Teacher steps in between student A and B and student A stabs the teacher in the hand. Teacher in Emergency Room. Student returns the next day. Consequence: not earning "points"
-Monday-Tuesday 8 to 10 year old Students C,D,E, and F with emotional disturbance(male and female) run in the halls all day yelling very creative things...oh, I'll just tell you: "Suck my dick, suck my motherfucking dick, suck it hard until I pee on you..." (!) to each other. When teachers ask them to stop, they yell other creative things, like "i'm dead ass you can't do nothin'" Gang up on a 5 year old student with Down's Syndrome because she's "looking" at them. Parents called. Principal called. Consequence: eating lunch in the office for the next few days and not earning "points."
Tuesday- 11 year old student with ED, who came to our school about 3 weeks ago from a hospital, arrives crying and screaming. Says she wants to kill herslef. No answer or return call from parent. Interviewed by the school psych and social worker, given lots of counseling...for about 3 hours. Around lunchtime, she grabs a sharp shard of a broken desk lying in the hall (left by another ED student the a few hours before) tries to stab herself - for real - lots of blood.school psych and social worker call principal, who asks them NOT to cal 911 if it can be helped. It coul;dn't be helped, 911 called, takes 4 big EMTs to carry this girl out- This happens about 12:30. She's at school the next day.
Wednesday: Teacher discovers some disturbing drawings and writings of a VERY sexual nature done by an 8 year old student with MR - relatively new to the school. Shows school psychologist and social worker. Both call the grandmother, the person the student lives with. No, she can't come in for a meeting. They do a very quick social history. Student lived with various family members in and out of the US. Psych and social worker explain that this type of stuff is unusual, woman hangs up. Student is out the rest of the week.
Wednesday - 10 year old student with autism has been out for 2 days. Her parent, who we all know to be very concientious - called the school office on Monday to say the student had a bad cold and would be back probably Wednesday. Student returns on Wednesday, parent calls the office and asks that if she still seems to be under the weather, please take her temperature and/ or call her to pick said student up- Thinks it's just a bad cold, but please let her know if it seems she's not recovering. Wednesday afternoon, an attendance teacher shows up at the house and threatens the parents with ACS involvement, possibly removal of all the children in the home. Parent calls up the teacher, very upset, wondering why in the world she can't keep her sick daughter, who has good attendance, etc...home sick for a couple of days without a fuss.
Well, I'm only up to Wednesday now - are you still reading? Note that I'm not privy to how that desk got broken, and likely unaware of a few other "atrocities" that may have occured this week. Please also note the irony of that last one.
Please also note I haven't mentioned academics yet. Readers of this blog may remember that I was a Teaching Fellow and still feel pretty raw about how useless most of the training was. One thing I do use and say to myself often is something Rick Hess wrote, that a student who can sit down and pay attention is more likely to learn better. We've got to work on the whole student at some point. (I'm paraphrasing)
The question I ask is this: Given the students I work with,in this "accountability obsessed" (Ms. Katie's phrase - thanks again!) culture of education, what, if any, room is there for the whole child?
If you know, please tell me.
Read it in it's entirety here
The very eloquent Ms. Katie poses the following question: What do we do with the disruptive, most-difficult to educate children?
Well, I'll tell you - they come to someone like me in a District 75 school or they come to someone like her, a teacher on an inpatient psychiatry unit.
Inspried by Ms. Katie, I have decided to write several entries about where "my kids" fit into the national conversation about education. I would like to begin by describing them and a typical "week in the life" of a special ed teacher in a D75 school - I think it's important to know how seriously "disabled" the children are before beginning the conversation. Subsequent entries will be dedicated to what does or does not work, what may or may not work, and general grumbling and harrumphing about specifics.
District 75 - for you non NYC DOE people out there -is a citywide district of specialized schools for special education students. It includes a number of different special ed classifications, students with autism, mental retardation, physical disabilities, emotional disturbance, and "other" (yes, there is an "other") To my knowledge, a few of the schools serve students with one or two types of disability, but most of them serve an array: I work at a school that has 5 sites, serving kindergarten through 12th grade, students who participate in the state wide "tests"- referred to as standardized assessment and those those cognitive disabilities preclude them from participating - referred to as alternate assessment. (more on the joke that is a NYS Alternate Assessment in the future!) Again these students are the most disruptive and / or most difficult to educate children in the NYC DOE.
Sometimes, I come home from work in need of serious de-compressing and it has become a bit of a ritual in our household for me to give Mr. Rim a list of the day's "atrocities." (A bit of hyperbole, there, forgive me) I think the best way to give readers an idea of the students we special educators choose to serve is to simply list this weeks "atrocities:"
- Monday / Tuesday: 10 year old Student with MR refuses to transition to classroom (on 4th floor, no elevator) from the b cafeteria or gym on 1st floor. Flops down on floor, refuses to move for 45 minutes to 1 hour - rolls around in various sticky things stuck to the floor. Crawls under difficult to move cafeteria tables. Get's into the bathroom, locks herself in a stall, curls around a toilet, rolls around in someone else's urine. This student is also able to burp and fart AT people. teacher has to leave the paraprofessional behind in order to monitor her. It takes a good 45 minutes or so to get her to tranisition to the classroom - if her behavior plan is followed correctly. Behavior plan involves ignoring. Many other adults stare, try to intervene, dangle food in front of her, even though teacher and para specifically ask them to stop, because it escalates the behavior. Other adults ignore these requests, which results in this student "flopping" around for about 2 hours or so.
-Monday 9/ 10 year old students with emotional disturbance have an argument in class about one of the "bothering" the other. Student A grabs a pair of scissors and threatens to stab Student B. Student B grabs a pair of scissors and threatens to stab Student A back. A chase ensues. The other students in the class begin to takes sides - anarchy. Teacher steps in between student A and B and student A stabs the teacher in the hand. Teacher in Emergency Room. Student returns the next day. Consequence: not earning "points"
-Monday-Tuesday 8 to 10 year old Students C,D,E, and F with emotional disturbance(male and female) run in the halls all day yelling very creative things...oh, I'll just tell you: "Suck my dick, suck my motherfucking dick, suck it hard until I pee on you..." (!) to each other. When teachers ask them to stop, they yell other creative things, like "i'm dead ass you can't do nothin'" Gang up on a 5 year old student with Down's Syndrome because she's "looking" at them. Parents called. Principal called. Consequence: eating lunch in the office for the next few days and not earning "points."
Tuesday- 11 year old student with ED, who came to our school about 3 weeks ago from a hospital, arrives crying and screaming. Says she wants to kill herslef. No answer or return call from parent. Interviewed by the school psych and social worker, given lots of counseling...for about 3 hours. Around lunchtime, she grabs a sharp shard of a broken desk lying in the hall (left by another ED student the a few hours before) tries to stab herself - for real - lots of blood.school psych and social worker call principal, who asks them NOT to cal 911 if it can be helped. It coul;dn't be helped, 911 called, takes 4 big EMTs to carry this girl out- This happens about 12:30. She's at school the next day.
Wednesday: Teacher discovers some disturbing drawings and writings of a VERY sexual nature done by an 8 year old student with MR - relatively new to the school. Shows school psychologist and social worker. Both call the grandmother, the person the student lives with. No, she can't come in for a meeting. They do a very quick social history. Student lived with various family members in and out of the US. Psych and social worker explain that this type of stuff is unusual, woman hangs up. Student is out the rest of the week.
Wednesday - 10 year old student with autism has been out for 2 days. Her parent, who we all know to be very concientious - called the school office on Monday to say the student had a bad cold and would be back probably Wednesday. Student returns on Wednesday, parent calls the office and asks that if she still seems to be under the weather, please take her temperature and/ or call her to pick said student up- Thinks it's just a bad cold, but please let her know if it seems she's not recovering. Wednesday afternoon, an attendance teacher shows up at the house and threatens the parents with ACS involvement, possibly removal of all the children in the home. Parent calls up the teacher, very upset, wondering why in the world she can't keep her sick daughter, who has good attendance, etc...home sick for a couple of days without a fuss.
Well, I'm only up to Wednesday now - are you still reading? Note that I'm not privy to how that desk got broken, and likely unaware of a few other "atrocities" that may have occured this week. Please also note the irony of that last one.
Please also note I haven't mentioned academics yet. Readers of this blog may remember that I was a Teaching Fellow and still feel pretty raw about how useless most of the training was. One thing I do use and say to myself often is something Rick Hess wrote, that a student who can sit down and pay attention is more likely to learn better. We've got to work on the whole student at some point. (I'm paraphrasing)
The question I ask is this: Given the students I work with,in this "accountability obsessed" (Ms. Katie's phrase - thanks again!) culture of education, what, if any, room is there for the whole child?
If you know, please tell me.
Friday, December 9, 2011
A miscellany of comments before I get back to blogging for realz...
Hello, all.
Took a break from blogging due to knee surgery. I took a week off of work, and had to hobble around on a cane for a while. I have the following comments / questions/ complaints about the last few months of work:
-It is borderline criminal that the school I am co located with places 4, 5, 6 year old students with mental retardation (intellectual disability, whatever they're calling it these days) who need PT to walk up and down 4 flights of stairs several times daily. I noticed it before, but hobbling around after surgery really made me empathize. And I had a dr.'s note excusing me from walking my kids to lunch/gym and fire drills!
- What do we think about the change in terminology from "Mental Retardation" to "Intellectual Disability" in the classification of disability? Of course the term "retardation" has it's negative connotations, and it's obvious this is an attempt to be sensitive. But I dislike the use of the word "intellectual" - depending how you define "intellect", any one of us could have "intellectual" deficiencies/ disabilities. If it's got to be change, I like the word "cognitive" better. But the MR term has been around for so long and from where I'm sitting, so many parents I work with have enough trouble accepting that their child is, indeed, mentally retarded that the change of terms is confusing. And, any second now, other kids will start calling other kids "intellectualy disabled" and then that will have the same connotations as "retard."
*Also, what will the kids in Boston do? "The Red Sox played wicked intellectually disabled last night?"*
Let's call a duck a duck. No, strike that. Or qualify it: a duck with spots, a duck with a white feather, etc. A child is a child. A child could be a child with mental retardation or autism or....well, you know what I mean. This could be a fantastic paper topic for someone who loves semantics.
- All these iPads? They're killing me! I have had more administrative "visits" and" walk - throughs" and "informal observations" in the last 3 months than in the last 5 years of teaching.I get it, I really do. One must justify the acquiring of an iPad from the DOE by using it. In theory, my school (and probably most others) uses it provide feedback, share best practices, and chart student and teacher growth.
In practice, what happens is an administrator will pop in without so much as a "Hello" snap pictures of bulletin boards or student work, send it to another administrator to with mostly negative - and very vaguely worded I might add "feedback." Then the other administrator has to to show the classroom teacher in person the feedback and when we ask for specifics about what was wrong... well you get it - it's a very adult game of "Telephone." And" Gotcha!" Then, teachers begin to feel, tense, nervous, fearful and "watched." Not a good combination to excel at a craft.
All that puts a bee in my bonnet, but what really makes buzz is this: there are some administrators that are very literal and logical to a fault - but there are enough out there that can use this technology in the right way and direct others to do so as well.
What if AP Sally popped in my room with her iPad and said, "Hello, Miss Rim! I'd like to take a picture of this ____to share with others. I think it's good strategy because of _____. Do you mind? " (what teacher minds that?)
Or alternately, AP Beth popped in to my room with her iPad and said "Miss Rim, I don't think this _____ is working well because of ____. I think that the way you can improve it is ____ . Maybe we can share it with other teachers and get their suggestions. Can I take a picture of it, and after you've incorporated some suggestions and improved it, I''l take another picture and we can use it to chart your "growth "/ to help other teachers?"
It's not that hard, people. With great iPads comes great responsibility.
PS- Annie Sullivan, the "Miracle Worker" had no technology as we know it, no paperwork, portfolios, etc and no administrator. Just sayin'
-And finally-at my D75 school, in my 12:1:1 alternate assessment class -3rd to 5th grade, so between 8 and 10 years old- there are WISC - scale IQ scores between 35 and 68. Pretty big range, but not atypical of an AA class. And within that scope there are students who are nearing grade level at, say...phonics but when it comes to other skills like comprehension or identyfing money - they;re all over the place. It's hard.
And that's the subject of my next "for realz" blog - "What about MY kids?"
NYC education bloggers: Been reading you all in the meantime,love what you're saying. Special shout outs to Mr. A Talk, Sweetgirl Tracie, and South Bronx.
Took a break from blogging due to knee surgery. I took a week off of work, and had to hobble around on a cane for a while. I have the following comments / questions/ complaints about the last few months of work:
-It is borderline criminal that the school I am co located with places 4, 5, 6 year old students with mental retardation (intellectual disability, whatever they're calling it these days) who need PT to walk up and down 4 flights of stairs several times daily. I noticed it before, but hobbling around after surgery really made me empathize. And I had a dr.'s note excusing me from walking my kids to lunch/gym and fire drills!
- What do we think about the change in terminology from "Mental Retardation" to "Intellectual Disability" in the classification of disability? Of course the term "retardation" has it's negative connotations, and it's obvious this is an attempt to be sensitive. But I dislike the use of the word "intellectual" - depending how you define "intellect", any one of us could have "intellectual" deficiencies/ disabilities. If it's got to be change, I like the word "cognitive" better. But the MR term has been around for so long and from where I'm sitting, so many parents I work with have enough trouble accepting that their child is, indeed, mentally retarded that the change of terms is confusing. And, any second now, other kids will start calling other kids "intellectualy disabled" and then that will have the same connotations as "retard."
*Also, what will the kids in Boston do? "The Red Sox played wicked intellectually disabled last night?"*
Let's call a duck a duck. No, strike that. Or qualify it: a duck with spots, a duck with a white feather, etc. A child is a child. A child could be a child with mental retardation or autism or....well, you know what I mean. This could be a fantastic paper topic for someone who loves semantics.
- All these iPads? They're killing me! I have had more administrative "visits" and" walk - throughs" and "informal observations" in the last 3 months than in the last 5 years of teaching.I get it, I really do. One must justify the acquiring of an iPad from the DOE by using it. In theory, my school (and probably most others) uses it provide feedback, share best practices, and chart student and teacher growth.
In practice, what happens is an administrator will pop in without so much as a "Hello" snap pictures of bulletin boards or student work, send it to another administrator to with mostly negative - and very vaguely worded I might add "feedback." Then the other administrator has to to show the classroom teacher in person the feedback and when we ask for specifics about what was wrong... well you get it - it's a very adult game of "Telephone." And" Gotcha!" Then, teachers begin to feel, tense, nervous, fearful and "watched." Not a good combination to excel at a craft.
All that puts a bee in my bonnet, but what really makes buzz is this: there are some administrators that are very literal and logical to a fault - but there are enough out there that can use this technology in the right way and direct others to do so as well.
What if AP Sally popped in my room with her iPad and said, "Hello, Miss Rim! I'd like to take a picture of this ____to share with others. I think it's good strategy because of _____. Do you mind? " (what teacher minds that?)
Or alternately, AP Beth popped in to my room with her iPad and said "Miss Rim, I don't think this _____ is working well because of ____. I think that the way you can improve it is ____ . Maybe we can share it with other teachers and get their suggestions. Can I take a picture of it, and after you've incorporated some suggestions and improved it, I''l take another picture and we can use it to chart your "growth "/ to help other teachers?"
It's not that hard, people. With great iPads comes great responsibility.
PS- Annie Sullivan, the "Miracle Worker" had no technology as we know it, no paperwork, portfolios, etc and no administrator. Just sayin'
-And finally-at my D75 school, in my 12:1:1 alternate assessment class -3rd to 5th grade, so between 8 and 10 years old- there are WISC - scale IQ scores between 35 and 68. Pretty big range, but not atypical of an AA class. And within that scope there are students who are nearing grade level at, say...phonics but when it comes to other skills like comprehension or identyfing money - they;re all over the place. It's hard.
And that's the subject of my next "for realz" blog - "What about MY kids?"
NYC education bloggers: Been reading you all in the meantime,love what you're saying. Special shout outs to Mr. A Talk, Sweetgirl Tracie, and South Bronx.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Trotting out the dogs and ponies....
We had some kind of trial walk through the other day...an AP walking around furiously scribbling about bulletin boards.
I have a special hate for bulletin board critiques - stemming from an incident in which a "Network Leader" ridiculed me and my SPECIAL ED students- in front of them- so much that I hyperventilated and threw up.
It was April,poetry month and we made symmetrical paintings and couplets that described our artwork. I even ripped off a veteran teacher's idea about the couplets (with his permission) - I didn't want to do one of those fill in the blank poems - and got reamed out about how my idea of academic rigor was a joke with only 2 lines and how the student's artwork was "juvenile." Of course the other couplet guy and the fill in the blank people got a pass.
I've since developed a thicker skin, a better sense of humor about these things but the BB Police thing still really puts a bee in my bonnet! So I was a bit amused in a snarky way when I saw the AP wandering and checking out the bulletin boards.I had everything - appropriate work/rubrics / feedback etc. there were 2 things marked "N/A" -next steps and visual appeal.
That puzzled me, so I asked "Visual appeal and next steps are not applicable?"
"They certainly are. I didn't see any evidence of those two factors on your bulletin board."
"Oh." Pause. "Uh, I'm a little confused. What does N/ A stand for then?"
"Not applicable."
"Oh," Pause. " I thought 'not applicable' meant you were not applying that criteria this time around."
"By criteria do you mean the aforementioned factors that i stated were not in evidence at this time?" (I'm not kidding, this is what she said)
"Um, yes. But OK I get it! The terminology threw me. Sorry."
"Do you want to know I why I stated that the evidence in visual appeal and next steps was unapplicable in evidence?" (again, not kidding)
"Of course."
"There was no evidence of next steps in your feedback post it and it was not visually appealing."
"I see. Well maybe you can help me, then. I wrote things like 'Let's keep working on your fine motor skills so your name is legible.' and 'Let's work on increasing the amount of work you do.' Those are things I think are next steps to increase the quality of their work. Were you looking for something else?"
"If you wrote that, i didn't read it because the next steps factor was not written as a criteria on the paper. I didn't see it applicable as evidence because I didn't know where to find it listed."
"Wait.... You want me to just label it?"
"If you had a rubric or a post it and included in the feedback you could write "feedback" where the feedback is and next steps with the next steps, then I could see it in evidence."
"Oh. Sure. I can do that."
I went and highlighted feedback comments in pink and next step comments in orange, and stapled up a little key by the bulletin board. "Thanks for adding on 'next steps' Ms. Rim" she called out at the end of the day, with a Top Gun thumbs up - like gesture. Didn't tackle the visual appeal there, that seemed a little too subjective.
By the way, most of my students cannot hold a pencil properly, read, identify shapes or colors, etc. Clearly that post it is not for them. Increasing expectations for special ed students is not about this. It's "N/A"
Friday, September 16, 2011
...and I'm literally doing it with one hand / the obligatory September complaints
So, how's everyone's fist few weeks back been? *sarcasm*
I came back refreshed. I took the whole summer off to plan and have a wedding. A destination wedding in the Carribbean, which was about 3,000 times better than I expected it to be, - even though Irene tried to crash, she was just a mere tropical wave at that point, not even named yet. A bit of drizzle. Afterward, Mr. Rim and I traveled to my hometown way up in Western NY ,where I tripped on an uneven sidewalk and broke my hand.
When I reported to work the first day, I was in a splint (which is now a cast) and since the kids weren't there, had some mildly "soothing stuf"f in my system. The morning was dedicated to housekeeping - blood borne pathogens, please-don't-get-arrested-but-if-you-do-call, etc. Since I work in D75 school, with many "offsites" and several different types of students, the afternoon was spent in attempting to align common core / state standards with what we actually DO and what the students actually NEED.
This is a common issue with all of us, but I think that it's more prominent in D75 - is that it's much harder for most of us classroom teachers to make what we do look good on paper. The Danielson / common core / flavor of the month Eduspeak jargon DOES NOT come with a manual about how to define whatever ill-defined quality of instruction within the scope of the students the any given district serves, and it's always been up to a particular school or a teacher to do that. And as most of you know, there is an incredibly diverse population D75 serves. It's funny how when "network" leaders, coaches, reviewers, or others who may not know about any of what I call the "special / special" ed kids hate what our plans and scores are on paper, but when they actually go to the school show an alarming degree of naivete. For example, in no particular order: I've seen the aforementioned cringe and leave when a child drools, or rocks back and forth or realize than a 10 year old who has still not been toilet trained has a diaper with poop in it; refuse to model a lesson after being called a "bitch" or something in a class full of emotionally disturbed 8th graders, yell "S/he needs a private school!" when spat at - this is what we do every single day.
And so, about 9:45 a the first day, my blood began to boil. My group is teachers that work with alternate assessment students. We plowed through some Danielson rubrics and sort of got the message that we have to do a couple common core projects for our grades (?) level 1 to 4 questioning techniques., or something.. and at about 10am, I asked ,
" So if I have a class of special ed students with cognitive impairments, who are only able at this point to count to 20, what would a level 4 question be for them? For example, could I ask them analyze the number, oh, say, 17 by comparing and contrasting it to a higher and lower number? Could I have them synthesize it by pointing out that today is the 17th of the school year, or to a given month? At which point on the scale is it that a student in my class can make a connection like, "My sister is 17, she's older than me,." Or say how many years differnece it is between the student and the sister. For most of my kids, this would be a level 4 question for them. "
My colleagues murmured and seemed to agree this was an Ok way to fulfill our charge. The facilitator blinked a few times. shuffled papers, looked at STuff and then, I KID YOU NOT, said if the student could write a 2- 3 paragraph piece about a number being a prime or a multiple of something and why, than "OK, we could probably let that slide" when we explained some of the children don't even know how to grip a pencil properly or spell their names. I asked about social / emotional / adaptive behavior goals - which are a very important part of any child's education, but are the bread and butter of D75 - more blinking and shuffling and less answers.
According to other colleagues who work with standardized "special /special" assessment kids, they asked simliar type questions and got the same type answers.
. Translation: " If you can't make a bulletin board about it, it never happened."
For obvious reasons, that put a big bee in my bonnet - and I still had "something soothing" in my system!
Rick Hess, the assessment guru, wrote - I'm paraphrasing - All other things being equal, a kid that can sit down, be quiet and listen, will learn better. But if a student in D75 was able to do that, then they wouldn't be there. S o it is not only our charge as teachers (in D75 or anywhere) but a big part of our ethic tohelp our students work the social / emotional/ behavioral pieces.
In fact, I think it's disservice to students and teachers to waste so much time on aligning and re-aligning the very basic nature of what we do into whatever rubric of the year is popular. It's Doubleplusnongood for you fans of Orwell.
So there's that, and the stray beginning o' the year "and you wonder why public education is in such a state" observations (read on, you can relate)
- BIG cockroach infestation in the building I work at. I'm not skittish, but I kill about 4 a day and my classroom isn't considered that big a risk. I'm on the 4th floor, BTW. No extermination / spraying/ bombing planned..according to the head custodial leader guy there -" I gotta get authorization from somebody, but can't find who. I don;t even know who my supervisor is this year."
-Moved classrooms, don't have a key - according to the aforementioned custidial leader guy: "So ya want me to find you a key, huh? uh...I guess I could just make ya a copy of mine, you could go to the hardware store or I could, but I don't wanna get in trouble with by boss and I dunno who that is yet."
-Special ed bussing is always a nightmare, and even under the best of circumstances there are many students who have to be on the bus for an hour a more - even if it's a "short bus." In the beginning of the year it's much worse: 2- 2/12 hours. Kids arrive to school or home having had #1 and #2 in thier pants. Also, these busses are private companies, subcontracted, so the only thing I can say top parents is to call OPT or the bus company.
-No printer, toner, copier. limited internet access for at least another week. But we have to give out homework daily and the bulletin boards must be done by Tuesday. Enough leeway, "no excuses" get it done already!
-More often than you would ever think, even district 75 doesn't have the resources to support quite a large number of very needy student. And there is a greater number of kids that really do need mental health support and meds than you would ever think. To wit:. I have been slapped by 2 children under in my class , both under 10 years of age, about 15 times this week. I lost count of the name calling. My paras, have had triple that. One kid broke a window with his fist, twice.
-One of these kid wAS dropped off to school by his dad. The student went off to breakfast, and I explained to the dad that the day about the hitting and hullabaloo,and that his 9 year son had called me every name in the book in Spanish and English and demanded I prove it by doing certain things to him...The kid found out I "snitched" on him to his dad, had an epic tantrum, which resulted in his dad telling me he was going to bring the student home for a bit to calm down and come back., What actually happened was that his dad called 911, and LEFT before the police / ambulance got there. Then , called the school later, demanding his son get a "better" teacher "She can';t control him and he don't get enough homework." Homework.
Remember... all this is with one hand. I don't meant o be a big complainer, but really - we can do special ed better than this.
I came back refreshed. I took the whole summer off to plan and have a wedding. A destination wedding in the Carribbean, which was about 3,000 times better than I expected it to be, - even though Irene tried to crash, she was just a mere tropical wave at that point, not even named yet. A bit of drizzle. Afterward, Mr. Rim and I traveled to my hometown way up in Western NY ,where I tripped on an uneven sidewalk and broke my hand.
When I reported to work the first day, I was in a splint (which is now a cast) and since the kids weren't there, had some mildly "soothing stuf"f in my system. The morning was dedicated to housekeeping - blood borne pathogens, please-don't-get-arrested-but-if-you-do-call, etc. Since I work in D75 school, with many "offsites" and several different types of students, the afternoon was spent in attempting to align common core / state standards with what we actually DO and what the students actually NEED.
This is a common issue with all of us, but I think that it's more prominent in D75 - is that it's much harder for most of us classroom teachers to make what we do look good on paper. The Danielson / common core / flavor of the month Eduspeak jargon DOES NOT come with a manual about how to define whatever ill-defined quality of instruction within the scope of the students the any given district serves, and it's always been up to a particular school or a teacher to do that. And as most of you know, there is an incredibly diverse population D75 serves. It's funny how when "network" leaders, coaches, reviewers, or others who may not know about any of what I call the "special / special" ed kids hate what our plans and scores are on paper, but when they actually go to the school show an alarming degree of naivete. For example, in no particular order: I've seen the aforementioned cringe and leave when a child drools, or rocks back and forth or realize than a 10 year old who has still not been toilet trained has a diaper with poop in it; refuse to model a lesson after being called a "bitch" or something in a class full of emotionally disturbed 8th graders, yell "S/he needs a private school!" when spat at - this is what we do every single day.
And so, about 9:45 a the first day, my blood began to boil. My group is teachers that work with alternate assessment students. We plowed through some Danielson rubrics and sort of got the message that we have to do a couple common core projects for our grades (?) level 1 to 4 questioning techniques., or something.. and at about 10am, I asked ,
" So if I have a class of special ed students with cognitive impairments, who are only able at this point to count to 20, what would a level 4 question be for them? For example, could I ask them analyze the number, oh, say, 17 by comparing and contrasting it to a higher and lower number? Could I have them synthesize it by pointing out that today is the 17th of the school year, or to a given month? At which point on the scale is it that a student in my class can make a connection like, "My sister is 17, she's older than me,." Or say how many years differnece it is between the student and the sister. For most of my kids, this would be a level 4 question for them. "
My colleagues murmured and seemed to agree this was an Ok way to fulfill our charge. The facilitator blinked a few times. shuffled papers, looked at STuff and then, I KID YOU NOT, said if the student could write a 2- 3 paragraph piece about a number being a prime or a multiple of something and why, than "OK, we could probably let that slide" when we explained some of the children don't even know how to grip a pencil properly or spell their names. I asked about social / emotional / adaptive behavior goals - which are a very important part of any child's education, but are the bread and butter of D75 - more blinking and shuffling and less answers.
According to other colleagues who work with standardized "special /special" assessment kids, they asked simliar type questions and got the same type answers.
. Translation: " If you can't make a bulletin board about it, it never happened."
For obvious reasons, that put a big bee in my bonnet - and I still had "something soothing" in my system!
Rick Hess, the assessment guru, wrote - I'm paraphrasing - All other things being equal, a kid that can sit down, be quiet and listen, will learn better. But if a student in D75 was able to do that, then they wouldn't be there. S o it is not only our charge as teachers (in D75 or anywhere) but a big part of our ethic tohelp our students work the social / emotional/ behavioral pieces.
In fact, I think it's disservice to students and teachers to waste so much time on aligning and re-aligning the very basic nature of what we do into whatever rubric of the year is popular. It's Doubleplusnongood for you fans of Orwell.
So there's that, and the stray beginning o' the year "and you wonder why public education is in such a state" observations (read on, you can relate)
- BIG cockroach infestation in the building I work at. I'm not skittish, but I kill about 4 a day and my classroom isn't considered that big a risk. I'm on the 4th floor, BTW. No extermination / spraying/ bombing planned..according to the head custodial leader guy there -" I gotta get authorization from somebody, but can't find who. I don;t even know who my supervisor is this year."
-Moved classrooms, don't have a key - according to the aforementioned custidial leader guy: "So ya want me to find you a key, huh? uh...I guess I could just make ya a copy of mine, you could go to the hardware store or I could, but I don't wanna get in trouble with by boss and I dunno who that is yet."
-Special ed bussing is always a nightmare, and even under the best of circumstances there are many students who have to be on the bus for an hour a more - even if it's a "short bus." In the beginning of the year it's much worse: 2- 2/12 hours. Kids arrive to school or home having had #1 and #2 in thier pants. Also, these busses are private companies, subcontracted, so the only thing I can say top parents is to call OPT or the bus company.
-No printer, toner, copier. limited internet access for at least another week. But we have to give out homework daily and the bulletin boards must be done by Tuesday. Enough leeway, "no excuses" get it done already!
-More often than you would ever think, even district 75 doesn't have the resources to support quite a large number of very needy student. And there is a greater number of kids that really do need mental health support and meds than you would ever think. To wit:. I have been slapped by 2 children under in my class , both under 10 years of age, about 15 times this week. I lost count of the name calling. My paras, have had triple that. One kid broke a window with his fist, twice.
-One of these kid wAS dropped off to school by his dad. The student went off to breakfast, and I explained to the dad that the day about the hitting and hullabaloo,and that his 9 year son had called me every name in the book in Spanish and English and demanded I prove it by doing certain things to him...The kid found out I "snitched" on him to his dad, had an epic tantrum, which resulted in his dad telling me he was going to bring the student home for a bit to calm down and come back., What actually happened was that his dad called 911, and LEFT before the police / ambulance got there. Then , called the school later, demanding his son get a "better" teacher "She can';t control him and he don't get enough homework." Homework.
Remember... all this is with one hand. I don't meant o be a big complainer, but really - we can do special ed better than this.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Why I teach
First of all, a shout out to Matt Damon - I like them apples. It felt good to have a celeb defend us.
I think now that it's back to school time, we should respond to some of the criticism of the SOS march. Many wrote "Why I'm marching." Let's now write "Why I teach." Hopefully one of you more technically savvy people can create a special webpage for this and make it a big deal.
Why I teach:
I teach because I was called to it. I teach because the most important thing to me in my life is to be kind and generous and good to others, and this is the best way I know how.
I teach because I find at least one quality to love in each one of my students - and sometimes I really have to search- but I ALWAYS find something - and that makes me feel good about myself. I teach because once a student knows about that quality makes me love them, it changes who they are, and how they think about themselves.
I teach because kids are funny, smart, mad, sad, violent, incontinent (that happens in special ed sometimes) weird, sometimes violent, sometimes very troubled - but they are all fascinating and wonderful in some aspect...even though there are days, maybe even weeks, that I forget that.
I teach because the education of every child (or adult for that matter) is like the beginning of a puzzle for me to put together - I do the end pieces, the borders, and I marvel in watching them fill it in for themselves. I never know what the picture inside the borders will look like, and am usually thrilled when I see it.
I teach because of the many colleagues I have that feel the same way, and if I'm having trouble with the puzzle, they will help me.
I teach because teaching is a craft: parts knowledge, technique, part magic and illumination - but the mix a teacher uses for each child, for each period of the day - is all based in the gut.
I teach because the craft allows me to try new and different things from year to year, I don't stagnate. (Theoretically, that is)
I teach because of the child whose dream was to go to "Montealbec, Candada" and eat creme brulee got to eat creme brulee in my classroom at least - the ability to make a part of a dream come true is marvelous.
I teach because that child now knows its "Montreal, Quebec, Canada."
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