I need to get better about posting more often. So very much has changed in a year. Most notably that Sunshine FINALLY got a one-on-one aide written into his IEP in December (just after his birthday). Also, we moved to a beautiful new house that's approximately three times the size of our old one in a neighboring county. Because it takes Sunshine so long to settle into a new school environment, Hubs and I petitioned to allow our son to stay in the school he's been in since he was 3 until the end of the school year. We ended up paying tuition but that was expected and we were happy to do so if it meant not disrupting his Kindergarten year.
After a few months of Sunshine escaping from his classroom, the IEP team readily agreed that he needed an aide. Because the county had to hire someone to fill this slot, but he needed the change immediately, his Special Education teacher (whom I will call Miracle Worker) spent her days by his side. We immediately saw a huge improvement. Miracle Worker earned that title fair and square. I've never seen Sunshine respond so well to anyone and she certainly taught me that humor goes much further with him than anger, seriousness, and threats. She also began customizing Sunshine's work based on his abilities instead of holding him back and boring him to death. By the end of the school year, he was consistently doing reading/comprehension at a 2nd grade level and was doing 1st grade Math. Occasionally he would ask to read something at the 3rd grade level and was doing pretty well.
One thing that just reinforced the idiocy of the No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top/Common Core testing is that Sunshine's teacher told me when she was testing him at the end of the year, he had technically answered a question incorrectly, but he gave a reason for his answer that not only showed he understood the concept the test was trying to ascertain his mastery of, but that he also thinks outside the box and was technically correct. She technically shouldn't have, but she marked that he answered it correctly. With so much focus on standardizing and computerizing tests these days, there is no longer any room for educators to take alternate answers into consideration. And that's a shame. I'm pretty sure the brightest minds that we know today didn't always find the easy or obvious answer. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Mark Zuckerberg. Stephen Hawking. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that none of them would have excelled in the current educational culture in our country.
Anyhow...
Now it's summer and it's the first summer I've spent being a SAHM. In some ways I love it so much and in others, I get why some moms can't wait to go back to work. Most of all I see a huge change in Sunshine and Rainbow. This past year he made so many friends at school. Yes, he has the kids who are the children of our friends, but they're not "his people." He misses the friends he made on his own and it's already occurred to him that he won't be seeing them again come September since he'll be transferring to the elementary school just a few miles from our new house. We took a tour of the new one towards the end of the year. We met the principal, the special education teachers, the speech therapist, the music teacher, and the librarian. Overall, I think this change is going to be a positive one but we are REALLY going to miss Miracle Worker. The new school is much larger. There were 535 students in the school this past year and they had five 1st grade classes. It's about the size of the middle school I attended so it's a bit intimidating, but there are 5 or 6 other kids with autism who go there. The school and the principal seem to be very progressive about autism. The principal is even going so far as to get a sensory swing installed for his autistic students over the summer. I was initially worried about them fighting us on Sunshine's aide, but the look on Mr. Principal's face when I explained that he elopes and has been known to try to flee the school even with his aide pretty much guaranteed they will make it happen.
On that note, it's time to wake Rainbow from her nap and Sunshine is about to try using my vacuum so I'll keep you posted.
Monday, July 13, 2015
My Thoughts on the Current State of Education
**This post originally written September 4, 2014**
This is going to be a wildly unpopular post, but I feel strongly this message needs to be said. The education system in this country as it currently stands is terribly broken. The bigger problem, however, is that nobody agrees on how best to fix it.
When I was a child, the kids in each grade were separated into smaller groups according to their innate abilities. Those who struggled more were put in one group for reading and math. There was another group who was considered "on grade," a third group who was about 1/2 a year "ahead," and a fourth group who were considered "advanced." In my school, I was in all of the advanced groups but most of my closest friends....the ones I chose to play with and eat lunch with and sat next to in specials....were in the remedial groups. I don't ever remember thinking they were stupid. On the contrary, they were incredibly smart...they just struggled with learning certain things. Overall, however, when I look at those friends today, they show the hallmarks of having had a good education. They are literate. They have good jobs. They are making a difference in society (moreso than I am). They have basic problem-solving skills. And they work well in teams.
In contrast, I look at the majority of the kids entering college these days and they are woefully underprepared. I believe this goes back to the earliest levels of education and how the system is broken. Now, a student in any grade isn't grouped according to his or her innate abilities to learn. Everyone is supposed to be the same. I've heard this is because of several studies which supposedly proved that kids who are struggling at the bottom of the class do better on assessments when they're educated along side their peers for whom learning comes more easily. This has coincided with the mainstreaming of kids in special education. What I've seen anecdotally is that this approach is failing dismally.
I have a unique perspective in that I have a child who has special needs yet is intelligent and when in the right atmosphere, learns quickly. Here's the problem in our particular circumstance:
My son is autistic. He struggles in large groups. He gets easily excited and OVERexcited. Circle time (which is kind of a hallmark of traditional early learning) is torture for him. Emotionally, he's immature compared to his peers. Intellectually, however, he is years ahead. He taught himself how to read before he could even communicate effectively. He understands basic concepts quickly and is a sponge wanting to learn more advanced information. In the current system, he is mainstreamed in Kindergarten and here's the problem with that. The system is set up for him to fail. And when he fails, he drags the other kids in his class down into his emotional hurricane.
Imagine being expected to learn in the middle of a rock concert. That's essentially what a regular classroom is like for my son. Now, take a child who is eager to learn and is naturally curious, stick them in that rock concert, and then drill them over and over and OVER on the same information they've been "taught" for the last three years. Information that they already knew before coming to this hell. What do you think is going to happen...particularly to a child who is emotionally immature for a 5-year-old? Behavior problems. Sometimes to escape the chaos. Sometimes to escape the boredom. In my son's case, I mean escape in the literal sense.
Sunshine has been in Kindergarten for a total of 6 days now and in that time he has run out of his class a minimum of 3 times. Each time his teacher has to stop what she's doing to chase after him. This means disrupting another teacher to watch over her class while she does so. Not only is this disruptive to two entire classes, but I fail to see how this is benefiting my child either. You have a kid who has trouble regulating his emotions, put him in a stressful situation, and when he struggles or fails he gets to do so in front of all of his peers. This adds to his stress. I'm already seeing signs of depression in my Kindergartener. How is this the best course of action for him? For the others?
I have more, but Mommy duties call. Until next time....
This is going to be a wildly unpopular post, but I feel strongly this message needs to be said. The education system in this country as it currently stands is terribly broken. The bigger problem, however, is that nobody agrees on how best to fix it.
When I was a child, the kids in each grade were separated into smaller groups according to their innate abilities. Those who struggled more were put in one group for reading and math. There was another group who was considered "on grade," a third group who was about 1/2 a year "ahead," and a fourth group who were considered "advanced." In my school, I was in all of the advanced groups but most of my closest friends....the ones I chose to play with and eat lunch with and sat next to in specials....were in the remedial groups. I don't ever remember thinking they were stupid. On the contrary, they were incredibly smart...they just struggled with learning certain things. Overall, however, when I look at those friends today, they show the hallmarks of having had a good education. They are literate. They have good jobs. They are making a difference in society (moreso than I am). They have basic problem-solving skills. And they work well in teams.
In contrast, I look at the majority of the kids entering college these days and they are woefully underprepared. I believe this goes back to the earliest levels of education and how the system is broken. Now, a student in any grade isn't grouped according to his or her innate abilities to learn. Everyone is supposed to be the same. I've heard this is because of several studies which supposedly proved that kids who are struggling at the bottom of the class do better on assessments when they're educated along side their peers for whom learning comes more easily. This has coincided with the mainstreaming of kids in special education. What I've seen anecdotally is that this approach is failing dismally.
I have a unique perspective in that I have a child who has special needs yet is intelligent and when in the right atmosphere, learns quickly. Here's the problem in our particular circumstance:
My son is autistic. He struggles in large groups. He gets easily excited and OVERexcited. Circle time (which is kind of a hallmark of traditional early learning) is torture for him. Emotionally, he's immature compared to his peers. Intellectually, however, he is years ahead. He taught himself how to read before he could even communicate effectively. He understands basic concepts quickly and is a sponge wanting to learn more advanced information. In the current system, he is mainstreamed in Kindergarten and here's the problem with that. The system is set up for him to fail. And when he fails, he drags the other kids in his class down into his emotional hurricane.
Imagine being expected to learn in the middle of a rock concert. That's essentially what a regular classroom is like for my son. Now, take a child who is eager to learn and is naturally curious, stick them in that rock concert, and then drill them over and over and OVER on the same information they've been "taught" for the last three years. Information that they already knew before coming to this hell. What do you think is going to happen...particularly to a child who is emotionally immature for a 5-year-old? Behavior problems. Sometimes to escape the chaos. Sometimes to escape the boredom. In my son's case, I mean escape in the literal sense.
Sunshine has been in Kindergarten for a total of 6 days now and in that time he has run out of his class a minimum of 3 times. Each time his teacher has to stop what she's doing to chase after him. This means disrupting another teacher to watch over her class while she does so. Not only is this disruptive to two entire classes, but I fail to see how this is benefiting my child either. You have a kid who has trouble regulating his emotions, put him in a stressful situation, and when he struggles or fails he gets to do so in front of all of his peers. This adds to his stress. I'm already seeing signs of depression in my Kindergartener. How is this the best course of action for him? For the others?
I have more, but Mommy duties call. Until next time....
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