6/18/13

Knock Knock, who's there? Nobody part 2 of open letter about Special Education in our country.

This is essentially part two of my open letter about Special Education in our country... it was already so long I figured I'd break it up for you.  I think I've finally said everything I've been holding in for the last year, whew, sorry to unload but the good news is I probably won't blog again for a while haha! ;)

Knock Knock
(silence)
Knock Knock
(silence)
KNOCK FREAKIN KNOCK!
sigh... "Who's there?"
No
longer sigh... "No who?"
Nobody it seems
.

It's hard enough to get people to listen let alone care in today's society without people from our community making things harder.

What am I talking about?...Over the last 3 months I've seen a trend in articles where it's just all about who to blame and not about implementing changes  that could resolve a lot of problems for both sides.  Nobody is talking about solutions; it's like being in a big hamster wheel of bickering :(

More and more Special Needs families are connecting thanks to social media and sharing their stories with others just like them.  We are no longer so isolated unless we choose to be.  The school districts, teachers and even other typical parents are getting annoyed (which is good because they are starting to realize we are not going away) and they are doing their best to continue to stonewall our families and to push back at us through the media unfortunately using examples of some of our parents and the un-addressed behavioral issues of some of our kids and it drives me crazy to admit that they've made some valid points along the way.  

I hear a lot of COMPLAINING from teachers and parents about the behaviors of our children.  A lot of EXCUSES and as painful as it is to admit... I have to say sometimes the schools aren't wrong.  Here's the biggest statement/issue I keep seeing repeated in articles and it's the main argument that they continue to use against us to keep from changing things for the better:  

"Dealing with Special Needs children is DANGEROUS".
 Most recently I saw this in an article out of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, where teachers are speaking out saying they feel like they are just expected to be okay with being hit, kicked, spit at , headbutted, pooped on, things thrown at them, screamed at, pinched, punched, hair pulled, bitten and they're right to be pissed about that because there are parents out there that for a multitude of reasons, take your pick, are in denial, are too overwhelmed, don't want to be bothered, literally have no clue what to do and the school system is their only hope, cannot find or what's more common in our states still cannot afford to access therapeutic resources for their children until they get to school  and in the teachers defense it isn't fair; but a good percentage of children are lacking in behavioral interventions and that is not the child's fault.

If it's not being provided at home for whatever reason then I'm sorry to say this but if the schools don't want their teachers going into combat zones on a daily basis they need to start giving teachers the proper training and resources to deal and more importantly to help the children learn to deal with their behaviors.

I hear teachers crying that the parents won't back them up at home and there are plenty of those people out there but it's not right though to make it sound as if all special needs children are mini sociopaths, little spoiled monsters who's parents are absent.  I hear just as many parents with stories about teachers who are borderline psychopaths themselves; just as many stories of parents begging teachers to work with them and their home programs only to meet an over-inflated ego or a complete lack of interest and a brick wall that won't budge.

WHAT I ALSO DON'T SEE in any of these articles I'm reading are any of those people asking for help to actually deal with and ultimately extinguish those behaviors.

I see a lot of blame placed on innocent children that didn't ask to be born let alone born with various challenges who are at the mercy of their families and our society for help.

I see people turning a blind eye instead of addressing the behaviors through a little thing called Positive Behavior Support and Positive BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION, they continue to use negative outdated methodology like aversive punishments for behaviors (negative abusive reinforcements that are traumatizing to children such as: making children excessively exercise to the point of throwing up and passing out, denying them food, water, access to bathrooms, shoving things that burn into their mouths like hot sauce, or cotton-balls soaked with vinegar, spraying them in the face with lemon water like cats, there have been instances of actual water boarding in our schools, improper use of both physical and mechanical restraints for simple infractions such as non-compliance instead of actual emergency situations often injuring and even in some cases literally killing children and shoving them into locked seclusion rooms like they are Hannibal Lector living in a mental institution and I'm not talking about a 10 minute time out, we're talking for hours with zero access to food, water, bathrooms.)

I only post a handful of the articles I see on a weekly basis so as not to overwhelm people but I need ya'll to know that I see 3 times the articles I share and I see 5 times the stories and pictures from families who didn't make the national media but are just looking to share their child's story so they don't feel so alone.  The pictures I've seen and stories I've read are heartbreaking and I am telling you they are NOT RARE, not by a long shot and it makes me sick.

I see people still using the concept of  punishments for behavior like they would a typical child only on far more abusive levels even though they know our kiddos all have varying degrees of comprehension and when you are dealing with some children who are non verbal THEIR BEHAVIOR IS COMMUNICATION.  You might be looking at a big tall aggressive 12  year old but they could very well have the emotional comprehension of a toddler. So great job people... you just punished a 2 year old like a 12 year old and if I did that at home to the insane degree I've been reading about the last couple years, I'd be in jail for child abuse.

What irks me is that there is a HIGH percentage of children being grouped in the "dangerous and aggressive" category that don't actually have to be there, but to find them you have to stop to look at their individual histories... maybe they didn't have access to any sort of Early intervention, maybe there's no behavioral therapy happening at home.  That doesn't mean that it's too late; it just means that it's going to take a little extra effort to get through to them to get those bad behaviors extinguished. My point with this is if schools stopped being on the defensive and stopped taking the reactionary position when dealing with behavior and instead start being PROACTIVE and doing the hard work to initially address the behaviors; the number of children that they assume can't learn and that are exhibiting aggressive behaviors would PLUMMET!  Schools have just become business first, helping children reach their potential and releasing quality humans into society second.  Don't shrug your shoulders at me!  I see you!  What can we do?  We share more stories, sign more petitions, march in more rallies, send more letters, introduce more legislation.

I'll tell you what we don't do... we don't give up!

Do you really think children want to be in turmoil all day?  They are doing the best they can to express themselves and communicate to the best of their abilities and instead of HELPING THEM we turn our backs and punish them...awesome... really.. you should all be so proud of yourselves.

Why? Because that's what we've been taught by the people before us?  We have a wealth of knowledge about all sorts of disabilities, mental disorders and neurological conditions that the generations before us didn't have; so I can forgive them for some of their choices because they were working with the best information they had... but there's no excuse for our generation to continue like that.  To have the knowledge that we do and still continue to turn a blind eye because it's too hard to change, because we're lazy or because we too afraid to say anything for fear that someone else who's outdated narrow minded or just plain evil might push back at us, it's not OK.

Along with offering Continuing Education for teachers who didn't previously have any courses on behavioral intervention we also need to be more vigilant in our screening processes.  Schools need to be allowed to tell other schools why they have let someone go when there's any sort of issue with mistreatment of children and they need to stop reassigning these individuals to other classrooms.  If you're caught mistreating children in any way you should not be allowed to work with children period.  There needs to be a screening process BEFORE anyone is even allowed to be in a Special Education Classroom.

I've said this so many times; in order to get your teaching certification for Special Education a person should have to undergo psychiatric testing.  It takes very special people, with a certain type of temperament, patience level and an uber compassionate heart to work with special needs children.  Prospective teachers and aides should have to attend anger management courses and be subjected to real roll play classes where for the length of a school day people are brought in to create common scenarios and exhibit common challenging behaviors non stop to see how the person is going to react.

Special Educators should also have to have mandatory monthly counseling sessions with full paid access to counselors any time they might need.  They need a proper outlet for their emotions too because at the end of the day most of them are just humans trying to do something good in the world.  Anyone who is going to teach Special Ed should have to clock several months as a student teacher in an actual special needs classroom.  It's insane to me that so often a person first hands on experience with our kids is the day they set foot in the classroom!  That's not fair to anyone.  

Oh and don't worry I'm not letting parents off the hook at all!!

For special needs parents to drop their children off at school and say, "My child has a right to an education, you figure it out!" is ludicrous especially if they are expecting the schools to fix the child's behavior.  First of all the guidelines for expectations of what a school can and cannot actually do in the realm of Special Education need to be redefined.  Schools need to start sitting parents down and having honest conversations about each child so that the parents truly understand what they can expect even if it's not what they want to hear.  We need to change the laws to define what the right to an education means when a child is dealing with any sort of challenge.  I'm sorry but if they don't already, the laws need to say "to the best of the child's ability"... it might help schools stop feeling like they have to be so underhanded and sneaky about getting around "right to an education" laws and stop focusing all their attention on not getting sued and instead go back to our roots and focus on how to help these children. Sorry little tangent there... back to the PARENT'S! 

If a child's behavior is not dealt with FIRST AT HOME then it's hard for them and sometimes even impossible for them to learn period! Not helping them figure out how to process and self regulate their emotions is not fair to them at all.  Parent's need to take responsibility for that in their own homes FIRST whatever it takes.  This new era of pop em out to have as accessories but then let the rest of the world actually raise them parenting is insane.  

The expectations currently placed on some of our teacher's is too high if a child's behavior hasn't ever been addressed prior to going to school.  By the same hand it's not okay that the department of Education in this country is not stepping up to meet the growing demands of the special needs community with real proactive and POSITIVE solutions.  You have a bunch of teachers who are not expecting to land in a special needs class or have special needs children in their typical classrooms; it's not what they went to school for and as a result there is a crucial part of training missing for them.  Likewise the requirements to get a degree in Special Education for those people who actually want to be there now-a-days needs to be revamped to meet the needs of the community and that includes requiring and helping them to either become behavioral analysts/therapists too or at least be under the constant and accessible supervision of a BCBA. If you can't be bothered to learn anything about positive behavior supports and are unwilling to try new interventions and continue with the old ways then I have zero sympathy for you.

I guess the whole point of this blog is that I'd like for everyone to just stop bickering and start


doing

what's 

best

for

our 

children.