Transforming Education: Special education inclusion deception

NYC Teacher Duct Tapes Two Children In Their Chairs.

She also tapes their little mouths shut and leaves them like that for longer than just a few moments.

What is scary to me is that I can empathize with this teacher. I know what it is like to be pushed to the edge of rationality by an untenable situation. This teacher “lost it”. She lost her connection to the foundations of her purpose in the classroom. The thing to understand is that teachers don’t just “lose it” overnight.

It takes weeks, months, and years of inadequate administrative support. By inadequate I mean irrelevant staff development, denial of requested books and materials, shunning of ideas and suggestions, and even institutional intimidation.

If you don’t shut up and do your job as told you find yourself in the basement with the “worst kids”, the worst schedule, no advancement opportunities, and a few extra eyes on your time card. You could receive personal letter in your file about your untidiness, lack of collaborative spirit or your lack of sufficient planning. You may simply receive a U rating when an administrator observes your class and finds that student who lives in a group-home asleep at his desk.

Year after year the school system flaunts the research about inclusion and mainstreaming and continues to give you groups of students who have been labeled as unmanageable. They have been labeled this for so long they belief it. You’re the only one that doesn’t believe it because you are their educational manager.

They can’t learn with the presser of each others conditions dampening the atmosphere like off colored wall paper and filling the room with words to make truck drivers blush. Each of them needs individual plans, instruction, intention and attention but the school insists that you can teach them like the others because you have fewer of them in your (smaller) room.

Smaller class size does not make an education “special”. Distinctive focus on learning profiles, emotional and personal disposition and careful incrementally scaffolded learning plans that include objectively measurable social, academic, and transitional goals and objectives are what make an education “special”.

But, back to our teacher. You have tried for fifteen years to teach in a place that is not properly conceived in its “environmental architecture” for helping children and you have gotten so frustrated that you want to lose it. You can’t just quit this job. Your brain will not let you but you can sabotage yourself. Your guts know you have had enough but the only way you will leave is if they drag you out.

One day you make it so.

Step up young men and women. Who wants to teach special education?

Who wants to see all they have learned in University ignored by the school community?

Who wants to be treated like an outcast among the faculty because they teach “those kids”? (and never see this prejudice never dealt with)

Who wants to deal with parents who are on their last nerve with a school system that discriminates against their children? (and denies that it is discrimination)

Who wants to take the pressure of meeting AYPs required by NCLB without a “whole school support Model”?

Who wants to hold up the mantel of persons who think, feel, and function in diverse ways?

Who wants to open the doors of creative and technical possibilities that finding solutions for those who learn or function differently unlock.

Who want to reclaim our national foundation and mission of liberty for all?

Ready to fight for what is right?

Then.

Welcome Aboard.