Special Education in Washington, Idaho, and Guangzhou

After interviewing half a dozen parents and teachers of children with disabilities, I now have a tremendous amount of respect and appreciation for the great work being done in schools around the world. I believe there is a special place in heaven reserved for these teachers.

Michelene Bay teaches nine children with severe learning disabilities ranging from down syndrome to autism and in age from five to 14 years old. She enters school at 6:10 each morning and completes her lesson progress reports from the previous day, email, phone calls, and whatever other small tasks she has like copies. At 7:15-7:30 her TA arrives and they can collaborate on the daily routine and goals, which all need to be written clearly on the board before 7:45, when the student aids arrive.

Students arrive at 8:05 each morning and need to be escorted from the bus to the classroom. More than 75% of the time, Michelene reports that the plan for the day must be altered due to behavior or health issues. For example, last Monday one child felt sick while riding the bus to school. By 9:30 AM all but one of the students reported also feeling sick. Some even began throwing up. Michelene says this is because the children are so sensitive to suggestion.

Melodie Larson, the mother of an eight year old by with Down Syndrome, told me his son is picked up at the house with a specialized vehicle to handle all of the needs of all of the children and taken directly to school. Her son spends half of each day at the Apollo Elementary Special Needs Magnate school, and half of each day in a regular classroom. Robbie, her son, works with 6 dedicated specialists and over a dozen other aides each day, to accomplish goals like “count to ten” or “transition from one activity to another without sitting down.” Robbie’s father mentioned that these specialists are far more effective dealing with Robbie than he is. Needless to say the parents are thrilled with the support Robbie receives.

When Robbie is in his regular school classroom, his teacher uses Robbies strengths well. Robbie is highly attached to Winnie the Pooh, and the teacher uses Winnie the Pooh effectively as a reward for him. She also knows that Robbie is highly social, so every day a different student is assigned to be Robbie’s friend that day, and make sure he does what he is supposed to do. These students learn empathy, patience, love, and many other social skills through these efforts. When Robbie is not responsive, the teacher knows that he will respond better with friends, so several students can ask Robbie to walk to the lunchroom together. This is usually effective even though it is a long walk for him and sometimes he does not want to go.

When interviewing the coordinator for my MYP section, Antonio Shawfer, I discovered that my school makes not effort to identify or support children with special needs. No training is given to teachers to help these children, and even if a teacher correctly identifies a child as having special needs, it is against school policy to speak to parents about this. Antonio says this is because the school does not want parents to lose face. Within my classrooms, I have a couple of students with special needs, and I do have different expectations and goals for those students. I try to plan lessons in a way that all students can benefit, but this is easier said than done.

In order to better prepare for teaching in future schools where I will be asked to identify and help such students, I also interviewed Alex Teston from Madison Middle School. He trains teachers in the state of Idaho to identify learning disabilities. He says there are three early signs that a student might need extra support, but he also emphasizes that all students should be receiving extra support at one point or another, so identifying a student for evaluation should not reflect negatively on the student, parents, or teachers. 
The three things to look for are literacy challenges, numeracy challenges, and difficulties with transitions.

Literacy:

When students with learning disabilities read, they often have trouble pronouncing words and will usually avoid reading out loud whenever possible. Mixing up words like “dad” and “bad” in both reading and writing is also common. Often writing lacks basic focus.

Numeracy:

Mixing up symbols like + and x is also common. If a child mixes up two numbers they may get the mechanics of the math problem correct, but still show a wrong answer.  Mathmatics education moves very fast, and so students with learning disabilities often get left behind.

Transitions:

Often students with special needs have a hard time getting on task, and an even harder time transitioning to a new task. At times this is rooted in social inabilities, other times the struggle is rooted in the fact that this child needs more time to accomplish the task than another student would need.

These and other warning signs can help a teacher identify and then help students who could benefit by having some extra attention.