I really love my career, but sometimes I hate my job. There are things that go on that follow the policies and the laws that are created to protect students with disabilities. However, the people who make the decisions state that they are abiding by all the rules, but do not really put the students’ interest first. Working in special education for the past 5 years, I have seen many different scenarios that turn my stomach upside down. Decisions are made and information is provided to fit the situation that best fit the needs of the budget, staff, or setting and based on the students. A recent situation involves students who are in the 6th grade and are set to move on to the middle school program for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students within the county.
While I may have negative things to say about the elementary school program, the middle school program does not hold a candle to the elementary school program! There are very low numbers of students each year who attend the program (this year: 3 Deaf students and 1 hard-of-hearing student). And the program is housed in a school that resembles a jail. The principal is not in his right mind and could really care less to have this unique program within the walls of his school. The students are given a classroom that is either off the beaten path away from all the other students in the school, in a classroom with horrible acoustics directly across the hall from the gymnasium, or, better yet, this year and last, they are housed in the former home economics classroom complete with counters, cabinets, and stoves.
Until somewhere around the second quarter of this school year, the students were taught by two teachers from another country with soft spoken voices and heavy accents, not to mention deficient signing skills. There is one paraprofessional who works with these teachers who “can sign”. I say it that way as opposed to “will sign” to/for the students. Someone on some planet believes that this woman is an appropriate person to place in an interpreting role because that, of course, saves money in the budget and no one has to hire and pay for a real interpreter. Neither the teachers nor the paraprofessional use adequate communication methods to get ideas across to the students. This includes not having satisfactory signing skills, not using FM systems provided by the county, and not even presenting academic information in a way that the students can access (videos without captions, sitting in the back of the classroom with the lights off and loud background noise while presenting a lesson orally, etc). This is not to mention the communication barrier of receiving information from the students and engaging in a full communication cycle. On the bright side, after one of the other teachers went back to his home country, a teacher who is Deaf was recently hired. Sadly, hiring her is only the tip of the iceberg of all the things that need to change in this program!
Today, for example, the hearing teacher (with deficient signing skills and a heavy accent) was out. In this kind of program, you can’t just find any substitute teacher off the street. The person must sign, so sometimes, our students just don’t get substitute teachers when their teachers are out. In this case, the paraprofessional decided to work with the students in the self-contained class during math and abandon her assigned position which is to be within a co-taught math class and interpret for one of the students. When a colleague approached her about this, she explained that all the details had been worked out and the other student would be fine. For a bit of confirmation, that colleague went into the classroom to see how this particular student functions without interpreter support. After standing and watching for a few minutes, she quickly realized this was not going to work and stepped in and interpreted the math lesson for the remainder of the period. When she asked the classroom teacher about this set-up, the teacher reported she was unaware this situation was going to be occurring and this was the first time she had heard anything about this topic. Unfortunately, she also added that the teacher had also been out for two days the previous week and there had been no one with the Deaf student for those two days. This means the student came to school ready to learn and we did not provide him information he could access despite having been through the IEP process and having everything written in black and white.
This type of thing, unfortunately, is common practice within the program. There was a student in a similar situation last school year that had this woman as his “interpreter”. She could have created a complete library of all the books she read during his classes instead of interpreting. Her work ethics are well known by everyone who works in the program, yet, she keeps her job. As mentioned in my previous post, I really despise the way “interpreters” are placed within the program and this is no different.
This is not the only problem within the program and there is a lot of room for improvement across many different aspects. Anyone who has worked in this program knows that and some parents pick up on this too. As for one of my students in the 6th grade, her mother picked up on this many years ago and has had it in her mind that she would not be sending her daughter to that school.
As we have recently begun the second half of the current school year, this mother has started to do some serious research about other options for her daughter. Living in Maryland near Washington DC, the students, fortunately, have a few different options. There are a few counties that have Deaf and hard-of-hearing programs within mainstream schools; Maryland School for the Deaf has two campuses: Frederick and Columbia; and on Gallaudet University campus is Kendall Demonstration School for the Deaf and Model Secondary School for the Deaf. In this particular situation, this parent was not open to her daughter attending Maryland School for the Deaf because both campuses were too far from home. Not wanting to accept the public school option, she visited Kendall School on several occasions and brought her daughter there to see how she felt about it. After discussing all options as a family (and visiting two of the schools), the decision is that her daughter will attend Kendall School and will likely transfer before the end of the school year. As we sat in her IEP meeting yesterday, the mother attempted to express her concerns (that she had stated in previous meetings as well) about her daughter attending the middle school program and tried to help the school to understand why she has made this decision (which is ultimately hers and not ours!). As I vomited in my mouth a little bit, I sat and listened to my colleagues try to sway her decision and make her feel like the middle school option isn’t really as bad as it seems. While I am in no position to express support for the decision that she has made (due to my own limited knowledge about the school), I know that it MUST be better than what we have to offer. None of them have worked at this location and can only speak for continuing within our public school program---which means more money. Most students, more money. Bigger program, more money.
Something else that has happened since this particular mother started researching other school options; she has spoken with other parents who have students in our program. These parents have known each other for many years and have developed a network. When this mother expressed her concerns and what she had decided, it seems that two other students will follow suit.
This means that of the three 6th graders who would be moving onto this middle school program, there may only be one. This means he would have classes by himself (due to the severity of his academic weaknesses, he needs a lot of support and cannot function within a general education classroom and would be inappropriately placed within a “general” special ed class), eat lunch by himself, and go home to a situation where no one signs. This is a scenario where I think we need to at least make sure his mother is fully-aware there is a chance of this situation and if she decides this is what she wants for her son, at least she knows what that entails. This particular mother does not speak a lick of English and I am only able to communicate with her via our parent liaison/Spanish interpreter. When I approach this colleague and explained my concerns, she shut me down faster than a bee stung stallion! She would NOT be telling the mom about this because she KNOWS that the mother will not be open to any other option. She feels her son needs to be in a talking environment because she refuses to learn sign (since he can talk, duh!) and the other options will not be viable for this mother. For this reason, she will not be interpreting that information to her. When I spoke with other members of the IEP team, they feel like it’s appropriate to not mention that fact to the mother as she will be under the impression that he will have classmates and things will be similar to the way they have been for years. Again, more students, more money. Bigger program, more money.
Grr.
I love working with these kids and their families. I hate how things are twisted and the very minimum is done to cover all the bases and not get any tickets from the special ed cops. In December, the whole program including all the teachers from all schools gathered together for a workshop. At the end of the workshop some of the requirements of the law were read aloud; it was a way to pinpoint that we really do more than the law requires so there is nothing to worry about. What about what the students really need? “Children first” is our school district’s motto. Hmm. Doesn’t seem that way to me!
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