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chey -> RE: Equal Education For All (8/26/2007 8:16:40 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JerseyKrissi72
I have a son with autism as many people already know. When I was growing up I had alot of emotional issues and was in a special class to deal with them for a few years- now, most public schools here do not have the means to teach special needs children within their schools..why is this? I think every school should be equipped to meet the needs of ALL their children...
The first part of this reply is to JerseyKrissi. I am surprised that your district does not have anything for your son. They cannot even teach students with mental impairments or learning disabilities? That shocks me because legally all school districts are supposed to be able to service these students. Not only service them but service them in their home school. It is why our county had to restructure and move a lot of our special education students around. It is not common these days for teachers to have a certification in autism (At least not that I am aware of and I speak to a # of teachers from many places). In our county there are only a handful of us who are actually holding a certification. If I were you I would follow the advice that was given to you about looking into the legal ramifications to the school. I can tell you that here, if we had to admit we could not service a child in our school then we would be forced to pay the expense of sending him someplace that could. Which may be why they keep giving me new students.
Now I am randomly commenting on some other things I read in this thread:
My first Master has aspergers syndrom and he was a highly intelligent man. Aspergers is a high functioning autism. For some reason my co-workers seem to think my students with autism lack mental ability. I always have to explain to them that autism effects verbal and non-verbal communication skills, social interaction, and often creative types of play. When they find out that some of my students are on or above grade level they seem surprised. Temple Grandin was a non-verbal child with autism. The doctors and teachers wanted to put her in an institution. Today she is Dr. Temple Grandin. She is a professor, author and speaker on the subject of autism. The woman was a child they did not know what to do with, she could not speak...and today she holds a PHD. So for anyone to say changes cannot occur they need to only look as far as this woman!
I have one student who does ABA. He is very intelligent and the ABA is working on some levels and not on others. I do not know his ABA trainers though, perhaps part of it is them.
As for many of them being unaffectionate, I find that to be not true in my classroom. My students seem to be affectionate with me to some degree, maybe just not the way we think of affection. I have 8 students in my classroom and of that 8, six of them have autism. I wear a lot of velvet in the winter, one of my girls will not even come near me. She hates the feeling of it. I could go on for paragraphs talking about each of them, they all mean a lot to me. That is not to say 6 of them at a time is not trying, but when you are able to reach one of them and he begins to actually come to you for conversation without prompting, or another one uses his device to tell you he wants a drink rather than scream you almost want to cry. And some teachers can't understand what they did that was such a big deal, as they stare at you clapping your hands and hugging this kid in praise. One other comment I would like to make is that I think some people are so quick to say these children need to be changed. When I say that I mean their quirks. I hear this a lot from some of the other teachers. What I am confused about is why? Why can't they accept them in spite of the quirks? I find a lot of times that is why they are not wanted in the regular education classrooms. They feel the students are disruptive. But what they find as disruptive is often the way he calms himself or expresses himself. I don't know, its getting late and I'm tired so maybe I am just not making sense anymore.
I hope the woman with duct tape never teaches again.
And I am a mother of one 16 year old who is an honor student, cheerleader, dancer and all around good girl. Very independent and level headed. I also raised a boy who is 12 years old. They are night and day. My son was diagnosed with ADHD in 5th grade. It was something I fought for three years. Even when he was little people would make jokes that he had it. My first job was teaching students with learning disabilities, behavior disorders and ADHD so I knew about it and had some students I felt were misdiagnosed but I am not a doctor. I didn't want that to be my son. In fifth grade I finally faced it and we started dealing with it. I did nothing that I can think of differently with him than I did my daughter. They both lived the same life and dealt with the same hardships. We all handle things differently. I am not a perfect mother, sometimes I say I can do so much for my students and not even reach my own child. My point is that doctors can make mistakes and maybe there are a whole slew of things that could have or should have been done differently but what my son deals with is real to him for whatever reason and I have learned to not worry about what anyone else thinks. What matters to me is my son. So if people think I did a bad job raising him, and I am sure many do, then its okay. They don't live in my house and they do not know us. I have to worry about the things that are worth my worry.
I think I covered everything that was on my mind from what I read. I wish you the best of luck (to the OP). Please look into the legal aspects of the advice others gave you!
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