I have been involved in multiple committees this year related to Special Education, and I've been learning how to speak up in groups of people, yet I get stomach cramps and shaking hands when it comes to explaining what we want for Alexa in the classroom.
We have been fortunate to have a fantastic 3rd grade teacher this year who not only welcomes my daughter into his classroom, but observes her carefully and thinks about what situations are successful learning experiences for her. He, along with her equally fantastic Special Education teacher from the Life Skills class, has made this year the most successful to date in terms of inclusive educational experiences.
Alexa loves diggers, big trucks, trains and playing ball. Last month her third grade class did a country project where each student created a country. There was a salt dough map, a posterboard display and her teachers programmed the text of the report into her iPad. When I got to school for the holiday party and presentation of the countries, Alexa was standing proudly beside her country and remembered to use her talker to tell me about it. Although I know the support she needed to get there, the teachers and aides were across the room, she did her presentation on her own. I was so proud of her, and so happy to feel like her school was on the same page I was.
This month is IEP month, and we did a Person Centered Plan just before winter break to help prepare for it. I have been talking to everyone about the fact that we want a general education placement for Alexa, but everyone (the principal and teachers,) as they are bound to by law, cannot make a decision about placement without the whole team present. The tricky part for me is, I have to explain why it's important to me that Alexa be placed in General Education with the Learning Resource Center providing support as needed, rather than the Life Skills classroom with as much general education time as possible.
I have been thinking about it long and hard, and I think it comes down to this. The Life Skills class is a "self-contained" classroom, which is a segregated classroom. The way you get placed in that class is by performing at least two standard deviations below average in academic testing, or by having an IQ test on which you score less than a certain number. So it's a segregated classroom based on not being smart enough according to standard tests. Now, aside from the fact that I've be told that a ten point difference in IQ test performance is not significant, that the test isn't accurate at that IQ, how would I explain that to one of Alexa's classmates when they ask what Life Skills is and why Alexa goes there? I don't want to teach children that Alexa or any other child isn't smart enough to be in the same class they are, that in fact, she isn't even "smart" enough to be learning in the LRC? I won't. I don't want any child to grow up thinking that it's okay to send kids away if they don't learn as quickly as their peers. I don't want Alexa's friends or Alexa herself to ever doubt that she is a smart, capable person.
If you're thinking I'm in denial, I'd challenge you to go a whole day without using your voice to communicate. As you type, search for the words you need in your communication device, or try to use sign language in an English speaking world, imagine you are 8 and that your fingers don't work exactly the way you want them to, and you don't know how to spell everything yet. It would be pretty hard to show the world how "smart" you are. Then imagine you get sent off to a classroom with other kids who also struggle to communicate, and paraprofessionals who are always hurrying you to one thing or another.
Maybe you hope that you can perform better on that next IQ test, though it's pretty hard when the psychologist giving it to you doesn't read your sign language, and they ask you questions about things you aren't interested in, but maybe then you could hang out with other kids who talk about kid stuff, and like to play ball and iPad games, and who you can watch to figure out how to do stuff. Maybe then you won't have to go to that "special" classroom-though it's pretty clear from their facial expressions and tone of voice, that your classmates don't think that classroom is for awesome kids.
I know that Alexa isn't at the same level in reading and math as her classmates, and I know that she need's "specially designed instruction," I just want her to go the LRC for this like every other kid who needs extra support to succeed academically. I want people to assume that what Alexa can express to us is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what she thinks and knows.
So we had the IEP meeting this week, but after 2 hours we had just barely finished the current progress part of the meeting, so we scheduled the second half for two weeks out, and I have to worry for two more weeks about how I explain all of this, respectfully, to a group of teachers and specialists whose personal opinions on the matter I have yet to discern.
