Parents get to Invoved Sometimes

Ok so in addition to my special education post I have come up with new found facts. Alright so special ed kids are given IEP (individual education plan). The IEP states what their learning disabilities are and how they can be accommodated. Every special education student has one. With every IEP report more accommodations need to be made...the more accommodations...the more money tax payers have to pay.

The issue arises when parents, typically high school parents , find out about these IEPs and miraculously come up with some kind of disability for their kid. IEPs allow you to sometimes get extra test taking time, taking the test in a separate room, closely monitored learning, etc. The parents find out about this and maybe see that their kids test scores are low and claim their kid needs more time on tests because they are learning disabled.

Let me fill you in on something. The more IEPs you create, the more the district has to accommodate...so if you want to complain about how much your spending on school taxes then go talk to the parents who are creating BOGUS IEPs. Your costing your self money just because the kid is lazy and they want an excuse for it.

Now I'm not saying all IEPs are bogus there are legitimate reasons why kids need these. They are important to educators, they allow them to rethink the way they teach to accommodate everyone, especially in a mainstream class. However, I think that whoever decides who has a disability and gets an IEP should re-evaluate who is getting one. There should be a better way of looking into the learning disabled child. IEPs should not be given just because some lazy kid wants more test time. More time isn't going to make you remember the information any better. And the parents should stop complaining about tax dollars when it's their own fault for the high costs.

Special Education

My topic of today is in regards to my visit at Tolman. I was talking to the teachers about special education and I was baffled to hear the things I did. It amazes me that people say education is the most important thing but people are not willing to pay for it. Hasn't your mother ever told you nothing comes for free?

Well according to my sources special education is being ripped off and unsupported. Tolman has special education kids who are learning disabled, and severe and profound kids that need to be contained in a separate classroom. So what's the problem you ask? The problem is the kids who are classified as just learning disabled have to sit in a mainstream classroom as regular ed students and this becomes a problem. Some special ed kids cant sit in a main stream classroom because there is too much going on around them or there isn't enough one-on-one focus for them, or the teacher is moving through the material too fast. Now Tolman has worked out a "solution" to this problem, that being that there is a special education teacher on hand in the classroom working with the other teacher. That's great but it doesn't work. Many of the times the main teacher acts as if the special ed teacher is there to be an aid which is not the case. They may send them to do copies or something like that when in reality there job is to help the kids in the classroom. Now another problem that arises is that many of the kids do not want to be classified in the classroom as special ed. So by having them all mixed your making kids feel inferior to the reg. ed kids. and that's just not right on the schools part.

So why is this like this? Because the cities and towns don't want to pay more taxes to have a separate classroom for these kids. Many say if we are spending money on this to educate our kids, then we want something in return for our money. Now mainly that would be sending the kid to college, but in inner-cites special ed or not it becomes harder to send kids to college because of money or whatever the case may be. Just because the kids doesn't go to college or he isn't regular education DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE RIPPED OF AN EDUCATION. and don't sit there are try to tell me that your fixing the situation by mainstreaming because that doesn't work for all. The schools job is to accommodate everyone and they aren't doing it. so fix it.

People are also getting mad because the government is mandating certain rules for school districts to follow. The problem with that is it's costing tax payers more money. And they don't like that. Listen people don't preach that education is so important if your not willing to pay for it. Those kids are going to run this country one day and if you want them to be stupid then be my guest but I think I would pay the taxes so we don't get another George Bush in the office. But that's just my opinion.

Are the rumors really true?

In addition to my Tolman visit while I was there I was talking to some other faculty and they informed me that expulsion is no more. Is this really true? Because if it is Rhode Island you made a very dumb mistake. If your going to honestly tell me that they got rid of expelling kids in Rhode Island then I will absolutely never teach in this state. I'm not saying that expulsion is the answer for everything but I am saying that it does work sometimes. The faculty was telling me that if a kid brings a weapon to school (which apparently isn't unlikely in Tolman, in fact it's very common) they are not expelled just suspended for 10 days.

Alright I'm going to pretend to be a student at Tolman for a second. If I was a student and you told me that a kid brought a weapon to school say a knife and all he/she got was suspended then you basically telling me that if a kid pisses me off that I can bring a weapon to school and take care of it, and I don't have to worry because all I'm going to get is suspended for 10 days.

Now switch roles and now I'm going to pretend to be a parent. So my kid comes home telling me (possibly with a news letter) that a kid brought a weapon to school and they were suspended for 10 days and now they are allowed back in the school, as a parent do you know what I would say? This is what I would say...."GET MY KID OUT OF THAT SCHOOL AND GET SOME NEW ADMINISTRATORS BECAUSE THAT IS BULLSHIT" Kids are NOT allowed to bring weapons to school period, and by not expelling them for doing so is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. By not expelling kids your telling them to bring weapons and your asking for another Columbine. And God forbid that ever happens again.

The first one.

My first blog...here we go. I am a student at URI and one of my classes is an education classes and we go off site into inner-city schools and into the classrooms to observe the teachers in their own environment. I was placed in Pawtucket school district...Tolman high school. I visited there today and they were not kidding about inner-city.

Not that this is a surprise to me but I saw pregnant girls only about 15-16 years old cruising down the hallway like nothing was wrong. I saw boys with jeans that if they wore them any baggier they would have been around their ankles. Now call me old fashion even though I'm not old at all but that's not acceptable to me. I don't know what it is about these kids, why do you want to wear your pants lower than your butt so that you have to hold them up and waddle down the hallway...personally that doesn't look comfortable at all and it is certainly not fashionable.

And the pregnancy thing blows my mind. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is appealing to having a kid at 15-16 years old........YOUR STILL A KID YOURSELF!!!!! and trying to take care of another life along with your own is impossible to me and I know I couldn't do it, not to mention if I came home pregnant at 15 my mother would kill me.

Tolman reminds me of home. Poughkeepsie high school that is, and I guess you could even say my high school F.D. Roosevelt. The kids that are there they just don't seem to care and I can't figure out why. It might be because I now understand the value of my education and because I have to pay for it but kids need be taught that education is a necessity just like breathing. If they have big dreams and goals than that's fantastic and they should follow them but in order to get there education is needed and it needs to be valued and not taken for advantage. I think many kids think that it's just somewhere they have to go, that they have to be there and if their contained there, they are not going to want to be there. When I was in high school I would do everything in my power to skip my class and leave to go hang out with my friends. I always had something better to do than school, and looking back now I should have stayed because half the stuff high school I don't remember.

In general not just in NY, teachers need to teach the value of education to show the kids what education will do for you right now in this time, and show they what it will do for them in the future. Kids live in the time right now, they aren't looking at the future yet, their worried about what they are doing after school not what test they have tomorrow.