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Archive for the ‘Special Education’ Category

50. Time’s Up

Posted in ADHD, Family, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , , on July 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Come on. You know why. Remember where Kenny was when the day hit its halfway mark in fourth grade? Just a few months ago? That’s right. That was him—metaphorically swinging from the hypothetical chandeliers. To paraphrase Popeye, he’d had all he could stand, and he couldn’t stand no more. His sensory filter was overflowing. His neurons needed a nap.
He needed time to absorb the morning’s worth of experiences. No amount of threats or promises, checks or x’s, medication or meditation could make it possible for him to sit in any classroom through three more hours of school. Even here. Even now.
Ding! Time’s up! Great class or not, this was his limit.So where are we? Home. At last. With Kenny. After all, this is Kenny’s story.To simplify life for all the grownups involved, Kenny is staying with Henry and me at our house during the school week and going back to Annie’s on weekends. There’s a lot to keep track of: medication, transportation, communication, behavior modification, and education coordination with the “home and hospital” aide whom the school system has provided as Kenny’s official tutor.

I think I’d better start keeping notes.

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49. Happytown

Posted in ADHD, Education, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , , , on July 7, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

It was the middle of one of those standardized testing weeks. When I arrived to pick Kenny up from school, Mrs. Hart had given the class a break, some free time between tests. Her plan had been to let them unwind a little before they watched a video.
But then she noticed that, instead of breaking up individually or into small groups doing unrelated things, all eleven of them were over in the same corner together, building with k’nex and constructing elaborate villages, with overlapping activities and story lines.
Five of the kids had formed a group that called itself Happytown, under the leadership of one of the girls. She was making announcements about how they would live in peace and never fight anyone. (Also announcements about eating hamburgers. But the main message was peace.) Kenny and four of his buddies, predictably, had named their group Military City. Bam! Pow! Shazam! Another one of the girls had claimed a sector that she was calling Doom City, and she was actively recruiting allies from the other two groups.
In spite of their difference, all the kids were conferring continuously, the scenarios in constant flux. I watched them order and re-order their k’nex communities, sometimes conflicting, sometimes compromising. I looked over at Mrs. Hart, who was standing and watching them, too. She smiled, raised her eyebrows, looked sideways at them, and shrugged her shoulders.
“They’re so happy,” she said, “I just had to let them keep their game going. As a teacher, I always feel a little guilty at times like these, like—what are they learning?” But it was obvious, and I’m sure she knew it, too. They were learning a lot: building, collaborating, connecting, negotiating—and, at the same time, having a great time with each other.And that last thing—the great time part? That was big. These were Kenny’s peers. Not that they all had ADHD. There was a pretty broad variety of learning disabilities represented there. But there was one thing you can be pretty certain that they all had in common. Up till then, school hadn’t been so great. For a lot of them, it had been pretty bad. They’d gotten into trouble. They’d fallen behind. They’d been the ones who were “different.” But not now. Not here. Not in Mrs. Hart’s room. Here, they were all part of a great group.

All right, then. You get it. Amazing class. Plus, you already know that the heart and soul of our fifth grade plan for Kenny was for us to pick him up halfway through the day and bring him home.

Okay, but if things were so fantastic in his classroom, why not just forget the plan and let him stay?

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48. Where were we?

Posted in Education, I.E.P., Special Education, tagged , , , on July 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Oh, yes. Kenny’s fifth grade GTLD classroom. The one Kenny says is the best he ever had. Well, how did it get to be so good? How else?
There was a great teacher—Mrs. Hart. As we all know, a gifted teacher makes all the difference to her (or his) students. And Mrs. Hart was gift to all the kids whose IEPs had placed them in her classroom.
Mrs. Hart wasn’t one of those charismatic instructors who mesmerizes you through her force of personality. Actually, she was pretty quiet. Gentle, self-effacing. She had a light touch. She’d gotten her teaching degree after her seventh child had gone off to school. One of my theories is that those seven kids of hers did as much to prepare her for teaching special ed classes—because that’s what this was: special education, in every sense of the term—as her formal training did.
Needless to say, I’m not proposing that teachers should be required to have a lot of children before they enter their first classroom. But in Mrs. Hart’s case, there’s no denying that she’d already had a lot of experience with both quirky individuals and at least one very large group before she met her first student. She didn’t sweat the small stuff. She could comfort one kid and move the group along at the same time. She understood the importance of goals, as well as the fact that each child might have an entirely different way of meeting them.
Of course, she taught her fifth-graders reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, along with science and social studies and the five pillars of good character. This was public school, no child left behind, no exceptions. Given the population of the class, in order to accomplish that, there was a lot of behavior management required, too. But the spirit of that group—the harmony—was something you could feel as soon you walked in the door.

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47. Just Say No

Posted in ADHD, Education, I.E.P., Special Education, tagged , , , on July 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A kid has ADHD. He loses his book or forgets his homework or draws faces on his hands with magic marker and has them make funny noises to each other while someone else is trying to speak. Is this the first time any of that has happened? (Just say no.)
The teacher and the kid’s parents and probably the principal have already reminded and scolded the kid about just these things countless times already. So the teacher loses patience. The other kids think this kid must be a weirdo or a dummy—after all, they can do all that stuff. Why can’t he?
Remember that ADHD isn’t an official learning disability? That, while it does make it much harder to learn, it doesn’t get you an IEP? That, unless you also have a learning disability that’s on the official list, ADHD doesn’t get you into “the good kind of special ed?”
Here’s what ADHD gets you: punished, teased, excluded. Maybe bullied. Put out in the hall. Sent to the principal. There’s detention. Maybe suspension. One thing is guaranteed. He gets labeled. He is officially a problem. And once you get that label, it’s almost impossible not to feel that that’s who you really are.

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46. What If

Posted in ADHD, Education, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , , , , on July 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

While Kenny is absolutely unique to those of us who love him, we know that his situation is nothing like unique. There are countless kids out there who are just as overdue for a good school year as he was. Innumerable kids who desperately need to be one of eleven students with four teachers, in a classroom that’s been designed especially for them.
Most of those kids are still in regular classrooms, required to sit at their desks for six hours straight. Every Day. Except. Like Kenny, they can’t sit still for six hours straight. Literally. Physically. Neurologically. Cannot do it. So. They don’t. Granted, Kenny’s ADHD was (and is) extreme. But still, if a kid’s even half as impulsive as Kenny, if their sensory filter worked twice as well as Kenny’s, if their neurons fired twice as fast—that kid’s mind would still be wandering. He’d still be out of his seat, or at least out of the discussion, a few times (or more) every day, checking out or thinking about something not on the school’s agenda.
And a lot of those kids aren’t even in regular classrooms. They’ve already been assigned to special ed. And not, as Kenny says, to “the good kind of special ed.” They’re in the kind of special ed where, for instance, they get sent to time-out if they touch another kid.Where the time-out rooms have tiled walls, locked doors, and no windows. I’m not exaggerating. I’ve seen it. That’s where they were thinking of sending Kenny.
Some of those kids have teachers, even some special ed teachers, who are still convinced that managing ADHD is just a matter of will power. That ADHD is all in your head. Which, as far as it goes, is undeniably true. After all, where else would it be? In your foot? Haha. Very funny. But not really.
Because, like a whole lot of other things that human people do, ADHD doesn’t just go away if you take the abstinence pledge: I will abstain from impulsive behavior. ADHD doesn’t care when you just say no. ADHD isn’t even listening.

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45. Work and Luck

Posted in ADHD, Family, I.E.P., Special Education, tagged , , , , on June 29, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

So Kenny’s finally caught a real, official break. He’s one of the lucky eleven. And, as for us, his grownups, we’re pinching ourselves. We can’t quite believe our luck.Really? You call this luck? Because it sounds like a whole lot of people put an awful lot of thought and hard work and effort into making this happen.
Absolutely true. But. We’re lucky that dedicated advocates came before us and paved the way for this program to exist. We’re lucky we live in a place where they school system had the funding to pay for it. We’re lucky that Kenny’s case was assigned to a caring and experienced I.E.P. manager, who was willing and able to negotiate exactly the individualized education plan that this individual child needed.
And more luck: very few people have jobs as flexible as mine—freelancing, working from home, making my own hours. Our daughter, Annie, Kenny’s mom, was a widow, a single mother with a full-time job, plus two other, littler kids, besides Kenny. There was no way in the world that she could have picked him up in the middle of the day and brought him home for afternoon lessons. But I could take time off in the middle of the day. That was lucky.
When you’ve got a kid like Kenny, you can’t help thinking about how easily things could have tipped the other way. And what happens to other kids like him when that happens.

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44. Fifth Grade

Posted in ADHD, Education, Special Education, tagged , , , , on June 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Well, here we are. Fifth grade. If ever a boy was overdue for a good year in school, that boy is Kenny, and this is the year. Think back. Kindergarten: what, me worry? First grade: teased by other kids AND the teacher. Second grade: caring teachers, but no friends. Third grade: still no friends; held back. Fourth grade: real friends, but nearly expelled. And now, fifth grade.
This is what he says about it, six years later, “That was the best year I ever had in school. Everyone got along. Not just the kids. The students AND the teachers.” He’s absolutely right.To begin with, the class was small—eleven kids. Seven boys, four girls. In addition to the teacher, there were three instructional aides. Amazing ratio. A great place to start.
But wait. That isn’t really where it started. Let’s walk this back a few steps. Because this classroom wouldn’t even have existed unless someone, somewhere along the way, hadn’t had the inspiration and the conviction to invest the dedication and the determination required to achieve the creation of a classroom intended specifically for this nearly invisible, distinctly special, hybrid breed of students—gifted and talented. And learning disabled.
Grateful applause. Heartfelt thanks to them for being here. Where we needed them.

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39. Turning the Day Around

Posted in ADHD, Behavior Modification, Family, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , on June 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I made an appointment to meet with Kenny’s teacher, Mrs. Hart. Dr. Block had told us that we all had to be consistent for this to work. “All” would definitely have to include her. As nice as she was—and she really was an exceptionally kind, understanding and flexible teacher—I wasn’t optimistic that she’d be able to work the checks and x’s into her already very complicated school day. But I described the method to her, and she seemed willing to give it a try.
When I picked Kenny up from school a couple of days later, the first thing I noticed was that he’d gotten another time-out that morning. Sigh. But then I saw that Mrs. Hart was actually keeping track of his behavior moment-by-moment, index card in hand. Bless your heart, Mrs. Hart! All hands are on the deck! Check!
Check for us, anyway. After we got home, Kenny himself was very antsy and uncooperative. X. X. X. His behavior didn’t seem to be modifying very effectively. He didn’t seem to be listening at all. I got angry. “I am very angry at you!” I said to him. I told him to go into the other room and give me a few minutes by myself. He did. Check.He had a dentist’s appointment that afternoon, and in a few minutes, it was time for us to leave. “What was that all about?” I asked him, when we got into the car.“I was nervous about going to the dentist,” he said.

“Well, next time it would be a lot better if you’d just say you were nervous about the dentist,” I told him. “I can’t promise I can help you to stop feeling nervous, but at least you won’t be getting into trouble.”

So why am I going into all this detail about one afternoon? Because, starting at that moment, he transformed into Mr. 5-Second Compliance Man, racking up check after check for the rest of the afternoon.

Around supper time, I told him to do something, and—as he was doing it—he proclaimed, “That’s a check mark! I’m turning the day around!”

Forgive me if I don’t say anything for a minute and just take that in.

Kenny. Is turning. The day. Around. He’s turning a hard day into a good day. This is something he’s never been able to do before. We thought he didn’t have a clue about how to do it. It turns out, though, that the problem was really that he didn’t have the tools. But now he has checks. He has x’s. He has a grownup standing nearby with an index card and a pencil. And with those tools, he can do what he’s been told to do in just five seconds! He can do it over and over! He can do it enough times to be able to turn this big old battleship of a day around and set its course for a completely new direction!

How do you think that makes him feel? All you have to do is look at him. That’s right. He feels good.

And, really, that’s the whole point, you know?

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37. School for Neurons

Posted in ADHD, Behavior Modification, Education, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , , , on June 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

At school, Kenny was in fifth grade, in a GTLD class. That’s gifted and talented and learning disabled. One teacher, three aides, eleven kids. About as good a ratio as you can find, especially in the public schools. But, still, that’s eleven different constellations of gifts and LDs revolving around the room. Needless to say, rewards and punishments were deployed liberally there, in an attempt to provide incentive for cooperation and orderly behavior.
All eleven names were listed in a row on the far corner of the chalkboard. At the end of every morning and every afternoon, one of the teachers would chalk a star, or not, next to each name, depending on how well-behaved, or not, each one of the kids had been for the past few hours.
As Dr. Block explained it to us at that first appointment, the morning/afternoon method of behavior assessment was a non-starter—as far as behavior modification was concerned—at least for kids with ADHD.That made sense.

Remember the neurons? The billions of nerve cells in everybody’s brain? Remember what happens when the neurons fire? You know what I mean, not like starting a fire or firing a gun. But that incredible thing that only neurons can do—sending an signal across a synapse, the space between one neuron and its next-door neighbor, and on and on down the line.

Remember what happens if your neurons fire slowly?  If they’re, like, “Oh, yeah, man. Ha ha. Almost forgot. Okay. Whatever. Fire.” The way they are in your brain when you have ADHD?

When you think about it that way, it’s easy to understand why it’s hard to remember things from moment to moment—to maintain awareness of other people’s expectations, for instance—if you have ADHD. To keep those kind of things in mind, the neurons in your brain need to keep firing at a steady, rapid pace. Or—poof! What’s that shiny object over there?

“What are you doing, young man?”

Huh?

“Oh, sorry. I forgot. I saw that thing shining over there, and I just wanted to find out what it was.”

“If I catch you out of your seat one more time, Mister, you’ll have to go see the principal again!”

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32. Tears in Our Eyes

Posted in Education, Homeschooling, I.E.P., Special Education, tagged , , , , , on June 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

We brought both reports, the neuropsychiatrist’s and ours, to our IEP manager. (In case you’re not familiar with the IEP process, each child with an IEP is assigned a case manager by the school system. That person schedules meetings, assembles the people who need to attend, leads the meetings, and organizes all the information. In our case, we were extremely fortunate to be assigned an experienced, thoughtful and empathic IEP manager.)
Almost all of Kenny’s grown-ups—Annie, my mother, my father, my husband, and I—all met with Kenny’s IEP manager in July. I read our report aloud to him, and we gave him copies of both of them. He listened attentively. His concern was visible. He explained that there was no precedent for this kind of proposal. But he’d talk with the head of special ed. He’d see what he could do.
On September 2 of Kenny’s fifth grade year, Annie, my mother and I met at the county schools’ central office for Kenny’s IEP meeting. We navigated the maze of corridors to the waiting room outside a large conference room. There was a long, dark, polished wood table and plenty of chairs. After the last meeting, we’d decided that arming ourselves with experts wasn’t helping our cause. We’d de-escalated, and so had they.Our IEP manager handed around the bulky stacks of IEP forms and told us that he’d been able to arrange a special schedule for Kenny, replicating last year’s, but with the addition of a “home and hospital aide”—essentially, a tutor supplied by the schools—to come to our house three time a week to do his school work with him. That way, Kenny’s schedule could be considered official.

For the first time since the process had begun, Annie signed the IEP. She, my mother and I all spoke words of heartfelt thanks. We all had tears in our eyes.

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31. The Pretty Good Year

Posted in ADHD, Childhood Trauma, Family, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , , on June 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? You know what this all meant, right?
Yes. It meant that, in terms of emotional development, he wasn’t disabled. He was delayed. Developmentally delayed. That has a whole different meaning from developmentally disabled. That means, given time, given care, he can develop; he can grow.
I wrote up an assessment of the semester, and Annie, my mother and I presented it to his principal, along with a proposal: “What Kenny calls ‘pretty good,’ his grown-ups call an amazing success, unexpected progress, tremendously encouraging—the first year we could say any of those things.
And that being the case, the next step feels so clear to us, you could almost trip over it. This ain’t broke. So let’s not try to fix it.
This is better than not broken—it’s working. For the first time, something is working. Let’s hold on tight. One more year of this can only be good for him—not just ‘pretty good,’ but food for his soul. This year, doing school this way, Kenny has had good days and made measurable, observable progress. We, his family, are able, and more than willing, to continue our active, cooperative role in his daily education.”
In June, after school let out, we took Kenny to be evaluated by a well-known neuropsychiatrist who specialized in gifted ADHD children. She attributed his social and behavioral difficulties to developmental delays, as opposed to emotional disturbance. Even better, she expressed enthusiastic support—in writing— for our hybrid schedule, mornings at school, afternoons at home, to continue through fifth grade.

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30. Eureka!

Posted in ADHD, Education, Family, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , , , , on May 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

It happened naturally. He was home. We were on our own. So we did what came naturally—we did things the way they worked best. He got to take some breaks. To have some quality time with his legos. To fold some origami boats out of paper and sail them in the creek. To go to the nursery and pick out some flowers and plant them in dirt back home. To lie down on the rug in front of the fireplace and read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” when he got tired in the afternoon.
He was doing the same work that the other kids were doing at school. But he got to do it at home. In a whole different way: One-on-one. Not too many distractions to filter out. With breaks. With snacks. With hugs. Petting the dog. Holding the cat. You know—the way he needed to do it all along.
He got to hear, “You did it!” “You worked hard!” “I had a good time doing that with you!” More than once. Every day. And—what a concept—it worked.Whoa there. Slow down. That sounds way too pat and peppy, like those articles we used to read.
Let me clarify. When I say that it worked, I don’t mean that he’d suddenly been promoted from Private Goofball to General Good Judgment. It was nothing like that. His changes would probably have been invisible to you, if you didn’t know him well. But for us, they were loud and clear.
He smiled a lot more. He was less withdrawn. He chatted more easily. He cuddled up close when we read together. When we took him back to school occasionally for special party afternoons, he played games with the other kids and didn’t act up.He even got better at doing his schoolwork. When we started, he had to dictate all his written answers to me; he wasn’t able to formulate his thoughts in writing. By the end of the year, he could go over the work he’d dictated and edit it himself as he typed it onto the computer. And while I’d be lying if I said that he enjoyed his work, he was actually completing his assignments and getting good grades. And he knew that. He was happy to be getting good grades. He was happy not to be getting into trouble.

When I asked him at the end of the year what he thought about it, he said it had been a “pretty good year.” Pretty good. That sounds pretty ordinary, right? Not for Kenny. Kenny hadn’t used any kind of the word “good” to describe school in a very long time. But he’d said it now. Eureka.

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29. But Guess What

Posted in ADHD, Family, Homeschooling, Special Education, tagged , , , on May 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

You know more than you realize. I’m not kidding.
Here’s how I know. Because we knew. We just didn’t know how much we knew. And how much what we knew—mattered.
We knew he’d always done best when he could work one-on-one with a loving grown-up. We knew he needed detailed direction, and he needed to take breaks when he was trying to get something done. We knew that, in spite of the fact that he consistently represented himself to the world as Doofus the Goofball, he was really brainy. And sensitive.
We remembered how he asked us to read to him about infinity and anti-matter at bedtime, when he was five.The big thing—the key—was this: We didn’t know how to use what we knew. Until. Until we fell into it. Until, by chance, by luck, by amazing good fortune, halfway through Kenny’s fourth grade year, when, to avoid having to expel him, his school gave us official permission to bring him home halfway through the day.
Just for the afternoons. But that was just enough. Just enough time to catch up with himself.

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23. And the result?

Posted in ADHD, I.E.P., Special Education, tagged , , , , , , on May 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

This time we squeaked through on a technicality. Kenny was unable to formulate written answers to questions without one-on-one assistance. That was a bona fide, certified, grade-A learning disability, with a capital LD.
Never mind that that meant that his IEP didn’t address his main problem. It opened the door. With Kenny’s well-above-average test scores, that placed him in a Gifted and Talented Learning Disabled fourth grade class. It looked to us like the best of the available options.
And you remember what he did there, right? All together now: Drew faces on his hands with markers and made them yap like puppets while other people were trying to work! Chewed on the couch! Licked the door knob! All the above and more! Correct!
And remember, after that, how, with no clear alternatives to expulsion in sight, the ensuing IEP meeting concluded with official permission for us to pick Kenny up from school at noon every day, to do his afternoon school work at home?Well, good! Then we’re all caught up! It’s June, 2005, the end of Kenny’s fourth grade year.
It’s time to get ready for another IEP meeting.

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22. The First Meeting

Posted in ADHD, Family, I.E.P., Special Education, tagged , , , , , , on May 11, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

After Kenny tried to flush the whole roll of toilet paper and flooded the kindergarten bathroom; after he spent a measurable portion of first grade lying on the floor instead of sitting at his desk or joining circle time; after his teacher wouldn’t or couldn’t stop the other kids from teasing him, Annie and I asked the principal for an IEP meeting.
We got the meeting. But we didn’t get the IEP: Kenny had been tested “at or above grade level” in every subject. The IEP regulations required him to be working at least two years below grade level. And besides that, ADHD was not an officially designated learning disability.
So we opted out. We were lucky we could. Annie, my husband Henry and I, and my parents all pooled our resources and sent Kenny to a small, private Montessori school, whose mission was to instill a life-long love of learning in their students, individual child by individual child. The school was a real community. Annie got a job there, got a tuition break, and enrolled the two younger kids. But as you’ve already heard, by the time Kenny was nine, after his second year in third grade, his teachers told Annie, albeit with compassion and regret, that they no longer had a place for him there.
There was only one thing to do. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to an IEP meeting. We’d seen the news stories, and we’d already been turned down once. We were determined not to let that happen again. Annie, my mother, and I all wrote personal statements to read aloud at the meeting. We hired an educational consultant to help us evaluate potential placements. We paid Kenny’s therapist to attend. We lawyered up. The county schools brought in their team. Both sides were so well-defended that there weren’t enough chairs.

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