Yesterday, the school I work at was on lockdown. Some kid had a gun. Lots of police. We had to stay in our classrooms with the doors locked, and keep the kids away from the windows. As soon as the buses could get there we escorted the students to the buses, then we were ordered to leave campus ourselves as soon as we could.
Guess nobody got hurt, since NOTHING was on the news, on the Internet, or in the newspaper. And nothing was said about the lockdown today at the school. Seriously, nothing. We all moved on with our lives and lesson plans—myself included.
I was anxious to dive back into our lessons for “Women’s History Month” and “National Reading Month.” I’ve been reading the book Cleopatra’s Daughter to my students, connecting it to all of the core subjects. We’re getting to a really, really good part of the book….. And then, the classroom phone rings.
I’m called down to the office like a truant student to talk to the school psychologist, my department head, and the district’s director of special education. Apparently, I fucked up.
Wide eyed and a little pissed off (I should have been teaching), I waited for it. Right before the tongue lashing began, I realized what the topic was going to be. Last week I’d had a contentious IEP meeting about one of my students. The only person in disagreement with the team recommendations was the school psychologist. She was firm in her disagreement. My student’s mother was equally disgusted by the psychologist’s reasoning.
Most of the IEP team wanted to place the student in 8th grade in my class for a second year. He was showing promising, and sudden progress since I had taken over the classroom. For the previous two years his classes had been with a substitute teacher, who was not certified as a teacher in any subject. Additionally, it was found that he was severely visually impaired enough to be considered legally blind. We were just now figuring out how to effectively teach him, and how he could show us what he knows.
The school psychologist, however, was adamant about two things. First, intelligence was a fixed quotient that she could accurately measure with a standardized test. She whipped out her diagram of the IQ Bell Curve. Pointing to the area in the middle, she said, “This is where normal people are. According to the tests he’s been given since elementary school, this is where he is,” and she pointed to the far left tail of the Bell Curve. The student’s mother visibly bristled at this definitive declaration of “Your son is here.”
The meeting concluded with the decision that these concerns would be addressed during an additional “move up” IEP to determine where the student would be placed the following school year. The school psychologist left. The ancillary staff left. The parent remained purposefully at the table waiting to talk to me. I told her that I wanted to make sure that I had her “parent concerns” accurately recorded, and I turned my laptop over to her to type these in herself. When she was done, she asked me what I thought about the psychologist’s assessment of her son.
I answered that I honestly did not agree with the psychologist’s view that her son’s abilities were predetermined and limited. She shared that she was concerned that having an unqualified teacher had impeded his progress. She asked me if I knew that the previous teacher wasn’t even a certified teacher. I told her the truth. She asked me if I thought this might have affected her son’s performance on the most recent standardized tests. I told her the truth.
A very, very, wise professor told me something I didn’t really quite get until I started teaching myself: “Every day you’re doing the right thing is a day you might get fired. If you’re doing the right thing you’ll go to work wondering if you still have a job.” Well, fuck.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Labels and Rights
I teach teenaged students who have significant disabilities. They are all labeled as having "severe cognitive impairment" (SCI). This does not, however, mean that they do not learn or that they are not capable of achieving academic gains. It unfortunately can mean that academic learning and independence skills are not high priorities. Staff, parents, (and even the students themselves) see independence or academic success as unattainable, unrealistic goals.
One of my students (who I will call Katja) stands out as an exceptionally smart, beautiful, capable, and interesting young lady who would be seen as a person with unlimited potential-- if not for her disability labels. Due to developmental delay and mental illness, she has been institutionalized at different times during her pre-teen and teen years. Now seventeen years old, many labels have been put into her 1/2 foot-thick paper file: Aspergers, autism, cognitive impairment, emotional impairment, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar mood disorder, attention deficit. By definition, it is not possible for her to have all of these conditions, since some of these diagnoses preclude the possibility of some of the others. This disabling litany does not describe Katja the person.
Over the past year-and-a-half, Katja has made stunning progress socially and academically. She has steadily increased her measured reading skills from below pre-K to around a 3rd grade level. Put concretely, she has gone from only being able to identify most of the letters in the alphabet to being able to read phonetically with 80% accuracy and able to identify over 200 sight words. In terms of "mental years" that's an improvement of six years. And she continues to improve her skills at a high rate. Social/emotional improvement has been evident in her improved ability to communicate her feelings without "melting down." She shows empathetic interest in the feelings and well being of her classmates and staff. For over a year now, she has not demonstrated any behaviors at school that could be considered harmful to herself or others.
I cannot express how proud I am of her and and how hard she has worked to overcome learning disabilities, fine motor impairments, phobias, and hallucinations. In short, she is simply amazing. And for the past several months I have advocated for her educational rights with the same passion I would for my own daughter. It never, ever, crossed my mind that Katja wouldn't even get a chance to live at least semi-independently. Until today.
Katja's mother called to talk to me about getting paperwork for guardianship started. Her 18th birthday isn't until May. I suggested that she might want to look at their legal rights between now and then, because there are some potentially negative consequences for a person becoming the subject of "guardianship." In worst case scenarios, courts have the right to assign ANYONE to be the person's guardian after the original guardianship request has been granted. So, bluntly, when the parent/caregiver dies, there is nothing set in place to transfer guardianship to someone who actually cares about or even knows the client. Katja's mother was quite frank in telling me that she didn't care about any of that. She planned to put Katja in a group home as soon as possible. The only reason she cared about guardianship was to have a legal right to visit with her daughter when she wanted to.
I listened and remembered the facts,
One of my students (who I will call Katja) stands out as an exceptionally smart, beautiful, capable, and interesting young lady who would be seen as a person with unlimited potential-- if not for her disability labels. Due to developmental delay and mental illness, she has been institutionalized at different times during her pre-teen and teen years. Now seventeen years old, many labels have been put into her 1/2 foot-thick paper file: Aspergers, autism, cognitive impairment, emotional impairment, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar mood disorder, attention deficit. By definition, it is not possible for her to have all of these conditions, since some of these diagnoses preclude the possibility of some of the others. This disabling litany does not describe Katja the person.
Over the past year-and-a-half, Katja has made stunning progress socially and academically. She has steadily increased her measured reading skills from below pre-K to around a 3rd grade level. Put concretely, she has gone from only being able to identify most of the letters in the alphabet to being able to read phonetically with 80% accuracy and able to identify over 200 sight words. In terms of "mental years" that's an improvement of six years. And she continues to improve her skills at a high rate. Social/emotional improvement has been evident in her improved ability to communicate her feelings without "melting down." She shows empathetic interest in the feelings and well being of her classmates and staff. For over a year now, she has not demonstrated any behaviors at school that could be considered harmful to herself or others.
I cannot express how proud I am of her and and how hard she has worked to overcome learning disabilities, fine motor impairments, phobias, and hallucinations. In short, she is simply amazing. And for the past several months I have advocated for her educational rights with the same passion I would for my own daughter. It never, ever, crossed my mind that Katja wouldn't even get a chance to live at least semi-independently. Until today.
Katja's mother called to talk to me about getting paperwork for guardianship started. Her 18th birthday isn't until May. I suggested that she might want to look at their legal rights between now and then, because there are some potentially negative consequences for a person becoming the subject of "guardianship." In worst case scenarios, courts have the right to assign ANYONE to be the person's guardian after the original guardianship request has been granted. So, bluntly, when the parent/caregiver dies, there is nothing set in place to transfer guardianship to someone who actually cares about or even knows the client. Katja's mother was quite frank in telling me that she didn't care about any of that. She planned to put Katja in a group home as soon as possible. The only reason she cared about guardianship was to have a legal right to visit with her daughter when she wanted to.
I listened and remembered the facts,
- I don't know what Katja and her mother go through at home.
- I don't have a right to care.
- I don't have a right to have an opinion.
- I don't have a right to give an opinion.
- It's my job to provide whatever help and documentation the parent wants to implement plans for her child.
I listened. I met with the school psychologist. The school psychologist called mom to talk about and schedule what evaluations needed to be done before a guardianship hearing.
Then I cried all the way home from work.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Ah... Boo. (or, One in 1,765,010)
Today when I got home from work, I opened a letter from the Genesee Intermediate School District. It was sent as a formality—to report fairly innocuous data about my son David. At first, I saw the letter only as a document that filled the (inexcusable) gaps in the assessment reports from his prior school placement. The staff at his previous school were satisfied with calling David “un-testable.” So, I was very impressed by the Elmer Knopf school psychologist’s neutral language and thoroughness.
About an hour later, I remembered a phone conversation with Shawn a few days earlier. I had sent Shawn on the journey to get a Medicaid waiver for David. It was my understanding that we needed to have a few evaluations completed by Community Mental Health, fill out some forms, wait for the papers to stop being pushed, and David’s significant medical needs would be covered. This program exists as relief for people with the most significant disabilities and their support-givers. It effectively eliminates income requirements and the perpetual re-application for Medicaid coverage, and it ensures a number of basic medical and social supports for the duration of the individual’s eligibility.
The other day I called Shawn on my way home from work to check on everything, including the waiver. He told me that the CMH case worker was hesitant in going forward with the waiver, because there was a “freeze” on future waivers. I dismissed this as sounding absurd. I called, and failed to reach, a couple of colleagues who know more about this sort of thing. And I slept, and commuted, and went to school, and went to work, and I didn’t think much about it again until today. But today, I looked into the status of the Medicaid Waiver in Michigan. (Ah…boo.)
A 30-second Google search led me to the page that confirmed there really was a waiting list in Michigan for the waiver. http://www.michigan.gov/mdch/0,1607,7-132-2941_4868_7145-14669--,00.html Currently, Michigan has allowance for 464 children to receive the waiver. And all of those places are filled, with a waiting list.
But after reading Elmer Knopf’s assessment of David’s functioning, I was certain that I had a legitimate argument for putting David at the top of the list—if not making him number 465.
The estimated total population of Michigan is 9,969,727 (www.michigan.gov, 2009). Of those near 10 million citizens, 23.9% (2,382,764) are under the age of 18, or the age range of people David would be “competing” with for the Medicaid waiver (quickfactscensus.com, 2009). Of that population, 11.82% are eligible for special education services or accommodations due to disability (www.michigan.gov/mde/, 2010). That only reduces the number of David’s competitors to 281,643. So reasonably, we might think that given the number of children with disabilities in Michigan it makes sense that the waiver program is at capacity.
But wait. David and his peers are much more interesting than all of that. (Ah… boo.)
According to the school psychologist’s report, David’s assessment indicated that he exhibits the cognitive ability of a 9 month old. David is 7 ½ . He will be 8 on November 2. The school psychologist offered another measure of impairment and comparison: “more than 4 ½ standard deviations below the norm for his peers.” So what does that mean? That means that my unique little love-bug is beyond 1 in a million.
By the Wechsler intelligence test standard, David would be among one and one-third of a child with developmental disability in Michigan who have the most significant need. (http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx). Using the Stanford-Binet scale, the incidence of David’s level of disability would be even rarer. And yet he exists, as a pesky reminder to statisticians that the term “statistically insignificant” should never, ever apply to people. (Ah… boo.) Using the standard Bell Curve, David is an occurrence of only 1 in 1,765,010.
So in terms of eligibility for the Michigan Medicaid Waiver, David is by far the head of his class. And I intend to point this out in a citation-riddled document for the lucky person who comes to officially evaluate him.
In reality, however, when the evaluators make their judgments on David’s placement in line for the waiver, they will use a decision matrix that weights violent behavior as the most significant. David is not violent. Ever. He is big; he can get upset; he can communicate physically; but he honestly seems incapable of intentionally causing physical harm. He’s our love bug.
Wish us luck.
Ah… boo.
About an hour later, I remembered a phone conversation with Shawn a few days earlier. I had sent Shawn on the journey to get a Medicaid waiver for David. It was my understanding that we needed to have a few evaluations completed by Community Mental Health, fill out some forms, wait for the papers to stop being pushed, and David’s significant medical needs would be covered. This program exists as relief for people with the most significant disabilities and their support-givers. It effectively eliminates income requirements and the perpetual re-application for Medicaid coverage, and it ensures a number of basic medical and social supports for the duration of the individual’s eligibility.
The other day I called Shawn on my way home from work to check on everything, including the waiver. He told me that the CMH case worker was hesitant in going forward with the waiver, because there was a “freeze” on future waivers. I dismissed this as sounding absurd. I called, and failed to reach, a couple of colleagues who know more about this sort of thing. And I slept, and commuted, and went to school, and went to work, and I didn’t think much about it again until today. But today, I looked into the status of the Medicaid Waiver in Michigan. (Ah…boo.)
A 30-second Google search led me to the page that confirmed there really was a waiting list in Michigan for the waiver. http://www.michigan.gov/mdch/0,1607,7-132-2941_4868_7145-14669--,00.html Currently, Michigan has allowance for 464 children to receive the waiver. And all of those places are filled, with a waiting list.
But after reading Elmer Knopf’s assessment of David’s functioning, I was certain that I had a legitimate argument for putting David at the top of the list—if not making him number 465.
The estimated total population of Michigan is 9,969,727 (www.michigan.gov, 2009). Of those near 10 million citizens, 23.9% (2,382,764) are under the age of 18, or the age range of people David would be “competing” with for the Medicaid waiver (quickfactscensus.com, 2009). Of that population, 11.82% are eligible for special education services or accommodations due to disability (www.michigan.gov/mde/, 2010). That only reduces the number of David’s competitors to 281,643. So reasonably, we might think that given the number of children with disabilities in Michigan it makes sense that the waiver program is at capacity.
But wait. David and his peers are much more interesting than all of that. (Ah… boo.)
According to the school psychologist’s report, David’s assessment indicated that he exhibits the cognitive ability of a 9 month old. David is 7 ½ . He will be 8 on November 2. The school psychologist offered another measure of impairment and comparison: “more than 4 ½ standard deviations below the norm for his peers.” So what does that mean? That means that my unique little love-bug is beyond 1 in a million.
By the Wechsler intelligence test standard, David would be among one and one-third of a child with developmental disability in Michigan who have the most significant need. (http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx). Using the Stanford-Binet scale, the incidence of David’s level of disability would be even rarer. And yet he exists, as a pesky reminder to statisticians that the term “statistically insignificant” should never, ever apply to people. (Ah… boo.) Using the standard Bell Curve, David is an occurrence of only 1 in 1,765,010.
So in terms of eligibility for the Michigan Medicaid Waiver, David is by far the head of his class. And I intend to point this out in a citation-riddled document for the lucky person who comes to officially evaluate him.
In reality, however, when the evaluators make their judgments on David’s placement in line for the waiver, they will use a decision matrix that weights violent behavior as the most significant. David is not violent. Ever. He is big; he can get upset; he can communicate physically; but he honestly seems incapable of intentionally causing physical harm. He’s our love bug.
Wish us luck.
Ah… boo.
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