The Quiet before the Storm aka Suspended pt 2

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maybe its time you threaten to contact the state board of education.

L-A-W-Y-E-R

When are these people going to get it!! !
I have no advice I'm sorry. Except tell pop I believe his version of events.
He was stuck in a lose lose situation. If he hadn't reacted like he did, he may have reacted like my son would have, and just sat there quietly feeling like crap about himself and then having a meltdown at home.
He didn't get it, for goodness sake. It is their job to help him understand, but don't expect him to. He is now being punished for being autistic, what if anything are THEY doing to address this problem so that it is less likely to happen again? How come pop (who has a recognised disability) has to be made accountable for his actions, and they dont have to be made accountable for their lack of action. You dont have to answer, it just scares the heck out of me. Having a 9yr old aspie who would have internalized all that confussion and beat himself up over silly comments that the other kids made, and mind you done probably more damage to his own self worth than pop did to those kids. It all would have gone un noticed because no one would have had to deal with it except maybe me. There for in their eyes there would have been no problem. Sorry I'm rambling, its just so frustrating, when are people going to listen.

GET HIM OUT! Homeschool him...

The damage the schools do to our children is outrageous. Yes, there might be some schools who are great/well, probably some teachers who might be great...but the majority are not.

Your child will think he's a bad boy, start doubting himself, etc...If there is anyway you can get him out, I suggest you do so.

You must be SO frustrated!
You are SO right that it is easy to ignore problems if the child doesn't react by going bollostic.
I would get everything on paper - so there is written documentation of what the problems are, and ask the school for a written response. I find that sometimes asking for an answer on paper makes schools think twice, because they are afraid of suggesting a plan of action that is not legal/embarrassing.

As for homeschooling - I would be catious. I personally wouldn't have the time, and would have a hard time "doing it right". Also, it makes it too easy for schools. Instead of changing to the better, they in practice exclude kids who don't quite fit in, and don't face their responsibility. But then again, I'm not from the U.S., and maybe things are different there.

I've used that card (pulling him out) and here it works to at least get the ball rolling. However, it seems as if we have a teacher who is inappropriately trained and unwilling to communicate properly. I get emails from her and I swear, she writes like a high schooler. She has poor spelling, a lot of typos, garbled way of saying things. When she verbally relays messages, she's overly dramatic to the point of being inaccurate.
When we point out her shortcomings, they suggest the Resource Teacher. We don't mind if the Resource teacher has the time to do the footwork (going over the planned interventions). However, we need a teacher trained special ed and autism to oversee his plan. We can't have this, "I was unaware" all the time.

I would prefer to homeschool him and think I could do a great job. My husband is reluctant because we have "social issues" and he's afraid we'll smother Pop and not stay on top of his socialization needs. He also thinks that I'll go nuts for lack of alone time. (I do go crazy on holidays)

There's definitely a give and take. Pop's behavior at home settles down and he seems to adjust easier when I've homeschooled him. So, it's not so bad being together under those conditions. When he's had bad days at school, one afternoon alone with him can be a nightmare.

We have this bigger meeting tomorrow morning.

I have been in very much the same situation with incompetent teachers.
I can understand you being interested in hometeaching. I did it for my son for a very short period of time. School work - maths and Danish - I had no problem with. But despite my good intentions and the huge amount I have read about autism, autism related issues were hard to manage. Finding the time to prepare schedules and plans was difficult.
So I did a good job of maintaining the status quo, and taught him heaps of maths, but didn't succeed in getting my son to be more social or changing some of his behaviour problems (which were massive at that point). I needed the help of some real autism pros, who had experience with kids like mine, to turn the whole situation around. They did this - first in my house for some months, then took him back to school, where they carefully and expertly reintergrated him in his class.

After many meetings my son's school has let two much more experienced teachers take responsibility for all autism related issues, and I am carefully optimistic.

Except in one case, I've been a lot more educated and interested in autistic traits and needs than any professional. When professionals meet my son, they are flabbergasted at his presentation. We got almost no services in California from the state because they were geared for dealing with high-risk, "low potential" kids. Here in Arizona, they are very behind and consider educating teachers about autism as "elective". Going to a couple of seminars and workshops make you an "expert".
So, while I'd like to entrust his program with someone more proficient than myself, I can't.

Hi, I'm new to this site. I have a 12 year old boy with asperger's. I read your post and I was having flashbacks. Demand an FBA be done immediately! After this they need to write up a BIP which will include interventions and positive reinforcers. This is so important to have done. Good luck!

i never had to pursue legal counsel when we were meeting to remove my son from district school placement..........i brought an advocate with me. ( who happened to be the principal of the special ed school i teach at ).............We were prepared, however, to tell them that we'd seek legal council if an agreement was not reached ( had the name & phone number of a prominent special ed lawyer within our state)........................sometimes, unfortunately, school systems need to be threatened in order to comply.

Legend:
DW, District Witch, the lady from the District, some director who was facilitating the meeting
Special Ed teacher, the teacher whose self-contained autism class that Pop is enrolled in, she's in charge of Pop's plan and communicating to us
Teacher, the current 2nd grade teacher that has been back for 2 weeks now
Psychologist, the school psychologist that administers the IEP, knows Pop and his needs
The above is a reference for when I use those terms.


I've had some time after the meeting to think about what was said, done and decided. And how I feel about it.

The first thing I think of is that the special ed teacher is openly acting defensive, hostile and agressive towards us. During the last meeting that she was present she was rude until the principal showed up then quickly cowed and was apologetic and friendly. This time, she didn't make any attempt to be pleasant, polite or restrained. The first thing she did was to hand me a very full baggie of mechanical pencils that she said were empty and that I needed to provide new ones. I always have sent new mechanical pencils in his backpack and requested that someone reinforce Pop to put them in his desk and not use wooden pencils. The fresh pencils were still in the same place I put them months ago.
Why would a teacher collect empty, disposable pencils and hand them to a parent in front of other professionals?

The DW introduced her observations, apparently she had been observing Pop since last December. She noted his strengths and weaknesses and trigger points. Ironically, she had observed Pop the very day of the field trip and saw a significant event that acted as a trigger for him-and had told no one. I had been told that Pop's outburst was unexpected because he hadn't been seen acting differently or agitated at all. In fact, he had gotten really upset over a writing/language exercise and began repeating a nonsensical phrase over and over, just before they left for the trip.

This leads to the core dilemma, everyone agrees that while Pop is "high functioning", he nevertheless has significant language issues that leads to his difficulty with his peers and classwork. For some reason, though, the school people don't connect those difficulties to the need to "have a plan" in place at all times. They instead, react to his "behavior" after he has displayed something. For example, there have been times where Pop is disruptive and he was removed and taken somewhere to "cool off". Then the problem is forgotten or dismissed as "Pop" got excited and we just want him to calm down. They may even say that it wasn't his fault, it was the noisy class or a different schedule.
This shows a lack of a plan. A plan would include explaining the schedule and reinforcing the expectations. If Pop needs to be removed from the class, there needs to be a pre-arranged goal and plan to re-integrate Pop back into the class. Without those, Pop doesn't know why he is being removed, what to do the next time he has trouble and there are logistical issues like forgetting his homework or lunchbox when he changes locations. On top of that, I need to know these things and not be told weeks later.

That is what we have been insisting on, explaining and wondering why it isn't in place. They still don't seem to get it. The special ed teacher continued to say that she can't leave her class and know what Pop is doing. She even blamed me for saying that Pop shouldn't be sent to her class. I replied that I didn't want him dropped off with no explanation, no goal and not being able to return to his 2nd grade class. I made that clear months ago, yet she lied about it and used it against me. Saying we had tied her hands on the issue.

The DW also presented us with a false dichotomy. For some reason, "Pop is being underserved" turned into "the parents are asking for a 1-1 aide (which he can't have)". My husband kept saying that we weren't asking for a 1-1 aide but someone who has constant supervision over Pop's plan. A plan would ensure that when things come up, there is a guideline that instructs the Teacher, the special ed teacher, a programatic aide and the principal what to expect and what to do.

Together we mucked up some sort of plan in place, where Pop will be reporting to the special ed room for end-of-day pragmatic lessons (social skills lessons and observation) and a weekly or biweekly meeting with the Resource teacher for other lessons.

But the impression we got is that we are now an enemy to them and they will join forces to fight us collectively. When my husband brought up the recent history which has led to this problem, the DW said that that wasn't at issue. She kept invoking, "and moving on". As if we're there to vent and complain unjustly. Our point in saying things about the past is that we are at that school for these very reasons (Pop requiring expert help and accomodations) and have had these very talks where we were assured that these things would be taken care of. ONE

my keyboard locked up while I was posting. Luckily I didn't lose my whole passage.

I guess my conclusion is that they are allowing substandard work and defending it when we get mad. They are characterizing us as being unreasonable, despite the fact that we haven't gotten litigious with them. That was our point, to work with them. They are building up straw men and fighting them and in the meantime we're still not sure they understand what we mean by teaching Pop self-managing skills. We also aren't assured that they understand autism at all. They use behavior management terms rather than cognitive delays.
My worry is that if they only deal with Pop when he is "doing something wrong", he will equate "autism with bad". He is already starting to do that. I can't argue how they handle the autistic introverts or the ones that don't lash out. But damn if they only address his negative traits as being autistic.

Pop is the only one who hit, so I'm not sure what you mean by "other kid". No adult witnessed the event and it apparently was over a misunderstanding.
As far as the IEP goes, they claim that they don't have 1-1 aides and they actually took it out of his IEP. We don't want a 1-1 anyways. We just want the IEP goals met in a methodical way and administered by someone who knows what they're doing. We were getting stalled and "we didn't know and now we do" excuses.

when we were having massive problems with son's old school, i made a point of corresponding via email.........then when they pulled the " oh we never said that" routine~ i yanked out the emails and pointed to several passages............such a shame that things have to be like that sometimes.