What would YOU do with $500 for classroom supplies?

For hosting a student teacher this semester, I recently received $500 to spend as I wish on classroom supplies. It's such a small, but extremely motivating way to encourage mentor teachers to participate in a college's teacher prep program that I would love to see done more often. As I have my Masters + 30 Credits, receiving a tuition voucher, as I have in the past, has not been useful. I host student teachers because I think they will shape the future of education and my students benefit from having another set of knowledgeable hands in the classroom. Money for classroom supplies could help reluctant teachers, who are already stressed with their regular teaching duties, become more interested in hosting student teachers.

Spending this money has made me giddy, as I've never had a set amount that I could spend as I like. At my school, we usually get the bare minimum, and then sometimes even less. Here's what I bought:

- 48, yes 48, Colorful and Exciting, Easy Reader Books, from the Step up to Reading, Ready to Read, and I Can Read series, to supplement the small collection I have and the somewhat boring materials I print from the Internet for my emergent readers. At Booksource.com, you must spend at least $100, but get a 25% discount and free shipping.

- 6 Talking Brix Communicators from Boundless Assistive Technology (Best price and free shipping!), which I have admired from a far since an Ablenet workshop I attended last year. I'm excited to use these small, connectable communication devices during phonics lessons and to make additional 2-cell "Yes/ No" switches. (Right now I only have one iTalk2, but 3 students who use it)

- Apple Camera Connection Kit to connect a USB Switch device to our classroom iPad (yes, I don't get regular supplies, but our school bought iPads...). I also learned this at an Ablenet workshop, see this site for the directions and feel free to email or comment with questions about it. This is one of the most exciting things I've seen with the iPad for kids with multiple disabilities and emerging communication skills.

- Apple VGA - iPhone/ iPad Adapter to connect to my classroom's Smartboard (yes, again, I have a Smartboard, but no regular supplies...), this will allow me to stream video, music, and important speeches, like Dr. MLK's "I have a Dream" from YouTube that's currently blocked at my school.
(As far as I know, it's not against DOE policy, since some schools don't have it blocked, its just that our building happens to prevent kids from searching it on their own)

- Basic Supplies - Markers and Notebooks
At Staples, I was able to buy boxes of 10 Crayola Makers for $2 a piece and this literally made my day. I've given up on the whole "washable" thing since they were $3 more a box!  For some reason this year's group of students love making full page rainbows when coloring, which eats up markers faster than you can believe. I've successfully taught them to put the caps back on their markers and have intimidated my paras to check the marker bin before putting it away, but I'd feel evil telling the kids they can't make rainbows anymore, so yay for $2 boxes of markers!

Also for $2 each, I snagged a bunch of composition notebooks, so we can finally do so more consistent journaling, hopefully with the help of my student teacher since my students will need lots of assistance to "write." (Using key words, simple pictures, stamps or picture symbols)

Its amazing how feeling prepared, rather than always just making do, has breathed new energy into my teaching this week. I'm grateful to a creative teacher prep program for thinking outside of the traditional mold on how to support mentor teachers!


After Thought:
Just in case you're wondering why I haven't used a charity like Donorschoose.org in the past for supplies, I have always had mixed feelings about it because I think its gives public schools the excuse to not properly supply classrooms and puts teachers in a position of begging family and friends for support. My feelings on this come from my first day as a NYC public school teacher, before even seeing my classroom or meeting my students and being told to sit in a room and write a Donors Choose proposal. Our school's tenure checklist even includes whether you showed that you support your school by setting up a Donors Choose page.

I will say though that this fall after several family members asked if they could donate to my classroom, I did set up a successful Donors Choose page and my classroom is grateful for the beautiful puzzles and sensory toys that we received. Their newer funding model doubled what I could get friends and families to donate. If my school wants to take credit for how great my class looks, I guess I can live with it if my students are benefiting.

And when the bus strike is all over…

22 days, 22 days, 22 school days. It’s like my students had a summer break in the middle of the school year. Except, their summer break is usually 10 days. They’ve never been out of school for 22 days, unless they had major surgery or a serious illness.

So Wednesday, they will roll into school and I will happily greet the chaos that is our normal. But what have we learned at the expense of them missing 22 school days?

I can only hope that we have started a conversation about why special education students have to be bused all across New York City and beyond to have their educational needs met. I hope we have realized that we must do better.

Of course, I was ecstatic Friday afternoon to hear the possibility of the strike ending and in almost disbelief when I heard it was officially over Friday evening. It’s hard to believe that a letter from 5 Democratic mayoral candidates was all it took. I also like to think that schools being less fearful of the press this past week also hastened the end. When the face of the bus strike became the children with special needs who weren’t getting to school, 1,285 never made it at all, ignoring the strike was no longer an option for at least some politicians.

Even in my excitement that I will be reunited with my students this week, after recharging my batteries over this long weekend, Bloomberg and Walcott continue to exasperate me. With the claim of saving $60 million, Bloomberg and Walcott are calling themselves the victors and saying that they “put children first,” after my students lost almost 5 weeks of school. On Friday after the Democratic mayoral candidates came together to craft a letter that ended the bus strike, Bloomberg and Walcott issued their first official statements in weeks, gloating. And before this, Walcott even made a statement saying that students whose educations were disrupted will still be expected to participate in state testing, which we all know will lead to their scores being held against their teachers.

Now I’m getting asked how will my students make up the lost instruction time. To be honest, they won’t. Most of the students with the most significant special needs had the most difficulties getting to school; they already attend school year round. In addition, there is already a shortage of Occupational, Physical, and Speech Therapist; there is no way they will be able to make up missed therapies during the school day. This leaves it on the parents to find therapists who will come into their homes, which is extremely difficult to do for even the most savvy parents.

So its time to make a plan for what needs to be done going forward.

The DOE’s Office of Pupil transportation needs to be held accountable for creating routes that are efficient.

The bus drivers and matrons’ union, ATU 1181, needs to create a platform that legitimizes their concerns, rather than just fighting for job protections. They now have until the next mayor is elected to do this.

NYC Schools, in particular District 75, needs to do a self-examination. Why are students being bused near and far to receive their educations?

Parents need to push the NYC DOE to provide appropriate educations in their communities, ideally their community schools.

I hope to do my part by continuing this blog and developing a strong community of teachers, teacher educators and advocates who recognize the improvements that need to happen to special education in New York City. Let’s not just be satisfied with getting our kids back to school, let’s make this system better so that this never happens again.

I’m looking forward to giving you an update on Wednesday, our first day back!

Stuff You Can't Makeup: “Trained” drivers and matrons?

I can’t take it, I’ve mostly held back for nearly 4 weeks, but the ATU 1181 and its drivers and matrons have finally made me lose my patience with them. I just can no longer have sympathy for a group that holds children with special needs hostage in order to better themselves. If they had gone about asking for job protections strategically or started by helping reform the entire transportation system, I think the union would look much better to all parties involved. You don’t all of a sudden call a strike and want to be taken seriously as a union by only demanding job protections.

So as someone who interacts with drivers and matrons daily, as well as for a weekly community outing, have I got the dirt for you!

Over and over you hear the ATU cite how they are just trying to make sure children have trained drivers and matrons, especially dealing with children with special needs. This gets parents to support them, although parents don’t see what I see. Clearly, I’ve heard, “its for the children,” one too many times.

I have found that over the course of 5 years at the same school, it’s been a rotating cast of characters of bus drivers and matrons. I’m not sure of the argument that bus drivers want to be on the same route from year to year, we’ve never had that and often drivers change 2 to 3 times a year on a route. I can’t even keep track of the matrons.

Repeatedly, I have matrons and even drivers who do not know how to use the tie down systems on their buses to properly secure wheelchairs. They then sometimes take over a half hour to tie down an average of 5 wheelchairs, that’s six minutes per chair. Sometimes they arrive without enough tie downs for the number of students who are going on the trips. On my last outing, a small wheelchair bus that should accommodate at least 3 wheelchairs had tie downs for only one chair. I then had to teach the matron how to slide the tie downs into the tracks and that the chair will tip over if you do not use 4 tie downs on the floor, not on the wall of the bus. (Lucky for them, I used to secure and drive my entire class in a wheelchair van at my old school.)

The DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT) will fine these companies only if the school repeatedly follows up. But why as a union do they not fight for better training for their members?

On these community outing days, I've been told I have too many wheelchairs. I've been told that on a bus with room for 8 chairs, they would only take 4. That I need to split the kids up so they didn't have to tire themselves out to tie them down, even though I didn't have a teacher for a second bus. I've seen matrons that are injured and can't do tie-downs for a wheelchair sit on a bus while the driver did all the work.

On our regular routes, I have seen drivers quick to say that a wheelchair's brake does not work to avoid having to pick up a student. They will repeatedly harass the families about the brakes, without even checking them again, even after the physical therapist has fixed them. I am the one who fields the phone calls from families trying to get the bus drivers and matrons to stop complaining to them.

They seem to pick the rules they want to follow that are convenient for them. I've seen a driver who refused to transport a walker device along with a wheelchair, but gets off the loaded school bus every morning in back of the school to smoke a cigarette. I also repeatedly see matrons, who have been off all day, get off a loaded bus of students to use the restroom. I've heard drivers and matrons who have made parents feel extremely bad about their children's special needs that cause them to scream during the bus ride. They’ll tell parents that they need to talk to their child, even though their child is non-verbal and doesn’t understand.

Is this where their special training comes in?

Today, I found out that 2 porters, who would carry a student out of a public housing building with no elevator, have been paid to sit on a bus all year for a student who’s home has an elevator. Why didn’t the driver tell the school and the company when he noticed? (And of course it’s the smoking, rule obeying bus driver’s route!)

I mean listen to this WNYC report, they’re not even outside picketing all day! One even has a doctor’s note! What a joke.

I will say that the entire system between the DOE's OPT (Office of Pupil Transportation) and the bus companies and the actual drivers and matrons is a mess. I wish the Amalgamated Transportation Union 1181 would be shedding light on overcrowded buses, which the parents would support, and professionalizing their unions, rather than all of a sudden making a fight for employment protections. 

So parents, this is what I see and I know you have experienced a lot of this as well. Let’s not let them continue to use your children for their own agenda. It’s time to call them out and end this strike. 

Bus Strike Day 18: The word of the day is: useless.

As in the information that the DOE is providing is useless. 

In response to why my students can’t get to school, I figured it was time, as we approach Week 5 of the NYC Bus Strike, to review what I’ve been hearing from families and why the solutions that the Department of Education (DOE) are providing do not help.

Let’s look at this DOE website for checking the status of a bus route. First, if you don’t have internet in your home or even a computer, you’re not getting to this site. Secondly, if you’re not able to read English, forget about it.

Today, we discovered that a bus that has not been picking up students or showing up at school is listed on the above site as never having been disrupted. OPT (Office of Pupil Transportation) is currently investigating.

The DOE website also continues to link to this useless page, with all the companies saying their overbooked.

All of these resources are just too much for families to navigate. Over and over again, I hear its not necessarily the transportation vehicles, but the time it would take from work to accompany their child back and forth.

Let me share some examples from my class of 12 students who have multiple disabilities with you.

Three students come from the Bronx and one is ambulatory but mom can’t leave her vending stand in Manhattan for the amount of time that would be needed to pick her child up, bring her to childcare in the Bronx and return to Manhattan. It would cause a considerable loss of income. She has arranged for her child to stay with an elderly neighbor and also has other children she needs to get to school. Mom also has limited English and speaks a rare language, so it is difficult to communicate the transportation options that change rapidly.

Two other families in the Bronx have tried calling various accessible options so that their children can be transported safely in their wheelchairs, but have been unsuccessful in securing one. One set of parents has special needs themselves and it is just too much for them to navigate, although they keep assuring me that they will try. The other parents keep calling the companies I give them numbers for with no success and have practically given up. This has been too much for this student’s mother, as he recently had a feeding tube placed and has a variety of other health needs that she is constantly managing.

In Manhattan, closer to school does not necessarily make its easier because it still requires an adult to be available to accompany a child to and from school. One student who uses a wheelchair has other siblings with special needs who go to different schools; does mom have to choose who gets to go to school? Other families have come down with the flu, mom is willing to try a taxi, but she’s sick and can’t manage it.

Another family doesn’t understand what their child is missing out on at school and has arranged for him to stay home with grandma. They said they will wait the strike out and they don’t want the Mayor to permanently take away the service if they make it look too easy. I can’t make them take the information I have and unless their motivated their not going to navigate through it. I think this one makes me the saddest, because I think it happens a lot with families with children with multiple disabilities who don’t understand all the therapy, interaction and skills they are getting at school and how it directly impacts their children’s quality of life.

Also in Manhattan, there is another family with an ambulatory child, but the father works nights and his mother, who is new to this country, does not feel comfortable navigating the city with her child with special needs and no English. Again, I give the information, not sure if its fully comprehended, and tell them to hang in there.

Three families have successfully navigated public transportation, but their attendance is still inconsistent because it is so time-consuming and exhausting. I shared one particular experience here. One father works nights and has 2 other children that need to be taken to their neighborhood schools while his wife provides childcare out of their home. Another student doesn’t understand why her yellow bus isn’t coming and it’s a fight for mom to get her on the subway. Mom asked me in her limited English to give her a pep talk on the subject of how “big girls take the train.”

This brings me to today and why it was a particularly frustrating day. I’m not talking frustrating like a little something annoyed me, I’m talking about a day that makes you question your morals, the way the world works and why I work in a system that doesn’t value the work I do or the children I teach.

Today, after once again being questioned by administration on whether I was distributing the DOE’s information to parents, much of which I’ve collected from websites like Advocate for Children and Resources for Children with Special Needs myself and have passed on to said administrators, I asked, as a teacher, is it my responsibility to be distributing this information? I do it out of the goodness of my heart and because I can’t stand not seeing my students come to school. I communicated with my parents regularly even before the #busstrike. But I fear that my consistent phone calls have prevented others from being held accountable for this information being distributed in multiple languages so that families are truly assisted. 

So what do I do now?

Stuff You Can’t Make Up: Lost Instruction Day 12 of the Bus Strike, 1 out of 12 Students in School

When my one student arrived at school today, his mother shared with us the craziest story of her commute earlier in the week. Even through a translator, I could tell how ridiculous it was by mom’s facial expression and my knowledge of key Spanish words.

Her son, my student, uses a wheelchair, is 13 years old and has a speech impediment, so he tends to gesture and use keyword signs. As they were traveling on the city bus on Monday, another older passenger coughed. My student playfully said, “eww,” and the person who coughed shot out her seat as if to hit him in the face and started cursing his mom out. The bus driver had to intervene.

I didn’t hear this story until today because his mom was so stressed by the incident; she couldn’t laugh about it until 4 days later.

It made me appreciate the effort she makes to get her son to school even more. If I have to look for a positive in this bus strike it is the greater opportunities to connect with families. The ones that we now see everyday and the ones we’re on the phone with trying to get their kids back to school. We miss this consistent connection when our students all come on yellow buses from far away. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had strong enough school options that we could keep all students in their communities and make it easier for families to come to school more often?