Take The “I” Out Of Special Education

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Take The “I” Out Of Special Education

Take the “I” out of Special Education

It must be my old age. But many years into teaching, the things that stressed me most my first few years just seem so miniscule now. It pains me to watch younger teachers learning the lesson that not everything is in your control and you need to accept the things you cannot change right at that moment. Even in special education, it’s rarely the kids that send a teacher home crying, it’s unsupportive co-workers. Now that I can navigate the always shifting personalities of a school better, I still don’t understand why elders in our profession make it so difficult for new teachers.

A change is coming, I can see it, a special ed “oasis,” where me-focused individuals hid is crumbling.

But I fear they are sucking the life out of everyone around them before they go.

If you’re truly here for the kids, don’t you want to see this teacher succeed, along with all her students?

If you’re here for the kids,

why do you let old school policies and outdated thinking dictate how your school is run?

If you’re here for the kids,

why do you keep telling me how busy YOU are?

And it trickles down to all staff members who are suppose to be collaborating in classrooms.

If you’re here for the kids,

why are you talking about YOUR report?

If you’re here for the kids,

why ignore a teacher who asks you about how you’re working with a student?

If you’re here for the kids,

why are you talking about YOUR feelings and your supervisor?

If you’re here for the kids,

why are you talking about YOUR schedule?

During my undergraduate student teaching in general education, I had a funny moment where I was caught off guard by my clinical supervisor’s criticism. My supervising teacher continually gave me nothing but praise. After keeping a running record of my comments during an observation, the clinical supervisor pointed out that I used a lot of “I” statements. Like, “I need your homework handed in” or “I need you to do this task for me and then come back to me.” I had never realized this. It was something I was naturally doing. It sparked an interesting discussion about how you want students to do things, but not because they’re just doing it FOR the teacher. They should be doing things for themselves, not for YOU.

I think those who are working in special education need to take a close look at how many “I” statements they are using these days and really ask ourselves if we are truly “here for the kids.”

Charlotte Danielson is not evil?

(As long as teachers can still use their intuition)

“Learning to trust your instincts, using your intuitive sense of what's best for you, is paramount for any lasting success. I've trusted the still, small voice of intuition my entire life. And the only time I've made mistakes is when I didn't listen.” – Oprah Winfrey

The other day I just happened to catch an NPR Radiolab piece on “Choice” and being “Overcome by Emotion.” Essentially, the hosts were discussing if we were all completely rational beings, like Spock from Star Trek, would we have an easier time making choices throughout our day. In theory, you think of course, but in reality it’s our emotions and intuition that keep us out of a circle of rationality. When you finally remember your favorite cereal from childhood, you are saved from the endless oblivion of choices in the supermarket aisle.

After sharing a series of interesting stories related to emotion and choice, Jad Abumrad came to the conclusion that, “one way to look at a gut feeling is that its kind of a short-hand average of all of this past wisdom.” (Quote is at 12:30)

Teacher Knowledge

I had a light bulb moment. As teachers, so much of our day is piecing gut feelings together. What separates a good teacher from a bad teacher is strong implicit knowledge of what good teaching looks like and how to implement it. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan L. Lytle refer to this as “teacher knowledge” in their work on teacher action research. Listening to the NPR piece on the reality of intuition, I was excited that there was neurological evidence to support the notion that what teachers know is particular to teachers and is important in educating children.

But then I thought, “oh, no!” This does not jive with all these “teacher effectiveness” buzzwords I have been hearing lately.

Or does it?

Teacher Effectiveness Confusion

My first experience with the Danielson framework was while working with a student teacher last spring. She came to me concerned about using “low-inference evidence” to support her work with our students who were emergent communicators with multiple disabilities. I immediately thought, “you want evidence of what my students say, only? Hmm, most of them are non-verbal… how’s this going to work?” The student teacher gave an example of grading student papers without knowing who they were, so that you would not be biased. I thought, “great, my students cannot write and definitely do not independently do worksheets.”

This was what I was thinking of as I combed through the New York City’s Department of Education (DOE)’s website for implementing the new teacher evaluation system based on the Danielson’s Framework for Teaching, also known as Advance. (Because everything needs to have its own name in NYC, can’t just be APPR like the rest of New York State.) I was looking for a better understanding and I cross-referenced the DOE’s info with the Danielson Group website and other web resources.

A Danielson Framework Surprise

I have to admit that I have come to the conclusion that Charlotte Danielson may not be as evil as we have been led to believe. It seems that its our state education departments and local school districts in their rush for accountability that may be corrupting the important work of documenting what good teachers know and do.

Shockingly, I have to say that this particular PowerPoint from the NYC DOE was actually quite helpful. I appreciated that their definition of low-inference included what students say AND do. I also got the impression that this was about improving administrators’ practices, as well as teachers. I went looking for evidence that teachers had to be robots teaching to a strict norm, but I only found it on district websites about “norming,” not in Danielson’s actually work, like here.

Teacher Knowledge and Danielson Working Together?

I started thinking: is Danielson’s work finally what we as teachers have been looking for in order to prove our implicit teacher knowledge? I have always felt good teachers should have nothing to fear about being observed; could this be a tool that could confirm that we are effective teachers?

What Low-Inference Really Means

It turns out low-inference does not just mean grading papers without knowing who the students are, but can be something like using a checklist during your lesson to document that students are meeting specific IEP objectives. Low-inference has come to have two meanings in education: low-inference observations of what our students are doing by teachers and administrators and low-inference observations of what teachers are doing by administrators.

Because I am a special education teacher, I initially thought that everything I do is high-inference, such as observing children’s movements and facial expressions and drawing conclusions, and I became defensive. Actually, everything I do in my teaching is a series of low-inference (ie. evidence-based) actions that over time have formed my intuition. This is exactly why experience counts in teaching. As teachers, we need to think about it as taking evidence-based action, which will provide low-inference evidence for administrators. We need to specifically identify the parts of our practice that causes us to form opinions and determine next steps.

To eliminate confusion though, I wished they would have just used a simple phrase like “objective evidence” instead of “low-inference evidence.” The definition of “inference” inherently means, “a conclusion or opinion that is formed because of known facts or evidence.” (Merrian-Webster Dictionary) Conclusion is in the word, and it is confusing as to whether there is supposed to be low conclusions or low evidence. A low “conclusion from evidence” evidence?

Support for Teacher Intuition

Initially, I associated the Danielson framework and teacher evaluations as an attempt to eliminate teacher intuition. Low-inference was another buzzword for rejecting teacher knowledge. But low-inference is about being specific, which I think we as educators really cannot fight. We can no longer simply say that our teacher knowledge is immeasurable, but we need to be sure that the tools that are being developed accurately reflect the murkiness of teaching young minds. We need to let our implicit teacher knowledge shine, by investing the time to understand the Danielson Framework of Teaching and use it to support our profession.

So I leave you with the two questions I have arrived at today:

1.)   Are the Danielson Frameworks of Teaching an accurate way to demonstrate implicit teacher knowledge?

2.)   How can we be sure that the Danielson Frameworks are used accurately given the complexities of teaching students with special needs?

I hope you can help me by sharing how you answer these questions and I will continue to blog as I shape my own answers.

It is time for all teachers to channel our innermost Captain James T. Kirks, because as rational as Spock was, he and the rest of the ship would have been lost without the gutsy Captain James T. Kirk in command.

Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on. – Captain James T. Kirk

Reflecting to Begin Again: Life of a Teacher

It is not until the new school comes creeping up that I feel I am really ready to reflect on the previous year. It takes a few nights of good sleep and no stress to put everything in perspective. When you’re teaching, everything is in the moment. Danielson may be looking at my lesson plan, but any real teacher knows, it’s all about how you handle everything in your classroom besides the lesson plan. Switching gears to reflecting is always tricky, but so important.

I remember in college, during my teacher prep program, how many times they stressed keeping a teaching journal. Several years in, I still cannot figure out how a teacher finds the time to do that. If I wasn’t actively seeking ways to improve my practice or planning, or researching social services for families, I was trying to get to a yoga class or meet up with friends to keep the work-life balance. I’m always jotting notes on my phone or sticking a post-it with one sentence in a folder, but a whole journal entry? Weekly?! Monthly?! Yikes.

What I have held myself to is writing an end of the year reflection. I finally sit back, take a breath and admire the work my students and team have done over the past 11 and half months. Reflection clears my mind, helps me set my goals for next year and gives me that itch to get back in the classroom and do it all over again, but 10 times better of course.

Since most of my students are non-verbal or have very limited communication, I feel I owe it to them to document all their work for prosperity. When you have the experience of being someone’s last teacher, going back and adding the moments together helps to explain why some kids get a shorter time in this world then others. That’s why its truly special education.

Challenges of Misclassification and Class Size

What makes teaching exciting is that every year you meet a new set of students, even if in a self-contained classroom you keep some students, the combination is never the same from one year to another. The school year prior to this past one was great with a slightly smaller class I felt like the data and organization queen. I was an experienced teacher hitting my stride. I feel best when I am working my hardest and everything starts to gel. Systems are in place, students are following routines and learning, paraprofessionals and therapists are enthusiastic about what they are seeing and becoming a part of it all.

This past year, I ran straight into 12 students who were all over the map in terms of their needs and learning styles. Data went out the window as I spent the fall struggling with classroom management. In special education, where not all learners are on the same cognitive or communicative level, that meant coming up with 12 individual systems. While teaching lessons and writing IEPs, I also had to spend time with each individual finding out what makes them tick and what would motivate them to buy into our classroom. Bonding is the most important part of classroom management, especially with students with significant disabilities. (Dr. Jan van Dijk’s work is so helpful in making connections.)

A big problem for teachers in New York City though is the number of students who are misclassified. So often, a 12:1:4 ratio classroom for children with the most significant, multiple disabilities becomes a catchall. (And yes, NYC(pg 24) puts 12 students who need the most individualized attention in one classroom.) Children who don’t quite fit anywhere else or who were placed there in kindergarten are never given the opportunity to move to a less restrictive environment. As a teacher, you get caught between trying to meet these more academic learners’ needs by focusing on specific emergent reading skills and leaving my other students who are working on early communication skills in the dust. Yes, you can do both, but with 12 kids its impossible to do it all well. I have training, I have tried to figure it out every minute that I’m not sleeping, and I have failed. I hate that feeling that I have failed even before I started because of the system.

My students with true multiple disabilities and complex medical issues needed my attention and it was being pulled in too many directions. These students who use wheelchairs need frequent repositioning and that is not something that can wait. Pressure sores are really important to avoid and nearly impossible to heal. It’s another thing that takes time with an individual student; especially when not all staff is comfortable working with medically fragile children it falls to me to look out for each child. It’s also my job to be sure that when a child is on a mat that the children who are ambulatory and have behavior issues are not hurting him or her! On top of that, the families that have children who are becoming significantly more medically fragile over the years also need my support.

Unexpected and Uncontrollable Interruptions

On top of a challenging mix of students, this year because of the many interruptions we never hit our grove until May and then we lost it by June. To start, Hurricane Sandy really brought our class to a screeching halt too early in the school year. Some students were out for up to two weeks and many had difficulty with their phones, so we could not find out if the families were okay. With District 75, students come from all over to our schools, so it was not guaranteed that just because our neighborhood was okay, that our students were. When students returned, it was like starting all over again to establish our routines.

           

And then in the middle of January the school year came to another abrupt stop when ATU Local 1181 of bus drivers went on strike. If you’ve followed this blog, you know my story. I actually had time to document it because I had almost no students who could make it to school. That my students lost 5 weeks of instruction due to politics, and that no one really cared because they were the students in special education, is still sickening to me. If you listen to administrators or politicians they refer it to as a couple of weeks, when it was 5 weeks, plus a vacation week before students got back to where they belonged. After an odd half of a February break, an early spring break and other events, we were never really able to get into a consistent flow the rest of the year.

Despite that, I did see growth in my students. Unlike some, I actually enjoy administering my end of year assessments. (We use the Brigance Developmental Inventory and the SANDI.) It’s stressful to sit down individually with each student with an erratic end of year calendar, but seeing a small improvement in one communication area, or fine motor skills, or maybe even math is so exciting. This year though, I felt remiss about where my students would have been if not for natural disasters and politics taking away almost 2 months of their school year. Would Jessie be reading full sentences? Would Dom be writing his last name too? Would Steven be making picture choices? Would Florentina be toilet trained? As teachers, there is so much that is beyond our control.

To Begin Again

But what’s beautiful about being a teacher is that every school year is a fresh start. One of the best parts of teaching is the automatic reset that happens over the summer, even if it’s a few short weeks for us in special education. What other career gives you an opportunity to come back to a new beginning every year? A new beginning to be the best teacher I can be and help my students achieve as much as they can. An opportunity to take the lessons from the previous years and set goals for what I’d like to do better. It’s why I can’t see myself leaving the classroom anytime soon.

            “The world is round and place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.” - Ivy Baker Priest

How Not To Thank a Teacher

Don't Recommend that a Teacher becomes an Administrator*

After helping a colleague or having my class observed by an outsider, I often find myself fielding a compliment that actually really irks me. 

“So when are you going to become an administrator?!”

Paraprofessionals from my own class and throughout the school, who know I enjoy working with my students, often come up to me and ask why I am not an administrator. For years they have seen the best teachers move up and out and I think they are confused about why I choose to stick around. It’s a huge compliment from them.

I know they mean it in a good way and I am flattered. But I am also one of those big picture thinkers and my mind sets off on why it is that the only way to recognize a good teacher is to make them an administrator, where most of their day will be spent not with students. Why can’t I just be a really good teacher and be recognized for that? I would eventually love a position as a teacher leader, but my school is just not structured that way yet.

My natural reply is to thank the giver of the compliment and then explain that I love what I do and I am happy where I am. I could not imagine spending my days not with my students. I enjoy the unique challenges of managing a classroom and that every school year is a puzzle that I slowly, but surely, put together as I structure opportunities for my students to learn from each other, themselves and me.

Not wanting to be an administrator is not knocking administrators. I appreciate that good administrators make space for teachers to do their best work. But I think that its important to realize that a teacher’s craft and an administrator’s craft are very different, even though they are both working in the best interest of students.

If we really want to thank teachers during National Teacher Appreciation Week, we need to think about how we can respect the particular talent of being able to teach a room full of young students.

Have you ever received this “compliment”? How does it make you feel? How have you replied?

*unless having a discussion on career paths

Alternate Assessment: Academic Learning for ALL

Let me start by saying that I am a big believer in Alternate Assessment. I think it’s important when the government passes laws like the No Child Left Behind Act that ALL truly means ALL. Now what I think of by all is probably different from what most think of as all. Most people do not know that students like mine exist; they are 1% of 1% of the population. These are students whose learning does not look like other 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders.

What pains me, particularly in New York State, is how we completely miss the point of alternate assessment when we start drafting guidelines that only include that students will “identify,” or “select,” to demonstrate their knowledge. My students cannot do that. But that does not mean we deny them access to academic knowledge.

In my first year as a lead teacher, I had the pleasure of working with six high school students with a range of multiple disabilities and complex healthcare needs. The warnings came from the beginning of the year, “watch out you’re going to have to do High School MCAS,” because of how demanding the paperwork would be. I never expected how much it would improve how I collect data and look at adapting materials for my students.

MCAS-Alt is Massachusetts’ alternate assessment. Each state is required by the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) to administer some form of alternate assessment to students with special needs who cannot participate in traditional exams. The goal is to demonstrate that all students have access to the general education curriculum. Students should have age appropriate access, which means they should be accessing material that is based on their chronological grade level. For example, you might thinking a 14 year old with multiple disabilities would love reading Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar (for the 14^th year of their life) because its simple and has bright colors, but really they are just as interested in the pictures and vocabulary in a non-fiction book on the Wright Brothers designing the first airplane.

After reviewing Massachusetts’ Science Standards, I decided that an interdisciplinary unit on "Inventions" would encompass a wide-range of motivating, multi-sensory learning experiences while collecting data for MCAS-Alt. What’s different than New York state is that I was collecting data on my students behaviors that enabled them to interact with grade-level content, rather than completing State-designed tasks. For one student, it was whether he was independently activating a switch to turn on a battery we constructed out of lemons. Another student was working on controlling her arm movements so that she could collect the materials we needed to construct the battery or other simple circuits that we built with the Life Skills’ teacher. We took field trips to a small local airport lead by a student’s father and the Boston Science Museum, where we a got a lesson in static electricity and the biggest smile I have ever seen from a student who is cortically blind and has very limited control over any body movements. Measuring their engagement and emerging communication skills easily aligned with their IEP goals. At the end of the unit, I constructed portfolios full of pictures and data charts that had meaning.

Students with complex healthcare needs just do not have time to waste on meaningless assessment tasks; two of my students passed away in less than a year after I taught this unit. I am at peace knowing that I gave them the fullest academic experience and at their funerals their parents specifically mentioned these scientific adventures. This is the power of alternate assessment when done right.

I’m sharing with you my experience with alternate assessment, because it was my hope that with the Common Core State Standards 50 states would take the opportunity to come together, rather than running in different directions and wasting energy doing the same alignments 50 times over. I will continue to share with you as I do more research into where alternate assessment has been and where it is going, including who should be participating. To start, here are New York State’s current guidelines. Two consortia have formed to design a common alternate assessment aligned to the Common Core, but New York State seems determined to continue to go it on its own judging from its current website on alternate assessment. Disappointingly, the draft now posted on the State Department of Ed website looks exactly like the Alternate Assessment (NYSAA) from previous years.

I’ll be back with more on this soon. Please comment below and share your own experiences with Alt Assessment.

The End of the Return from Bus Strike Honeymoon

Today officially marked the end of the lovely honeymoon period after the end of the bus strike when my students were so surprised and excited to be back in school that they listened to whatever I asked them to do. Today they would not. It felt like a day in September today, not March.

It started yesterday with the tickling, Juan would not stop touching and tickling anyone who came in his path, which set off all of the boys trying to tickle each other. Various consequences were threaten, it just would not stop, no one earned choice time. Today, Juan refused to go to his reading group and insisted on following the Physical Therapist (PT) around the room. I had to resort to taking his prized Dora the Explorer paddleball from his backpack. He immediately leapt to where he needed to be. Later in the day during Speech, I caught him lifting his shirt and making inappropriate gestures at the speech teacher’s back, which is usually a rare behavior for him. Since he did complete the rest of his work, he narrowly managed to earn choice time today.

Adama who did not come to school at all during the bus strike, has developed this unstoppable attitude. Now when I separate her from the group, after she hits or kicks her classmates, she talks back in order to continue to disrupt the group. She is more violent than she had been, in the past she had just been impulsive and accidently hurting her friends. Positive reinforcement is not working and I am going to have to come up with something new.

But the saddest for me was dealing with Florentina. Florentina is a student that has the most intensive sensory needs that I have ever seen. She uses a wheelchair because she walks unstably on her tippy toes. She is verbal, but speaks in memorized phrases. When she started in my classroom three years ago, every morning she would have a full blown, violent tantrum upon entering the classroom. I still have small scar marks from her pinching and scratching. People who visited my classroom back then are shocked to know that she is the same girl; her behavior has improved so much because of a consistent routine and the bond that we have formed. Then she missed almost 5 weeks of school because of the bus strike and an additional week due to doctors’ appointments and a cold.

Today Florentina lost it. When the Physical Therapist quickly transferred her, forgetting her old ways, to a new classroom chair that we received while she was out, it triggered a tantrum. She dangerously tried to slide herself out of the chair and hit or pinched anyone who came near, while crying and yelling. This is why you did not keep a child with special needs out of school for 5 weeks. It took all my attention from my 11 other students to prevent a full meltdown. I even gave her the marker that she had been fixated on, just because I knew how hard the transition was for her and that I could phase out the behavior another day. The crying continued as I tried to lead my small reading group on the other side of the room. Finally, 20 minutes later she calmed down enough to participate in a small group activity. This incident was not only hard on her, but disrupted everyone else in the classroom.

Math was also quite the challenge with Adama refusing to not touch everyone and everything. Everyone else’s new thing is to rest their heads on the table and feign tiredness. By the time choice time rolled around and I was trying to write notes home to parents, chaos had enveloped us with everyone complaining about everyone else. One or two kids having a bad day can quickly wear on everyone else in the room.

So the honeymoon is over, it’s time to revamp my behavior plans and schedule a few yoga classes afterschool. How long will it take Adama and Florentina to recover from this? Why do my other students and staff have to be distracted by their behaviors? As teachers, we welcome our students, close our doors and settle down to business, it’s just what we do. It just pains me that this loss of instruction was something that was unfairly done to my students and did not need to happen.

*Pseudonyms are used to protect identify of students

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.