I had an interesting conversation with one of my co-workers
and I asked her why does everyone seem so disgruntled at work? She explained
that everyone is bitter due to past treatments.
The conversation came about when I noticed that it was approaching time
to leave, but there were still people waiting in line at school registration. The line started outside in the school
parking lot. At the entrance door was a
security guard who waited for a call over the radio that informed him of how
many people in that line he could allow through and into the band room where
the parents were to wait in a different
line until we called them to our table.
It was near time to leave and the band room was filled with parents. Every seat was taken. This was the third day of registration and
people were entering the building in droves.
The general consensus between the other teacher’s aides who worked with
me was that when the clock struck seven p.m. they would leave with no regard to
the people in line or in the band room.
Ms. Ware explained to me that there would be no overtime paid to us for
extra work and that home was an hour away; therefore volunteer work was not an
option. Mrs. Hernandez said that she
would consider volunteering her time, if she was not treated so poorly in the
past. It was mentioned that she would be
assigned to a one on one with a student.
Aides assigned to one on ones
were given a single student to shadow from the first period to the last. That aide was responsible for getting the
student to class and assisting that student in whatever way was necessary for
the student’s Individual Education Plan that was created by a team of
professionals.
My personal thoughts
regarding these teams are mixed.
Obviously I hesitate in making broad accusations and statements so with
that disclaimer; I will say that in my personal and professional experience,
the entire beast that I will call special education needs to be revamped. First, I’ll start with my personal
experience. I have a child who has a
hearing deficiency that came from a sickness during the toddler years. The
sickness caused a fever that apparently damaged the developing hairs inside of
the ear. Such damage is
irreparable. My child is a three sport
athlete, reads well, loves science, and does well in math. By all comparisons
at worst she is an average child. Due to
the hearing issue in the right ear, it was determined that an Individual
Educational Plan (IEP) was needed to give accommodations. The accommodations involved seating
arrangements in the front of the class or closes to the teacher and to the
right side so that most audio could come at her from the left side. With that being said, I found myself over
the last three years of elementary school literally fighting with professional
teams regarding in class treatment. In
my experience with my daughter, the professional team seems to do everything in
their power to cripple my daughter instead of empowering her to
self-advocate. The go overboard with
services even at one time suggesting that they force teachers to use a
microphone in class to assist my daughter’s hearing. This was far overboard as she had damage in
one ea. When she played sports she does not use her hearing aids. When she stands in center field, I’ve never
saw her softball coach have issues adjusting her when he calls to her from the
dugout. I say all of this to say that
despite the special education team’s insisting that my daughter have a resource
class, microphones, and special ear pieces, she does well enough without them
and she only needs two accommodations: sit in front of the class and a teacher
that can keep the classroom quiet or at least free from disruption. I have many
more examples of how the special ed team in this district does more harm than
good.
Mrs. Hernandez was very unhappy with the
assignment and said that she would try to fight it. As a one on one, she would
have to follow a student to every class and sit in that class to assist that
student. She did not like the fact that
she would was assigned to the student at the bequest of a parent’s request that
the one on one teacher’s aide have the ability of bilingual speech. She believed that sense the student’s IEP did
not mandate a bilingual one on one, she should have additional pay for her
services. She felt that she was given
this assignment because she has a special ability and that was some sort of
discrimination. She felt that if she was
given an assignment based on having a skill that other aides do not have, then
she should be compensated financially. So
for this reason, she planned to fight the assignment.
When it
was 7:00, everyone at my table left, so did I.
Freshman Orientation
Today the Aides punched the clock and walked to the
lounge. I joined them there and did some
research on the computer. Then I made
some hotel reservations for my son who was invited to Texas for a baseball show
case. We had some interesting
conversations some of which I found myself getting involved. First we talked about police officers. Apparently there was an incident in St. Louis
where some kid was in a fight with a police officer. Ms. Thompson started to talk about that
children should submit to the authority of the police. Ms. Gomez the registrar came in for a few
minutes and expressed her worries relating to her grandchildren regarding
police harassment. I shared the
information that I told my children. I
told them not to talk back to the police officer and do not explain things to
them. I told them to first ask “Am I
under arrest?” If the answer is yes,
then they are only obligated to state their name and where they lived. If they are pulled over for a traffic
violation, they do not need to get out of the car. I also told my sons that if they are involved
with a police officer, turn on the video recording of their cell phone and
inform the police that they are recording the conversation. The should ask for the policeman’s badge
number and inform the police that when the recording stops the video is
automatically sent to his online drop box account. Ms. Thompson’s thought that what I told my
sons were extreme and intimidating to the police. She did, however agree that they should do
whatever the police officer asks. I
shared two stories. One story was about
my oldest son who was approached by a police.
The officer asked him if he had a gun.
He said no and continued to walk away.
The police asked him to stop, he did.
Then he asked the police officer if he was under arrest and if so the
charge. The police officer did not
answer the question and apprehended my son.
They got into a scuffle. In the
end, the judge dismissed the charges of resisting arrest due to the fact that
there was no probable cause for arrest.
I shared with them a second story about a day when my youngest son and I
were heading home in a taxi from the cinema.
The taxi was stopped by a police officer. Then there were four other cars that came and
surrounded us. They pulled out their
guns, made my younger son who was 12 years old get out of the taxi, lay face
down on the ground and then they hand cuffed him. I had just purchased him a new wooden baseball
bat just before we went to the movie while we were at the mall. They had me get out of the car and they went
through all of my personal belongings – a briefcase. They said that they drew their weapons
because of the baseball bat. They said
that there was a recent robbery of a taxi driver in the area and that is why
they stopped us; coupled with the idea that it “looked like,” my son was trying
to slouch in the back seat. After I
started to refer to police officers by badge number, they changed their aggressive
tone to a more apologetic one. “We just
came from the movie theater Star number 3218,” I remember saying. All of these things and more happened within a
few months.
Not by coincidence, my
daughter had her softball bat taken from her by a police officer. She had the bat in a softball bag that was a
back pack. The handle of the bat was
visible and because of that, the police officer, holding his gun in hand,
called my daughter to him while she walked from the high school along 5th
avenue. He told her to give him the bat
and she did. It took me a month to get
back the softball bat. I was told that
the officer took the bat because he was afraid that someone would take it from
her and use it for a weapon. I am over
40 years old and I cannot say with much certainty that I have any respect for a
police officer.
Mrs. Hernandez asked
me if it made me felt safe because the treatment that my three children received
from police officers was strict evidence that the police officers were
protecting the neighborhood. Ms.
Thompson held firm that the police officers had the guns and for that reason
alone, we should simply do whatever they ask.
I told Mrs. Hernandez that W.E.B Dubois once said that the police system
was designed in the South to control slaves.
This is no less far from the truth in the North. The police system in America is in no way
designed to do anything more than intimidate, frustrate and impose American
racism on blacks and Hispanics alike.
We had another conversation about the new contract. Ms. Thompson pretended to be knowledgeable
about the contract. It was asked what
happens to sick and personal days when or if one retires. She said that the contract allows us to have
our personal days and they will pay us full rate for them, but they will pay us
$35 for each sick day. I commented that
that was a loss of money it was better to use all of the sick days, and then
retire or resign. Then Ms. Thompson said
that we would get paid all of our sick days up to $2000. By then, I realized that she didn’t know what
she spoke of and I ignored the rest of the conversation.
When Ms. Willis entered, the conversation of her assignment
from yesterday took command. Yesterday,
she was given a female freshman student who was dealing with down-syndrome. Ms. Willis was the student’s one on one aide
during the freshman orientation. The
student later was assigned to Trainable Mentally Handicap classes. The wording
has changed suddenly to TST – but no one knows what TST means. Ms.
Willis told her story about how the girl was resistant to participate in the
freshman orientation activities. She did
not want to enter certain rooms, or walk down certain hallways at certain
times. She did not want to write and she
became at one point aggressive enough to hit Ms. Willis’s hand. The conversation went on to critique the
decision of bringing the student to school on an orientation day where
mainstream freshmen were walking through the building on scavenger hunts,
forming groups and teams for various competitions. It was obvious to Ms. Willis that the
activities and the environment were not good or safe for the girl or the
mainstream students who had to come into contact with her. Then the conversation veered into Ms. Willis’s
lack of training. In fact, she had not
been given any special training neither had she been advised on what to do with
a child dealing with down-syndrome. She
felt helpless.
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