Academic Support for Kids with Concussions?
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Anonymous
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When my child received a concussion, I gave the school the doctor notes including an ACE (Acute Concussion Evaluation) Care Plan that described her need to stay home for now, then resume 1/2 days after she is symptom free. Many hours of instructional time has been lost but all the school cares about is the paperwork with the "Return to Play" protocol. Seriously? My child is not being educated nor is anyone helping to track and collect missing assignments but they are hounding me about the protocol of how to return to school sports?
It seems that our school is well educated on the dangers of returning kids to sports, but fall short on having a clear and concise protocol on how to help kids academically that are experiencing a long term medical condition that interferes with their ability to attend school. Does MCPS have a protocol on how to academically support kids with concussions? Are there services my child should be receiving? |
Anonymous
| What kind of supports are you looking for right now? If she's supposed to stay home right now, and then only go to half days, I'm fairly certain she's also not supposed to be doing school work during those resting periods. How long do you expect she'll be out of school/going half days? If it's more than a couple of days, it might make more sense to wait until she's ready to return to school, and then figure out a plan with her teachers/school for how to get her caught up. |
Anonymous
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Our school worked with kids individually since some kids were out for a week and others out for significantly longer. It's no different than working with kids who have a range of health issues. Have you met with the guidance counselor to work out a plan?
The return to play protocol was just put in place 2 years ago. At our school it was the coach and to a lesser extent the AD focused on that. The academics were totally separate. |
Anonymous
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/studentservices/schooling/instruction/index.aspx |
Anonymous
A child recuperating from a significant concussion isn't only supposed to avoid physical activity, they're also supposed to avoid/limit cognitive activity. Instructional time at home is completely contrary to that. |
Anonymous
There is a reduction in hours when a student is enrolled. The core classes - English, math, science and history - are limited to 1.5 hours each a week for a total of 6 hours. Yes, the assumption is that students do work outside of the 6 hours, but work load may also be reduced to fit the student's individual case. For example, a student can be exempted from certain tasks. However, keep in mind that when instruction is "abbreviated," final exams are often more challenging. I'd like to know if the doctor stated that the child should receive NO instruction while recuperating before transitioning back. If so, then the concussion is very severe and the school should determine how to best proceed at that point. |
Anonymous
| Kids aren't supposed to even watch tv for weeks after a concussion, so of course their cognitive activities/learning must be put on hold. |
Anonymous
| Keep on top of them. MCPS talks a good talk about concussions, but handles them poorly. I got a concussion at work via my duties as a classroom teacher. Not only did the school nurse fail to recognize the signs of a concussion, but MCPS would not allow me to return on restricted duty. At the same time, I was bombarded with emails and "care packages" of student work to grade. |
Anonymous
I fail to see how this is MCPS' problem. If you were hurt ON THE JOB, you should have filed for workman's comp and then had your doctor sign off on medical leave. Your school would have then been responsible for a LT sub. Did you follow the protocol? |
Anonymous
Yes, I did and the doctor I was sent to see via the Workman's comp program certified me for restricted duty. You have to see their doc to get your full pay. If you want to see your own doc, your Workman's comp pay is 80%. And LT sub is a designation that doesn't always kick in automatically when a teacher goes on leave. It's not LT leave until the 10th day. Until then, the teacher is contractually responsible for sub plans and grading. I couldn't even read at all for the first week due to the concussion. The second week and afterwards, it have me a headache to do it for more than 10-15 minutes. |
Anonymous
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Is your child in HS.
Assuming she is... she is only responsible for "necessary" work. The school is also only responsible for "necessary" information. So anything that does not build on itself, you child most likely will not learn. For example, if there were in the middle of reading a book, she will just start again with the next book. It is frustrating. Nobody will track the assignments for you. Meet with each teacher and request a list of everything your child missed. Then mark each assignment "necessary" or "excused". For the necessary, you child will need to meet with the teacher after school to get up to speed. My son just quit his sport for the rest of the season (which is unreasonable, in my opinion... because really these kids need an outlet, especially dealing with a concussion) In addition to doing all the new work... he spent 2 weeks getting caught up in Math, 2 in Science, English was just books and papers so most was just excused, History... the teacher spent a week after school quickly going over what he missed, but it did not build on itself so we just let it go. All in all, after he was cleared to return to school full time it took about 2 months to catch up. It sucks, no doubt. |
Anonymous
What do you think the school should have done differently? Should they have taken 4 months to get him caught up? Should they have doubled his workload once he was deemed "recovered"? If you want him to read that book he missed in English, why not require him to read it over the summer? |
Anonymous
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^^^^
I think an educational specialist should have been assigned to create a return to school program. They should have received a list of missed assignments with the ones marked as necessary vs. not necessary. Trying to email 6 different teachers and get a list of missed assignments only created animosity between my child and the teachers, it hurt their relationship. The teachers don't understand concussions and were less than kind when asked to provide a list of missed assignments. They were also not very happy about having to teach after school all the work he missed. I know they have teachers that go to the homes of sick kids. Maybe somebody like that could have taught my son his missed work. I think it put stress on a teacher that is already stressed and they probably need to get somewhere after school but my son was told by the school to meet with the teachers after school to make up the work. I don't really care about the missed book or any of the missed assignment... except Math and Science. I was glad we were not doing a language. History and Literature... most kids forget 80% of that stuff a month after they take the test. I think grades are relative and often subjective. So I don't really take this stuff too seriously. What I do think is important is the relationship of the student to the teacher. Being that kid that made your life harder, turns into a negative relationship with the teacher and that makes the rest of the year, every day hard. Concussions have an emotional aspect to them, so a teacher that is being mean and rude to a student, normally... I would tell my son to suck it up. But he was crying at the drop off a hat for 2 months. It had nothing to do with him being overly sensitive, he had a bruised brain and he was unable to control his emotions, A normal teacher is not equipped to deal with that situation. Since my son's concussion was from a car accident, there was also a broken leg. Getting around was really hard, so sometimes he was 5 minutes late to his "after school" meeting and the teacher would spend the next 10 minutes lecturing about how important her time is. It was really a debacle for about 4 months of his life that was made harder not easier by the school. |
Anonymous
This information is somewhat incorrect. The student is not limited to 6 hours a week of instruction -- that is the minimum amount of instruction the school must provided. If the child needs more instruction, then the school system must provide more. It is true that workload can be abbreviated. How a child will do on the final exam depends on the amount of repetition a child needs. You should know that final exams can be waived, or administered in smaller sections. It is likely that the school will tell you neither of those options are possible, but if you have a doctor's note supporting the need to limit cognitive activity and/or have more frequent breaks, then the school MUST accommodate you, even if the test is a secure exam. In MCPS, my MS student was excused from at least one semester final (Algebra, I think) and had another (French) administered over two days, with additional breaks. Also, under the law, the school system MUST give you access to all your classes. Disabled kids (and a concussion is a disability until you recover) have a right to the same kind of access to coursework as non-disabled kids, and if your student is disabled and in a gifted or accelerated program, they have a right to continue to access that as well. The 4 core classes are not some kind of maximum the school is obliged to provide. If your chid is taking a course load that includes more than the 4 core classes, and you want to continue that, then the school system must find a way to accommodate you. Yes, it's true that the "Interim Instructional Services" rarely have teachers that can support outside those 4 core classes, but if your child wants to continue a language, for example, then the school must find a way to accommodate by giving the work and tests, having the teacher re-teach your child if necessary, etc. (It's a separate and different question if carrying an extra class like French is good for the concussion recovery and/or whether doing a year of a language while recovering from concussion creates a shaky foundation for the future classes, but those are issues for YOU to decide, not the school. If you want to continue the class, it is your student's right to continue.) |
Anonymous
Hi OP, my child had a serious concussion and was in and out of school for the better part of 6 months. Still, my DC was able to continue her studies and finished all her classes with good grades. I agree completely with you that school systems only just now have a plan in place for dealing with concussions from a sports/PE perspective (i.e. return to physical activity) and still have NO system-wide guidance for the return of students to cognitive activity. I think school teachers know almost nothing about the cognitive problems concussed students may face. CDC has some good materials for teachers and school officials, which we gave to all DD's teachers. But, you know the drill, some teachers are great and read the material and adjusted. Others were terrible, and thought my DD was faking (even though she had been a straight A student and really had no reason to "fake") or thought that accommodating my DD was somehow unfair to others, or thought that our DD simply wasn't smart enough anymore to continue in accelerated classes, or just thought that DD was extra work they didn't want to do. Some teachers took the medical directive to "limit unnecessary work" as a personal insult. We had one teacher tell us in a 504 meeting that nothing she assigned was unnecessary and therefore she couldn't excuse DD from anything. Of course, we thought having to answer questions in writing at the end of a textbook chapter was unnecessary if DD read the chapter, but the teacher thought it "necessary". <insert eye roll here> What we didn't get, that we should've asked for, is a clear case manager for DD's academics. That fell on me (DD wasn't able to do at all) -- to collect and track all her assignments. It would've been more effective if she had been provided a special education resource person to liaise with her and the teachers and track everything. A counselor was assigned as the 504 meeting chair, but she was totally ineffective as any kind of case manager, probably because she did not have the right background. We are in MCPS, and TBH, our experience was a nightmare. We fought often with teachers and school administrators. We hired an educational advocate, then an attorney, then wrote letters to the head of special education and the countywide 504 supervisor. Here is a short version of what we learned: 1) On the concussion recovery -- For us, the serious concussion required careful management of cognitive activity. DD wasn't even able to attend a full day of school without getting headaches and feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. What worked for us was to pull her out of school entirely for a period of time. At first, she spent a solid week of absolutely no cognitive activity -- no friends to visit, no TV, no reading, no music, no trips outside the house. Then, we slowly returned her to academic work, having her work at home on material the teachers sent home. In this way, she could work for 20 mins and then rest, and we could expand the amount of time that she could work. Also, frankly, she could make up more work faster at home, than trying to go back to school. Then we returned her to school one class at a time. By the end of 6 months, she was back to school full time with accommodations such as extra-time, frequent breaks, ability to change seating in the classroom to manage sensory symptoms, etc. You should do some reading and talk with your doctor about managing cognitive activity. At the time our DD was concussed, the medical recommendation called for this kind of strict rest period as part of the recovery. But, more recent studies (by DeGioia from the Children's SCORE clinic) suggest that the strict cognitive rest might not be the most beneficial way to recover. 2) On the law -- We used the ACE plan (any medical note from a doctor will suffice) to ask for a 504 plan from the school. This is your right. Disabled students are entitled to accommodation under IDEA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. and the Americans with Disabilities Act. For reasons I still don't understand, our school fought us on accommodating DD. She was in a magnet program, and at first, they tried to convince us that she just had to go back to her homeschool. For many reasons, we didn't think that was appropriate. The school dragged feet on holding a 504 meeting. Teachers refused to implement the 504. Eventually, we gave up and asked for Interim Instructional Services for awhile, but the teacher often didn't show up and when she did, she wasn't qualified to teach some of the coursework (magnet classes and Algebra, particularly). I tutored DC on my own, I hired an Algebra tutor who was able to quickly get DD back on track in math. We also hired an educational advocate, and then an attorney. Finally, I wrote a letter to the Head of Special Education and the Section 504 Supervisor. These last two people were the most effective recourse. As supervisors, they understood that the principal had F'd up massively and that we could sue. Literally, the day after I wrote our letter, the principal came to me and reversed herself and anything we asked for was provided. In MCPS, I think the Director of Special Ed has changed, but the Section 504 supervisor is the same, Steve Neff, and you can find his email on the MCPS website. FWIW, our DD's concussion never got so bad that we thought she needed "specialized instruction," so we never asked for an IEP, but that was something we could've accessed if we thought it was necessary. 3) The specific kinds of accommodations DD got -- (in no particular order) -- Interim Instructional Services, cutting some of the workload, ability to reschedule work, frequent breaks, extra time, ability to change seating in the classroom, reduced testing (I pulled her from PARCC and MAP tests and other quizzes and tests were cut from class), ability to wear sunglasses or a baseball hat to manage sensory overload, flash pass to the nurse when DD was feeling bad, use of a computer for writing, deadline extensions, ability to get and turn in materials electronically, ability to return to school 1 class at a time while still maintaining IIS for the other classes, ability to dictate answers instead of writing, etc. Eventually, the school even offered to allow DD to finish work over the summer, but we really wanted to have a clear end to the whole fiasco and a clean summer to recuperate. I think the main lesson I learned from all this was that I should have either gone over the principal's head more quickly or I should have filed a complaint or suit more quickly. FWIW, filing a state complaint is easy to do and forces MCPS to "examine" their system that you have complained about, meanwhile you are protected from retaliation (by law). Honestly, it would have been a service to the school system if I had filed a complaint.... this is something they really need to figure out. |