Mcps Rara educator KICKED AUTISTIC elementary student

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is wild. I am an elementary school
arts teacher who teaches everyone in the school, including kids with autism and nonverbal. I would 100% never kick a child. But I would 100% definitely have a Diet Pepsi on my desk after lunch. I think parents have an unrealistic sense of what a school looks like.

As an arts teacher, you might not be seeing the most challenging situations. I know at my kids' school, paraeducators often float to students during specials. You have a very different environment than the home room.

At our elementary, all kids of all ages are dropped off at their specials — no teacher, no para. So kids with autism, developmental delays, ODD, and more. No adult stays with them other than the art/music/PE teacher. My job would be so much easier with another adult in the room.

Wow, that’s a lot. Is it a classic autism program? I know at our school the paras travel with the kids for specials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is wild. I am an elementary school
arts teacher who teaches everyone in the school, including kids with autism and nonverbal. I would 100% never kick a child. But I would 100% definitely have a Diet Pepsi on my desk after lunch. I think parents have an unrealistic sense of what a school looks like.

As an arts teacher, you might not be seeing the most challenging situations. I know at my kids' school, paraeducators often float to students during specials. You have a very different environment than the home room.

At our elementary, all kids of all ages are dropped off at their specials — no teacher, no para. So kids with autism, developmental delays, ODD, and more. No adult stays with them other than the art/music/PE teacher. My job would be so much easier with another adult in the room.

That sounds like a disaster unless your school aggressively seeks alternative placements.

Where do the 1:1s go during that time? Surely some kids must have 1:1s in your school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is wild. I am an elementary school
arts teacher who teaches everyone in the school, including kids with autism and nonverbal. I would 100% never kick a child. But I would 100% definitely have a Diet Pepsi on my desk after lunch. I think parents have an unrealistic sense of what a school looks like.

As an arts teacher, you might not be seeing the most challenging situations. I know at my kids' school, paraeducators often float to students during specials. You have a very different environment than the home room.

At our elementary, all kids of all ages are dropped off at their specials — no teacher, no para. So kids with autism, developmental delays, ODD, and more. No adult stays with them other than the art/music/PE teacher. My job would be so much easier with another adult in the room.

That sounds like a disaster unless your school aggressively seeks alternative placements.

Where do the 1:1s go during that time? Surely some kids must have 1:1s in your school.

Would love to know the name of that school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This threat is wild. What shocks the most is people with 2 or more kids with significant issues. Then blame the school for issues that arise during the day as staff cares for their kids. Why don’t keep doing this?

What do you expect parents with multiple kids with special needs to do?

use effective birth control after knowledge of the special needs of the first child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is wild. I am an elementary school
arts teacher who teaches everyone in the school, including kids with autism and nonverbal. I would 100% never kick a child. But I would 100% definitely have a Diet Pepsi on my desk after lunch. I think parents have an unrealistic sense of what a school looks like.

As an arts teacher, you might not be seeing the most challenging situations. I know at my kids' school, paraeducators often float to students during specials. You have a very different environment than the home room.

At our elementary, all kids of all ages are dropped off at their specials — no teacher, no para. So kids with autism, developmental delays, ODD, and more. No adult stays with them other than the art/music/PE teacher. My job would be so much easier with another adult in the room.

That sounds like a disaster unless your school aggressively seeks alternative placements.

Where do the 1:1s go during that time? Surely some kids must have 1:1s in your school.

Would love to know the name of that school.

I doubt we'll get that, but I'm curious, too. I've never heard of an elementary school in MCPS where the paraeducators don't accompany the students to specials. That's usually where they bring in more support when there's a class with multiple kids with behaviors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This threat is wild. What shocks the most is people with 2 or more kids with significant issues. Then blame the school for issues that arise during the day as staff cares for their kids. Why don’t keep doing this?

What do you expect parents with multiple kids with special needs to do?

use effective birth control after knowledge of the special needs of the first child.

Honestly get off the forum. What another family decides to do is none of your business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This threat is wild. What shocks the most is people with 2 or more kids with significant issues. Then blame the school for issues that arise during the day as staff cares for their kids. Why don’t keep doing this?

What do you expect parents with multiple kids with special needs to do?

use effective birth control after knowledge of the special needs of the first child.

Nice. Such willingness to say the quiet part out loud on a topic you obviously know nothing about.

[Anonymous]

MCPS ain’t equipped for no food stealer!

[Anonymous]

I work in special education. I have worked as a paraprofessional and honestly, it was a horrific job. You are looked down upon as a para because most do not have any experience or education for the job. You can literally walk off the street, apply for the job and be given it. I furthered my education and experience and I am not a SPED teacher. The paras where I work are quite questionable. I would not leave them to watch my dog, let alone children. They have no patience, no experience, smell like weed and do not even seem to like children. I get it though. We can not set the bar high for paras when we do not even have teachers. I have no solution but I am aware of the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in special education. I have worked as a paraprofessional and honestly, it was a horrific job. You are looked down upon as a para because most do not have any experience or education for the job. You can literally walk off the street, apply for the job and be given it. I furthered my education and experience and I am not a SPED teacher. The paras where I work are quite questionable. I would not leave them to watch my dog, let alone children. They have no patience, no experience, smell like weed and do not even seem to like children. I get it though. We can not set the bar high for paras when we do not even have teachers. I have no solution but I am aware of the problem.

There's some low-hanging fruit here. Full-time MCPS paraeducator positions are more desirable than a lot of positions in child care, largely due to the benefits they come with.

Shifting more paraeducator positions into permanent positions with benefits would attract better candidates and improve retention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an MCPS training issue. Clearly their staff haven’t been trained on crisis intervention.

Paraeducators receive very limited training. This is particularly problematic given the high turnover in the "critical staffing" paraeducator positions that don't receive benefits.

This particular case was probably the result of a poor safety culture combined with insufficient staffing.

Absolutely. And yet, MCPS refuses to acknowledge this as an issue and tells parents staff receives sufficient training and that they have things covered. There’s no accountability and these kids and their families end up suffering.

To be fair, MCPS has to be cagey because there are so many litigious parents who will sue MCPS at the drop of a hat. I’m a lawyer and rule number one is to admit to nothing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow that sounds pretty bad.

When first seeing the title, I was willing to get the paraeducator the benefit of the doubt. Where something might've been incidental contact and blown out of proportion. And not to offend anyone but being identified as Special Ed can be a very wide spectrum and for a variety of reasons.

But to be actually be able to kick a kid in the chest seems to be pretty deliberate.

No injury reported.

My guess is the para was sitting in a chair and she pushed the kid away with her foot when he grabbed her drink (which she absolutely should not have had in the classroom).

This is why you shouldn't bring in minimum wage untrained people off the street to care for disabled students.

Why not?

It was soda.

Are teachers prohibited from having soda?

No, but they obviously shouldn't have it in the classroom in front of students. Come on.

That isn’t reasonable.

Teachers can have soda in front of students. Some teachers have coffee or tea. Even energy drinks. This is ok.

This. Parents can be so unreasonable. With young students, she should have put her soda out of reach of the kids. No excuse for kicking a kid. Although I’m guessing she put her leg out to stop the kid and kicked him accidentally but even that is inexcusable. You need to stop kid with your hands not with your feet

This was an elementary school classroom. Soda was probably prohibited in the cafeteria, much less the classrooms themselves. Having soda out in class was obviously going to be a trigger for behaviors.

This was terrible judgement on the paraeducator's part. The kick (which I also suspect was more of a blocking move rather than a kick) was a split-second decision. Yes, an awful mistake, but I'm more inclined to be forgiving of the split-second mistake here than the conscious decision to introduce an unnecessary trigger into the classroom.

A split second decision that was done with enough force that caused a vulnerable child to fall to the ground. The woman yelled no for crying out loud. She had time to think through this. Would you be so forgiving if this happened to your child?

It doesn't take much for my kids to fall to the ground. Running into a stationary leg/foot put up for blocking would easily cause them to fall to the ground.

And the time between a trigger, saying no, and a result is *very* often less than the amount of time to think something through. She thought through bringing the soda into the classroom, but she almost certainly didn't have time to think through her reaction to the students' natural response.

I doubt you have a young child with ASD with significant behavioral challenges. I think most parents that do could easily imagine this scenario. And they learn, and are taught, to avoid triggers in the first place because of how quickly things can escalate.

You sound like you’re paid by MCPS. Are you? Because anyone with sense would know the way to prevent this isn’t by eliminating the soda. The way to prevent this is to TRAIN THE F@CKING STAFF YOU BLOODY IDIOT!!

Calm down first of all. And believe it or not but there are parents who disagree with you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an MCPS training issue. Clearly their staff haven’t been trained on crisis intervention.

Paraeducators receive very limited training. This is particularly problematic given the high turnover in the "critical staffing" paraeducator positions that don't receive benefits.

This particular case was probably the result of a poor safety culture combined with insufficient staffing.

Absolutely. And yet, MCPS refuses to acknowledge this as an issue and tells parents staff receives sufficient training and that they have things covered. There’s no accountability and these kids and their families end up suffering.

To be fair, MCPS has to be cagey because there are so many litigious parents who will sue MCPS at the drop of a hat. I’m a lawyer and rule number one is to admit to nothing

That's a ridiculous reason when the legal system is so stacked against kids in Maryland. You can't win against the school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is wild. I am an elementary school
arts teacher who teaches everyone in the school, including kids with autism and nonverbal. I would 100% never kick a child. But I would 100% definitely have a Diet Pepsi on my desk after lunch. I think parents have an unrealistic sense of what a school looks like.

Would you put that Diet Pepsi somewhere a child might be less likely to see it though? That’s where this adult went wrong. She had her whole meal out and the kids gathered around. I have a hard time believing this para didn’t know that her food and drink wouldn’t appeal to the children.

Happy to know you wouldn’t kick a kid over it!

You’re the biggest idiot on this thread.

God help us all if you’re an educator because damn are you rude as hell. Do you talk to people like this in person, too?

I've observed that the rudest people in MCPS threads on SPED tend to be a small group of elderly posters who ultimately want to kick students with special needs out of public schools. They pretend to be supportive of SPED until they reveal their real goal is segregation.

100%

And honestly as a parent of a child with high support needs, I can recognize that public schools aren’t always appropriate but the district makes it impossible for us to get our kids what they need without trying every single placement and putting teachers who may not be able to deal with behaviors/needs in an impossible position. It puts our kids and others in harm’s way. I’m tired of parents being blamed. Some of us are trying hard AF to get our kids into the placement they need.

The school district would go broke if they paid for private placement for everyone who wanted it. There are so many money sinks right now. Poor kids, kids who don’t speak English, special education, magnet programs ….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is wild. I am an elementary school
arts teacher who teaches everyone in the school, including kids with autism and nonverbal. I would 100% never kick a child. But I would 100% definitely have a Diet Pepsi on my desk after lunch. I think parents have an unrealistic sense of what a school looks like.

As an arts teacher, you might not be seeing the most challenging situations. I know at my kids' school, paraeducators often float to students during specials. You have a very different environment than the home room.

At our elementary, all kids of all ages are dropped off at their specials — no teacher, no para. So kids with autism, developmental delays, ODD, and more. No adult stays with them other than the art/music/PE teacher. My job would be so much easier with another adult in the room.

That sounds like a disaster unless your school aggressively seeks alternative placements.

Where do the 1:1s go during that time? Surely some kids must have 1:1s in your school.

We had maybe 3 kids with 1:1s last year, and during specials paras were on their break. School is in Silver Spring. It is the only MCPS school I have worked for so I’d love to know if it’s standard practice for paras to come to specials.