If you had gone to a good school that teaches you that there are more than cookie cutter kids out in this world you would not get to the point of having a child smeared with feces. Teaching is not something you decide to do because your spouse got a good job on the hill and your degree in marketing is not marketable. |
Your SIL needs a new job. Either her school and admin is crap or she is a crappy teacher. I have a family of teachers not one has been touched by a kid. And were are talking taught kids that have ; abused kids, one went on to commit suicide, armed robberies, etc... Your SIL is not telling you the whole story. |
There’s a lawsuit against FCPS for abusive use of these rooms in their public schools and in the contract schools they send disabled children to. |
A scientific behavioral plan that studies the causes for the child’s behavior and works to prevent the meltdowns, and skill building. This requires trained behaviorialisrs and psychologists and a detailed plan. That’s much more expensive than a padded closet. Some kids do need medication and that is out of the schools hands. |
In the 60's in Maryland the vice principal had a paddle on the
wall of his office. All of the elementary school kids could see it (glass walls). It was never used. We virtually never had kids misbehave in any elementary classes I was in. Kids did not throw chairs and did not assault teachers or students in any classes I was in during the 60's and 70's. It was a great environment for kids to learn. |
in the 60s/70s kids with special needs were sent to special schools or residential schools. they weren't at your school. everyone knows this. now go away and let the grownups talk. |
Wrong. Kids being put in seclusion closets are already in self contained special ed classrooms (or schools). They have much smaller classes and the adult:kid ratio should be in the range of 1:4. They should have detailed behavioral plans being documented and followed that prevent most of these meltdowns from happening, and support from psychologists and behavior specialists. When a meltdown happens, the other students in the room should be moved out to another learning space (a pod in the hallway with books, for instance) and the child allowed to calm down without being touched or moved and then process with a teacher. |
here's the lawsuit against Fairfax
https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.copaa.org/resource/resmgr/docs/2019_docs/2019.10.08_pl_s_complaint.pdf |
It takes on average 3-4 hours for my kid to Re-regulate himself. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Are you advocating that they rest of his class be moved to a pod with books and lose their learning opportunity while my kid is contained within the classroom for those hours? |
Is he wildly out of control for 3-4 hours or can he safely be persuaded to relocate himself to a sensory room or somewhere else in the building after a little while? If he is wildly out of control for so long, he probably needs a medication adjustment/change. |
The kids who would throw chairs were already in institutions. |
Don’t they need to have parents permission to do this? On our registration forms (public school) there is some sort of paragraph about this. I always check “no” (as in- no you are not allowed to put my kid in that room). My kids do not have any special needs and it has never come up, anyway. I have also never heard of them putting a kid in there (not that I necessarily would). I’m not even sure our school has such a room at all? Have had three kids at the school and know the layout etc very well and have volunteered a lot over the years. |
First federal law mandates that all children have free access to education in this country. Don't assume that the kids in these classes have no value, are incapable of learning, or get no benefit from learning. Don't assume that these kids are physically harming anyone. One of the most important things to understand is that students who are put in these rooms or restrained are often NOT being violent or out of control. When restraint and seclusion are used, they will eventually be abused and that abuse then becomes the norm. We have so many cases in my county where students were put in seclusion for cursing, for moving too slow, or for making noises that annoyed the teachers. In Loudoun county a student in a self contained class took a photo of another student who had been shoved behind filing cabinets so the two teachers in her room could stop and get on Facebook. The student wasn't being violent. Often the kids who are subject to this are "elopers". We've had cases where sros have tackled and hurt these kids. Often the training given to teachers is useless. School systems rarely evaluate the training given to their staff and there is an attitude that since they provided something, everything is fine. Also the people who are aides in these classes often have little training or education themselves. The reality is that many school administrators have no sympathy for these students and don't want the bother. They are usually as ignorant as the worst parents. If you go to teach in special ed and at your core feel that these kids are less than, there are going to be problems. |
You keep bringing up the most extreme cases. Your school system is not dealing with this appropriately. There are better behavior systems, I'm not going to mention names here. It is like moving a mountain to get a school system to look at better training. Not every parent is trying to mainstream their kids. There is so little inclusion in public schools that you would be stunned. |