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Elementary School-Aged Kids
My kid is in a class with a chair thrower
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Anonymous
What mainstreaming does is turn regular classrooms into special education classrooms, but it is the wrong fit for everyone. |
Anonymous
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Call the police every single time and file a report. Report the incident of violence and threat to the public welfare.
Inform the principal and the superintendent every single time. Speak at school board meetings. Ask them what would happen if instead of speaking you began throwing things and destroying the room. Would they simply tell the superintendent he needs to do a better job managing teachers and parents? I sympathize with all that this child and his or her parents are going through, but a classroom free from violence shouldn’t be a hard ask. |
Anonymous
Oh wow. A good friend of mine has a second grader with a 1:1 aide. If all the aide did was talk him down, there is no way he could be mainstreamed. The aide actually holds him when he tries to throw things. They can also hold his hand on the playground, which they often do. |
Anonymous
Agree and I also have a lot of sympathy for these kids. It can’t be easy. I view doing all these things as not just helping your kid and the teacher, but also the kid who’s having problems. The school will drag their feet on this stuff as long as they can. They’ll try to strong arm the parents into accepting less. Be the squeaky wheel and that helps everyone get what they need. |
Anonymous
But there are too many kids that need a 1:1 aide to be a mainstream class. It isn’t reasonable to be providing 1:1 for all the kids that need them. There would be one or more in each classroom |
Anonymous
You can usually talk my son down before his behaviors become physical, but he would benefit from physical interventions. I know some schools and staff members are extremely averse to physical interventions. I'm not sure how much of that is driven by parents versus staff. |
Anonymous
It’s even less reasonable, and would be much more expensive, to send all kids with behavorial challenges to self-contained classrooms, which would similarly require more staff. If the students’ issues can be addressed by adding a paraeducator to the classroom, that’s almost always going to be the best and cheapest path for everyone. But, in some cases that won’t be enough. And that’s where the more restrictive, more expensive classrooms with more supports and modifications should come in. |
Anonymous
We do have appropriate schools in this area. In Frederick there is Laurel Hall. In PG and Ffx there is Phillips. In Mont Co there is Shephard Pratt, RICA, Foundation, and Ridge. In FFX there is also Keller. Baltimore has even more options. Of all of these only RICA is run by a school system supported by the state. The rest of these schools are private and the placing school district has to bear the cost. It’s expensive and considered the most restrictive environment. Schools want to try every less restrictive environment first before non public placement. Unlike TJ, no parent runs to FB posting with pride and joy that their child was accepted to one of these schools. There is still very much a stigma associated with attending one of these schools. My kid is in one of the schools I mentioned. What’s ironic to me is that parents don’t know how much their kid needs the help and support until they are placed there and they are finally successful. Most parents I’ve met over the years are grateful that their child is in this environment. It’s also interesting that most teachers in the gen ed settings are not familiar with the available programs. The school districts do a very good job of trying to keep information about available programs quiet. If you read the SN forum there are hundreds of questions asking about the different programs in different counties. Transparency would help a lot. The burden is on the parent to figure out what’s available and then try and figure out the best fit. This is where an advocate is helpful. But if you don’t have the money for an advocate and you don’t know that DCUM exists, then you don’t know what you don’t know. What you know is that your kid is the chair thrower and tomorrow the school will try X. |
Anonymous
NP. Of the countries that I know, they don’t mainstream. They have specialized facilities that provide therapy+education. They try to integrate partially or fully kids who may be ready after years of therapy. Violent children as described in this thread would never be in a mainstream classroom. The US schooling and medical systems are too fractured to solve this. |
Anonymous
This. Keeping a violent child in a mainstream classroom isn’t fair to the mainstream kids nor the child who needs help. And we can all point fingers at the parents and say this is your fault/we don’t care what happens to your child just get them out of here. Or we can complain to the police, school board, anyone who will listen. Because we should all be having the same end goal here. And I agree with a PP who says if there’s funding for TJ then there should be funding for special schools for kids with other needs. Which in turn will improve mainstream classrooms. It’s sort of outrageous that the status quo is currently considered acceptable for any of these kids. |
Anonymous
+1 Schools need SPED rooms, but the SPED parents fight it. |
Anonymous
The tracking and segregation common in Europe is not a good system for the kids with special needs, whose future educational and job opportunities will be significantly limited. But at least many of those countries have better public support programs for adults, so their lives hopefully won’t be as poor as they would be in the US. |
Anonymous
Thank you for sharing this. I’m so glad your child finally found a good educational fit. I wish this process was easier for parents to navigate. |
Anonymous
| Thankfully this mostly resolves by MS because the chair throwers can’t typically handle honors classes even with accommodation. You still have to deal with them in PE and electives though. |
Anonymous
"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" |