MCPS teachers - what would you tell parents in your class(es) if you could?
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Anonymous
Different poster, and I'm an SLP and case manager. The most frequent difficult request I get is to increase service time or see them individually. Or to not pull them out of specific classes. I have one student that has 4x the service time that most come in with and the parents don't want them seen in a group and don't want them missing class. It's just not possible. There aren't enough hours in the day. Or the parents who want me to address things that don't affect academics, and their kid who doesn't even want to address it. It's just not how the system is set up. We operate differently than private practice SLPs. We are just as qualified, but the job itself has its restraints. |
Anonymous
Currently I'm mostly supported (that's not always the case). But their hands are tied with certain things too that they can't budge even if they wanted to. |
Anonymous
As a parent of 3 who did speech, I understand where you’re coming from. However, the speech services provided are pretty useless. If you have a group of 3 students for 30 minutes, each student is getting 10 minutes of intervention a week assuming you don’t lose time gathering students and they are all ready to get down to business at the first minute of the allotted session. My son had apraxia. MCPS refused to provide appropriate services. Treatment for apraxia differs from articulation or phonological disorder. It can’t be done in a group. I loved our MCPS speech therapists. This isn’t the SLP’s fault at all but MCPS. However as a parent, the SLP is the point person so I contacted her when I wanted a change in service. What should a parent do instead? And fwiw, we supplemented with private for all 3 kids. MCPS needs to get on the ball with children with disabilities. Aside from autism, they do a terrible job. We did a lot of private testing, private therapy and hired advocates. It was expensive. What about parents who don’t understand how to navigate the system and don’t have money for outside services and advocates. These kids get the shaft. Not your fault or any teachers fault. It’s a systemic failure but it makes me so mad. |
Anonymous
What's clear is that the school district tries to minimize the dollars spent on special education students when the law says each child is entitled to an appropriate education. A child who needs slp services will get some but they will be taken out of Math class inorder to do so, so the student now has 2 struggles. Mainstream schools are not appropriate for special education children in many, many circumstances. It is infuriating to see the school board funnel money to pet political projects instead of to students who are given the poorest, least amount of an education that mcps can "somewhat legally" get away with |
Anonymous
I have two special needs kids and did not take it that way. Anyone with a bit of common sense can see teachers and support staff are stretched far too thin. This teacher is being honest. Which was the request on the thread. Parents need to know this so we can try to make the best decisions possible for our kids. |
Anonymous
I agree. The whole model should be different. I make sure all my legal requirements are covered. And I do the very best I can for the kids gives all the parameters. But I still ask myself constantly "how is this legal?" Or maybe WHY is this legal. I constantly consider leaving for private practice but at the end of the day I know that this IS the only speech language support some of these kids have access to and I owe it to them to be there, even if it's not as robust a program as we would like. In non teacher jobs it's the same - you could do really great things on that project if only there was a bigger budget. |
Anonymous
My dyslexic kids SPED teacher was quietly removed from being a classroom teacher after parent complaints on her very heavily English...so lets have her teach phonics! |
Anonymous
I get this. But I teach advanced HS math and when 10 out of 30 kids constantly have their hand up for extra help I run out of time to help the quiet kids who don’t proactively ask for help. I try to get to them but too many students with one teacher is an impossible environment at times |
Anonymous
This exactly. People have to lie because there is too much work for the assigned staff and schools are terrified of lawsuits. It is an impossible situation and no one is happy about it |
Anonymous
You hit the mail on the heady about legality. Some things are the way the are because of trying to ensure compliance with law. To handle some things correctly and appropriately for kids MCPS would need to setup whole different special education schools and classes with completely different staffing models. And not just for the most severe cases. |
Anonymous
HS teacher here - I often work through lunch providing extra help to students who have trouble with my class or kids who are absent for various reasons and miss class. Also, IEP kids often get extended time so they come in at lunch for extra time on tests. I also need time to respond to emails from students, parents and administrators. We also have department meetings and other meetings within our content areas. I need to make paper copies of handouts and assignments and sometimes there is a line at the copier and sometimes it jams and you have to spend time troubleshooting. If I try to assign everything electronically, my students complain. I also help out junior teachers in my content area. We get pulled in to sub for classes. The principal and instructional coach will ask for data requests that I have to pull together. Grading always takes forever. I have to fill out IEP updates and attend some IEP meetings. I also write college and internship recommendations. Counselors request meetings about certain students. I do all my planning at home because the school day is just packed with stuff. |
Anonymous
What you should be doing is advocating for more school staff. Smaller caseloads and smaller classes would benefit all students. Instead MCPS is all about administrative bloat at Central and all those people do is create more paperwork requests that take more time away from students |
Anonymous
In my case, the principal/school admin hinder my work. They keep creating new rules and procedures and then don’t enforce them. They act like cell phones are not a problem because they don’t want to enforce any rules. They constantly waste my time with useless meetings when I would much prefer to use that time to improve my teaching. |
Anonymous
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Here is something I would tell parents of students with IEP's: If you think your child should have a different service placement (outside the HSM) you should hire an advocate/lawyer.
The gatekeeping involved with the central special ed department is off the charts at this point. They will do everything in their power to work to prevent a kid from being moved to a different program because of staff shortages in those programs. Local special ed teachers are POWERLESS (other than collecting data and working on the IEP) to make this happen. The special ed supervisors will stonewall and throw up obstacle after obstacle. Only when a parent is there being persistent and bringing representation do things really happen. |
Anonymous
All of this. This is why college professors opt to teach less classes and have TAs or graduate assistants. |