At a loss with classroom behavior issues

[Anonymous]

This is 100% about money. If you think otherwise you are mistaken.

20-30 years ago, special ed kids were locked in a basement classroom and just sat there. They weren't taught a thing and people gave up on them. Parents fought back, said their kids had a right to a free and education, and better situations occurred. Students were put in smaller classes with more support. Sometimes with an aide. But, that ended up costing too much money. So, more mainstreaming, throw a paraeducator in there, and everything will be fine. That will cost less than smaller discrete classrooms with more support. Having six special ed students in a classroom with a paraeducator to support them cost less than a discrete classroom.

But the pendulum has now swung too far. The special education and ED kids are not getting the education they deserve, nor are the Gen ed kids.

Something has to change, but it will cost more. A lot more. And while many realize that this is a problem, not many want to cough up the funds to solve the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs, etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process.
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough.

Everyone - please read this post!
Elementary teacher here in a "good" school.
OP, in my experience most of the cases are like this. A child acts out and the parents of the child are going crazy trying to help the child and figure out what's wrong. They are begging the administration and the teachers for help. Usually the administration thinks whatever is happening will pass and leave it up to the teachers to handle. Some of my colleagues are terrific and will come up with behavior plans and strategies on their own. The rest will overreact or under-react, or lose their own shit and make things worse. We have a few younger teachers with anxiety and OCD type issues, and instead of ignoring small, unimportant behaviors like fidgeting they will pick and pick at a child who they know has emotional challenges until the child explodes.

Believe me that 99 percent of cases of young children who act like this can be managed by a good teacher with good strategies. Sometimes they need another hand temporarily. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a small number of kids who need a different environment. They exist but they are not common.

One thing the administration might try is to try to move a child to be with a different teacher. It does work in some cases. When it doesn't it could mean the child is too far gone emotionally and does not trust anyone at that point or it could mean the child needs a different school. It takes a long time to figure that out. I have taught kids who looked like they might need this but then the next year, with a different teacher and more time, it is clear they will succeed in general education.

It is horrible your child is going through this, OP, but I hope you will read through these threads to get the perspective from the other family and other teachers in the building.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that we as a society need to finally recognize that it's a zero sum game. We can't just sing lalala and pretend to be one big happy family. The fact is that inclusion is often detrimental to the other kids, especially when we're talking about behavioral issues. Therefore, in trying to "help" some kids by IGNORING the effect of their disruptions and continuing to offer them the "normal" educational system, we are literally HURTING the other kids. If we can admit that to ourselves and each other, then we can start asking the questions of HOW MUCH of a detriment is reasonable, if any at all.

Majority of kids with SN are not violent or disruptive or at least no more than your kids. There are a handful and those kids deserve more supports and better school situations but its near impossible for many families to access and those schools are not affordable for most. Instead of blaming the kid and families, look at the school system. Look at how much most of the major school systems like MCPS spend fighting families with attorney fees alone when that money could be spent on the kids. These kids don't want to act this way and need help. As a society we are failing these kids and we owe it to them and our society as they are are our future to do better for them.

"Behavioral issues" by definition means disruption, if not violence. If your child is SN in a way that really has no bearing on the rest of the class (e.g. speech issues or a dyslexia pullout once a week) then this is not relevant to you.

Nobody is arguing that these kids don't need more support than they're getting. What we're saying is that the level of support is not possible in the public school system without negatively affecting the other students. Clearing a room might be perfectly appropriate in a special school for kids with behavioral issues, but it is NOT appropriate in a public school setting unless in the case of a bomb threat or similar. A mainstreamed child should not be the equivalent of a bomb threat on the safety and wellbeing of other children.

There isn't enough capacity in private special ed schools for all the students who need seats, not by a long shot. My friend's ds was approved for a school by FCPS last year after he repeatedly ran away from school but there was no space in any of the few schools for him--he waited almost a full school year in a public school that was the wrong school for him because there was nowhere else for him to go. Also, these schools cost the school system $60-$90k per student per year. Everyone has to be willing to pay more taxes to support schools to pay for this. The last time Fairfax tried to raise more money for schools through a meal sales tax, they lost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs, etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process.
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough.

Everyone - please read this post!
Elementary teacher here in a "good" school.
OP, in my experience most of the cases are like this. A child acts out and the parents of the child are going crazy trying to help the child and figure out what's wrong. They are begging the administration and the teachers for help. Usually the administration thinks whatever is happening will pass and leave it up to the teachers to handle. Some of my colleagues are terrific and will come up with behavior plans and strategies on their own. The rest will overreact or under-react, or lose their own shit and make things worse. We have a few younger teachers with anxiety and OCD type issues, and instead of ignoring small, unimportant behaviors like fidgeting they will pick and pick at a child who they know has emotional challenges until the child explodes.

Believe me that 99 percent of cases of young children who act like this can be managed by a good teacher with good strategies. Sometimes they need another hand temporarily. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a small number of kids who need a different environment. They exist but they are not common.

One thing the administration might try is to try to move a child to be with a different teacher. It does work in some cases. When it doesn't it could mean the child is too far gone emotionally and does not trust anyone at that point or it could mean the child needs a different school. It takes a long time to figure that out. I have taught kids who looked like they might need this but then the next year, with a different teacher and more time, it is clear they will succeed in general education.

It is horrible your child is going through this, OP, but I hope you will read through these threads to get the perspective from the other family and other teachers in the building.

Yes, this can work in a "good" school (what does this even mean?) because the other 99% of students don't need significant amounts of support themselves (I'm talking about gen ed kids with no special services who still need significant amounts of support for various reasons whether it's behavior, language, social skills etc). The issue is that not every school is a "good" school and the majority of students in the classroom need significant amounts of support and one teacher cannot provide that level of support to that many students. There's no option to just move a student to another class, because there's a student like him/her in *every* class and putting them together would be pure and utter chaos. If a teacher has one student who needs significant amounts of support, what you stated can be manageable. But that's not what life is like in *many* other schools, so you're speaking from a place of privilege as if the rest of us have the same exact situation as you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs, etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process.
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough.

Everyone - please read this post!
Elementary teacher here in a "good" school.
OP, in my experience most of the cases are like this. A child acts out and the parents of the child are going crazy trying to help the child and figure out what's wrong. They are begging the administration and the teachers for help. Usually the administration thinks whatever is happening will pass and leave it up to the teachers to handle. Some of my colleagues are terrific and will come up with behavior plans and strategies on their own. The rest will overreact or under-react, or lose their own shit and make things worse. We have a few younger teachers with anxiety and OCD type issues, and instead of ignoring small, unimportant behaviors like fidgeting they will pick and pick at a child who they know has emotional challenges until the child explodes.

Believe me that 99 percent of cases of young children who act like this can be managed by a good teacher with good strategies. Sometimes they need another hand temporarily. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a small number of kids who need a different environment. They exist but they are not common.

One thing the administration might try is to try to move a child to be with a different teacher. It does work in some cases. When it doesn't it could mean the child is too far gone emotionally and does not trust anyone at that point or it could mean the child needs a different school. It takes a long time to figure that out. I have taught kids who looked like they might need this but then the next year, with a different teacher and more time, it is clear they will succeed in general education.

It is horrible your child is going through this, OP, but I hope you will read through these threads to get the perspective from the other family and other teachers in the building.

Yes, this can work in a "good" school (what does this even mean?) because the other 99% of students don't need significant amounts of support themselves (I'm talking about gen ed kids with no special services who still need significant amounts of support for various reasons whether it's behavior, language, social skills etc). The issue is that not every school is a "good" school and the majority of students in the classroom need significant amounts of support and one teacher cannot provide that level of support to that many students. There's no option to just move a student to another class, because there's a student like him/her in *every* class and putting them together would be pure and utter chaos. If a teacher has one student who needs significant amounts of support, what you stated can be manageable. But that's not what life is like in *many* other schools, so you're speaking from a place of privilege as if the rest of us have the same exact situation as you do.

^^I've worked in schools with both high and low FARMS populations and it's night and day. Yes, in a low FARMS population school having one student like this per grade level is manageable with good teaching strategies and other options as you state. But once the FARMS rate starts creeping up it's a whole different ball game, so please don't paint with such a broad brush.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% about money. If you think otherwise you are mistaken.

20-30 years ago, special ed kids were locked in a basement classroom and just sat there. They weren't taught a thing and people gave up on them. Parents fought back, said their kids had a right to a free and education, and better situations occurred. Students were put in smaller classes with more support. Sometimes with an aide. But, that ended up costing too much money. So, more mainstreaming, throw a paraeducator in there, and everything will be fine. That will cost less than smaller discrete classrooms with more support. Having six special ed students in a classroom with a paraeducator to support them cost less than a discrete classroom.

But the pendulum has now swung too far. The special education and ED kids are not getting the education they deserve, nor are the Gen ed kids.

Something has to change, but it will cost more. A lot more. And while many realize that this is a problem, not many want to cough up the funds to solve the problem.

Stop posting nonsense. 20-30 years ago kids weren't locked in basement classrooms. I taught a elementary self-contained special ed. classroom 20 to 25 years ago. It was a great set-up. I had anywhere from 12-14 students in 3-4th grade who had learning disabilities or ADHD. I also had an aide. Those kids needed a classroom with not as many students with additional adult help. We could teach them how to read and give them lots of attention because we did rotation with 4 kids with me, one group with an aide and the rest doing independent work at stations. Kids who had behavior issues because they couldn't do grade level work and acted out thrived in our class. Because they were finally given work at their level and were learning to be fluent readers. Kids who couldn't handle the commotion of being with 25 other kids, did better in a smaller setting. Eventually, inclusion advocates came in from a nearby university and harped on how awful it was to segregate kids. They dissolved my classroom and I was supposed to team teach or push in while they gave students aides. The district I worked in aides got health and other benefits so having to pay for all those aides ended up costing more than my salary and my aide.. No one was happy except the inclusion advocates. Some kids truly cannot thrive in large classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% about money. If you think otherwise you are mistaken.

20-30 years ago, special ed kids were locked in a basement classroom and just sat there. They weren't taught a thing and people gave up on them. Parents fought back, said their kids had a right to a free and education, and better situations occurred. Students were put in smaller classes with more support. Sometimes with an aide. But, that ended up costing too much money. So, more mainstreaming, throw a paraeducator in there, and everything will be fine. That will cost less than smaller discrete classrooms with more support. Having six special ed students in a classroom with a paraeducator to support them cost less than a discrete classroom.

But the pendulum has now swung too far. The special education and ED kids are not getting the education they deserve, nor are the Gen ed kids.

Something has to change, but it will cost more. A lot more. And while many realize that this is a problem, not many want to cough up the funds to solve the problem.

Stop posting nonsense. 20-30 years ago kids weren't locked in basement classrooms. I taught a elementary self-contained special ed. classroom 20 to 25 years ago. It was a great set-up. I had anywhere from 12-14 students in 3-4th grade who had learning disabilities or ADHD. I also had an aide. Those kids needed a classroom with not as many students with additional adult help. We could teach them how to read and give them lots of attention because we did rotation with 4 kids with me, one group with an aide and the rest doing independent work at stations. Kids who had behavior issues because they couldn't do grade level work and acted out thrived in our class. Because they were finally given work at their level and were learning to be fluent readers. Kids who couldn't handle the commotion of being with 25 other kids, did better in a smaller setting. Eventually, inclusion advocates came in from a nearby university and harped on how awful it was to segregate kids. They dissolved my classroom and I was supposed to team teach or push in while they gave students aides. The district I worked in aides got health and other benefits so having to pay for all those aides ended up costing more than my salary and my aide.. No one was happy except the inclusion advocates. Some kids truly cannot thrive in large classrooms.

Yes, to all of this. FYI, MCPS is currently undergoing the same exact process for students from other countries who have had interrupted education. They are dissolving the self contained METS programs (they say being segregated from the general ed population isn't good for them) and sending these kids to enroll at their home schools without providing extra ESOL allocations or paras to those schools. I've never encountered any of these students with significant behavior issues (often they're withdrawn and quiet more than anything else), but it's just one more layer to the absurd expectations they're putting on teachers when you have all of these different needs that have to be met in one classroom, including students with significant behavioral challenges. ESOL teachers have 60 or so students on their caseloads and can't be with one student all day,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something needs to change. It’s just simply unacceptable that one child’s behavior can have such negative consequences on all of the others around them. I realize some parents are fighting for services, but as a society we need to come up with a better, quicker way. The pendulum has swung way too far on the side of favoring the disruptive child’s rights over everyone else’s (just like many things in our society, such as “emotional support animals”

The options are to overturn existing legislation that guarantees equal access to a free and appropriate public education or to actually fund a free and appropriate public education for all students. We are in the middle ground where FAPE is law but schools don't have the funds to provide FAPE so only the squeakiest wheels get it. And meanwhile, the head of the Dept of Education doesn't even know what FAPE is...

I disagree that we have to choose between upholding FAPE or overturning it. Students, with or without diagnosed disabilities who routinely disrupt the learning or safety of others are not in an appropriate placement. Students who routinely harm or threaten to harm others are not being well served in a placement where they can do that. It could be the placement is fine, but the student needs more support in that placement in the form of an aide. It could be the student needs a morning social story read to them, someone to come to the room twice a day to give the child a sensory break. It could be they need a cross cat room or an alternative school placement. But when any student harms others repeatedly or disrupts severely to the point evacuation is needed, the placement is not working. No student has the right to violate the FAPE of another. Period.

Legally, schools can request an emergency evaluation and outplacement. They can also place a child in a more restrictive environment while evaluations are occurring if safety to others is an issue. There are a number of other things schools can do under the law. Schools absolutely need to better by kids with extreme needs. But leaving them alone in the classroom and just telling the teacher to "tighten up" her procedures? Not okay.

You are confirming my point. FAPE doesn't mean every child belongs in a Gen Ed environment -- far from it. The Appropriate part of FAPE means that some students are best served in more restrictive environments however that typically costs more money and some schools fight very hard to avoid spending that money. MoCo has a well paid lawyer who does nothing but fight against private placements because once a student's IEP increases services, the only way to decrease services is graduation, aging out, or the parent's consent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something needs to change. It’s just simply unacceptable that one child’s behavior can have such negative consequences on all of the others around them. I realize some parents are fighting for services, but as a society we need to come up with a better, quicker way. The pendulum has swung way too far on the side of favoring the disruptive child’s rights over everyone else’s (just like many things in our society, such as “emotional support animals”

The options are to overturn existing legislation that guarantees equal access to a free and appropriate public education or to actually fund a free and appropriate public education for all students. We are in the middle ground where FAPE is law but schools don't have the funds to provide FAPE so only the squeakiest wheels get it. And meanwhile, the head of the Dept of Education doesn't even know what FAPE is...

More funding will not solve the issues. It’s a mitigation strategy, not a solution. Violent children should never be mainstreamed. Period.

+1. We need to bring back institutionalization. Varying forms of it, but habitual violent students have no place in public schools.

agree.
As someone earlier said, most people want to help/ empathize with SN kids and their situations but NOT at the cost of their own kids education and mental well-being.

Contact your congress critters. The federal law you want to overturn is IDEA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs, etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process.
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough.

Everyone - please read this post!
Elementary teacher here in a "good" school.
OP, in my experience most of the cases are like this. A child acts out and the parents of the child are going crazy trying to help the child and figure out what's wrong. They are begging the administration and the teachers for help. Usually the administration thinks whatever is happening will pass and leave it up to the teachers to handle. Some of my colleagues are terrific and will come up with behavior plans and strategies on their own. The rest will overreact or under-react, or lose their own shit and make things worse. We have a few younger teachers with anxiety and OCD type issues, and instead of ignoring small, unimportant behaviors like fidgeting they will pick and pick at a child who they know has emotional challenges until the child explodes.

Believe me that 99 percent of cases of young children who act like this can be managed by a good teacher with good strategies. Sometimes they need another hand temporarily. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a small number of kids who need a different environment. They exist but they are not common.

One thing the administration might try is to try to move a child to be with a different teacher. It does work in some cases. When it doesn't it could mean the child is too far gone emotionally and does not trust anyone at that point or it could mean the child needs a different school. It takes a long time to figure that out. I have taught kids who looked like they might need this but then the next year, with a different teacher and more time, it is clear they will succeed in general education.

It is horrible your child is going through this, OP, but I hope you will read through these threads to get the perspective from the other family and other teachers in the building.

Yes, this can work in a "good" school (what does this even mean?) because the other 99% of students don't need significant amounts of support themselves (I'm talking about gen ed kids with no special services who still need significant amounts of support for various reasons whether it's behavior, language, social skills etc). The issue is that not every school is a "good" school and the majority of students in the classroom need significant amounts of support and one teacher cannot provide that level of support to that many students. There's no option to just move a student to another class, because there's a student like him/her in *every* class and putting them together would be pure and utter chaos. If a teacher has one student who needs significant amounts of support, what you stated can be manageable. But that's not what life is like in *many* other schools, so you're speaking from a place of privilege as if the rest of us have the same exact situation as you do.

I didn't mean to do that. I completely agree with many PPs the way to help is with more money in the form of extra staff, training, guidance for teachers and for students with behavioral issues. I just wanted to emphasize the other perspective. Many people on this thread seem to blame the child or the parents without looking a teacher's own shortcomings and the general administrative dysfunction of many schools and school districts. They all need to provide more support and money for cases like this for the good of the child and the classmates.

OP's original post and many others are the top in trying to create a picture of a perfect teacher with a crazy child. It could be the teacher has a lot of problems. I've seen it. We had a young teacher out of school for only a few years who was really excited about working with young kids. She is organized and very nice to the parents and people thought she was sweet as pie. She really is but she was a mess when dealing with children with any behavioral issues she was a mess. She had one strategy which was publicly calling them out by making them change their classroom sign to "red" which denoted "poor" choices. It was no wonder to us that year after year she ended up with a (different) child that had angry meltdowns. Some, not all, of these kids did end up having special needs but miraculously they were fine when they were not with her. It took the administration 4 years and a lot of observations requested by different parents to wise up to this and she got additional training and had an extra adult helping her for many months one year. I think she's a bit better but

[Anonymous]

I think she's a bit better but still sometimes handles situations in a way that escalates the behavior.

I'm far from perfect myself and have made mistakes but I as I have taught I long time I feel I have good perspective on how kids change and can look back and where those mistakes were made whether by myself or others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs, etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process.
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough.

Everyone - please read this post!
Elementary teacher here in a "good" school.
OP, in my experience most of the cases are like this. A child acts out and the parents of the child are going crazy trying to help the child and figure out what's wrong. They are begging the administration and the teachers for help. Usually the administration thinks whatever is happening will pass and leave it up to the teachers to handle. Some of my colleagues are terrific and will come up with behavior plans and strategies on their own. The rest will overreact or under-react, or lose their own shit and make things worse. We have a few younger teachers with anxiety and OCD type issues, and instead of ignoring small, unimportant behaviors like fidgeting they will pick and pick at a child who they know has emotional challenges until the child explodes.

Believe me that 99 percent of cases of young children who act like this can be managed by a good teacher with good strategies. Sometimes they need another hand temporarily. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a small number of kids who need a different environment. They exist but they are not common.

One thing the administration might try is to try to move a child to be with a different teacher. It does work in some cases. When it doesn't it could mean the child is too far gone emotionally and does not trust anyone at that point or it could mean the child needs a different school. It takes a long time to figure that out. I have taught kids who looked like they might need this but then the next year, with a different teacher and more time, it is clear they will succeed in general education.

It is horrible your child is going through this, OP, but I hope you will read through these threads to get the perspective from the other family and other teachers in the building.

At our school they also isolate the kids. All the kids except one or two will be sitting in groups and they will have desks alone. Its pretty terrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs, etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process.
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough.

I have empathy and I feel very badly for you, I really do, but my child has started seeing tutors to help with reading and math because she's basically not being taught these subjects due to being in a class with not one, but two disruptive students and only one teacher and one aide. On top of that, all the attention spent on those kids means that other children are acting up more than normal and my child has a classmate constantly picking on and bothering her, and it has seriously impacted her ability to learn, her level of anxiety, and her love of school. We're also considering sending her to a psychologist to help with the anxiety issues. And yes, I've complained and documented and complained some more but apparently there's nothing the school can do for my child who was doing GREAT for two years before being put in this class with children the teachers can't handle. I really don't think this is fair to my child either, and has potentially long-term impacts on my child's mental health and well-being. You are not the ONLY one suffering.

This has nothing to do with one child. Your child is having tutors as they are struggling and probably also need assessed. Your child having anxiety probably is genetic or also something else going on. If its that bad ,send her to private. You don't get that these parents are doing the best they can and many are not equip to handle these indues and honestly, it doesn't sound like you can if you have to get tutors for a young child vs. working with them AND you are ignoring your child mental health.

Two sides to this and both have legitimate points of view. My child was in a class that was evacuated every few weeks in two different grades. I never even heard about it from her but a few parents mentioned it to me and I saw it happen once while volunteering. Not one of the kids seemed visibly upset. The evacuation was really quick and they just went to another classroom to continue the lesson. This was early elementary so it gave the kids a movement break and they continued with their lesson and were moved back into their classroom in about 5 minutes after another adult was able to come down and help the child who was upset.

DD has a friend with anxiety, and, her parents discovered a few years later, a learning disability. This situation was very difficult for her and the parents initially were in denial and blamed their DD's not being able to learn on the upset child. They did move her to a different classroom but found she was still struggling academically. This was about HER issue, not the other child's issue.

Public school is chaotic my friend and your child will encounter behavioral issues throughout K-12 so if this is making your child struggle you do have a right to bring it up with the administration but just know most students do fine with these disruptions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs, etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process.
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough.

Everyone - please read this post!
Elementary teacher here in a "good" school.
OP, in my experience most of the cases are like this. A child acts out and the parents of the child are going crazy trying to help the child and figure out what's wrong. They are begging the administration and the teachers for help. Usually the administration thinks whatever is happening will pass and leave it up to the teachers to handle. Some of my colleagues are terrific and will come up with behavior plans and strategies on their own. The rest will overreact or under-react, or lose their own shit and make things worse. We have a few younger teachers with anxiety and OCD type issues, and instead of ignoring small, unimportant behaviors like fidgeting they will pick and pick at a child who they know has emotional challenges until the child explodes.

Believe me that 99 percent of cases of young children who act like this can be managed by a good teacher with good strategies. Sometimes they need another hand temporarily. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a small number of kids who need a different environment. They exist but they are not common.

One thing the administration might try is to try to move a child to be with a different teacher. It does work in some cases. When it doesn't it could mean the child is too far gone emotionally and does not trust anyone at that point or it could mean the child needs a different school. It takes a long time to figure that out. I have taught kids who looked like they might need this but then the next year, with a different teacher and more time, it is clear they will succeed in general education.

It is horrible your child is going through this, OP, but I hope you will read through these threads to get the perspective from the other family and other teachers in the building.

At our school they also isolate the kids. All the kids except one or two will be sitting in groups and they will have desks alone. Its pretty terrible.

I have seen this too and wonder how this happens. Awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. I'm up late tonight still decompressing from stress and work stuff, and I am feeling really validated and grateful for some of the posts here.

I can say that 10 years ago I literally never heard of the idea of evacuating a classroom because of a disruptive student. Now, in my FCPS school, this is commonplace. Literally, commonplace.

A student wielded a sharp tool in one of our classes yesterday, threatening to hurt another child with it. This student was out of control. All students were evacuated from the room and the clinical team was called and the student spent the rest of the day with clinical and administrative support and guess what? The student was back in class again today. Not even a suspension. (And I'm not a big fan of out of school suspension in general, but what message does this send to the classmates who were literally terrorized yesterday?) Multiple members of this teaching team were in tears throughout the school day, exhausted with the stress of it all and the constant feeling of failing everyone because these one or two students take up 50-80% of their mental energy on any given day, and there is so little left for actual...teaching.

Our administration will do NOTHING to protect students or support teachers unless there is huge parental pressure and usually squawking up the food chain. They are utterly conflict avoidant and are content putting everything at a teacher's feet.

Tangible ideas:

1) Literally every day that a violent disruption occurs (or any significant disruption), document it fully in an email. If you believe this is true, please document that you believe the teacher is doing a good job and that this is not a criticism of teacher performance.

2) Document the disruption. Document the effect on your child.

Example:

Dear Mrs. Twaftwaddle,

I am writing with a deep concern about ongoing disruption in Larla's classroom that creates an unsafe learning environment and is interfering with her ability to learn. In one example today, Phil refused to follow the teacher's directions to get his laptop from the laptop cart, loudly interrupting the teacher, wandering the room and interfering with other children who were logging in, and then dropping his laptop on the floor with a crash. When the teacher approached him, he yelled loudly and used very graphic cuss words. All the while, no instruction was happening. As the student's behavior escalated, she instructed the rest of the class to go down the hallway and called the front office for assistance. My child was moved to Mrs. Smith's room where there were no spare desks and 44 students working with one teacher. The class ended up eventually scattered around the room and had about 10 minutes of silent reading time before their teacher was able to get them back to class. By that time, the Language Arts block was completely over.

Not only did she get no Language Arts instruction today, she and classmates spent the rest of the day nervous and on edge, wondering if their classmate would return. When he did return, he continued to exhibit refusal to participate, verbal attacks, and physical signs of frustration such as throwing writing implements on the floor and knocking books off tables.

Consequently, my child was fearful all day, and lost a great deal of instructional time due to this student's behavior. What supports can be put in place to ensure that this does not occur again tomorrow?

(keep doing this EVERY day your child reports major disruptions. Cc county-wide administrators and higher-ups if the first email doesn't have results.)

This is where I stop and say WTF was the teacher thinking. If this is a child with a history of getting upset physically, she should have called to the office when he started interfering with other children who were logging in and the administration should have been prepared for this. This letter makes no sense. What do you mean the teacher "approached him"? I would ask WTF did the teacher say? This letter would really make me question what was going on with the teacher.