Reply to Mcps Rara educator KICKED AUTISTIC elementary student

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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 ([b]which she absolutely should not have had in the classroom[/b]).

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

Why not?[/quote]

It was soda. [/quote]

Are teachers prohibited from having soda?[/quote]

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

That isn’t reasonable.

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

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 [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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?[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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!![/quote]

No, I'm a parent with two kids with special needs in MCPS at the elementary level. One with high support needs.

I agree the issue is training, in addition to resources. And the paraeducator's decision to bring soda into the classroom reflects that. Their training and policies should have prevented such an obvious trigger from being introduced to the classroom.[/quote]

Immediate pp here, adding to my previous comment:

Said another way, it seems like a lot of the immediate reactions in this thread were against the paraeducator. My own immediate reaction initially focused on the paraeducator.

But, as I've thought about this more, and imagined how and why it probably went down, I've actually become much more sympathetic towards the paraeducator here. I don't know what actually happened, but I do know how my own child would react in that situation, and what it could lead to. She was likely placed in a very difficult situation by MCPS.

That being said, after looking her up, I see the paraeducator in this case as a bachelors degree in rehabilitation services and five years of experience as a paraeducator, and another three in a related field. She should have known better than to bring that soda into the classroom.

But I'm well aware of the broader, institutional problems within MCPS regarding SPED. My family has had a relatively good experience so far, but it by no means has been smooth. I get 1-2 calls a week from the nurse regarding injuries, and often another report each week from the special educator for events that didn't raise to the level requiring an immediate call. Academic supports have been a challenge.

But I've also had close relationships with his teachers, special educators, and therapists. They know as much as I do about his challenges and needs, and I remain confident they're doing the best they can with the resources available to them. But those resources are very limited, and frankly, the quality of 1:1/critical staffing paraeducators is poor. They know that too, but all they can do is try to train the paras they have on-the-job.

It's really disgusting how MCPS and the Board of Education have failed students by refusing to properly resource SPED.[/quote]

Another MCPS shill.[/quote]

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