Lots of ignorant piling on here. OP didn't ask for anything from teachers. Good schools have a therapist on staff who can run a lunch bunch and have downtime at other time during the day.

Anonymous wrote:

Finally, one issue as well is that students do not want to miss lunch in the cafeteria to do a lunch group, they don’t want to engage with peers on the playground (very common for students with autism- they want a break from engaging and to do their own thing and I think that’s okay), and they don’t want to participate in brain break games that foster interaction in the room. So I can only do so much when students don’t want to participate.

This is (potentially) a big bunch of bs, since kids with autism might not *know* how to socialize.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, teachers basically told us "no, we don't do social groups here." They basically refused to change their schedules. It was ridiculous rigidity.

I have found teachers to be super unhelpful in this regard. Not saying it's any ONE teacher's job to run social groups, but somebody should be doing it.

Figure it out. I encourage parents to advocate and fight.

do you understand that this would be an IEP service?

Duh. That's what I'm talking about.

Sped teacher again- you are right that I am. It willing to give up my contracted duty-free lunch break or planning time. I need those times to eat and get my lessons and materials ready (I only get 3 planning times a week without meetings).

I’m a special ed teacher. One issue is I don’t have any time to run a social skills group in my day regularly. Sometimes I can pull a small group to do a morning meeting but I have about 10-15 minutes total and usually I use that time to get quick data updates or administer evaluation testing (not given time for that either). The rest of the day I am teaching academics. When there are group activities I work to help students collaborate with partners and model for them. I observe when I have recess duty (half the time) and try to help students engage with peers. Our guidance counselor does run lunch groups but those are not part of special ed services.

The speech teacher would do them as part of pragmatic speech related services but not everyone qualifies for that.

Finally, one issue as well is that students do not want to miss lunch in the cafeteria to do a lunch group, they don’t want to engage with peers on the playground (very common for students with autism- they want a break from engaging and to do their own thing and I think that’s okay), and they don’t want to participate in brain break games that foster interaction in the room. So I can only do so much when students don’t want to participate.

In my experience, social skills groups are run by school psychologists, special ed teachers, or counselors - never the gen ed teacher. That way, it’s part of their job and not an extra task during their lunch time. This is really common in schools, so I’m surprised your school is different!

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, teachers basically told us "no, we don't do social groups here." They basically refused to change their schedules. It was ridiculous rigidity.

I have found teachers to be super unhelpful in this regard. Not saying it's any ONE teacher's job to run social groups, but somebody should be doing it.

Figure it out. I encourage parents to advocate and fight.

do you understand that this would be an IEP service?

Federal law makes clear that the purpose of special education is to prepare students with disabilities for “further education, employment, and independent living,” all of which require social competency

You need very specific goals to make this happen. Like this, but aligned with your child’s needs:

In the context of a conversational small-group setting with similar-aged peers, Larlo will independently ask 3 consecutive questions of peers about the peers topic of interest. Data will be recorded 5 times per day until Larlo responds independently during an average 80% of recorded instances across 5 consecutive days. This skill will then be generalized across 2 different peers and 2 different settings meeting the same criteria.

If you get enough kids with goals like this they will hire a social skills teacher or at minimum create a social skills class.

That’s the way I’ve always seen it play out.

Hire an advocate and a lawyer if you’re getting push back from the school.

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, teachers basically told us "no, we don't do social groups here." They basically refused to change their schedules. It was ridiculous rigidity.

I have found teachers to be super unhelpful in this regard. Not saying it's any ONE teacher's job to run social groups, but somebody should be doing it.

Figure it out. I encourage parents to advocate and fight.

Parents who want this need to advocate through the IEP process, and not ask teachers to skip things that either are mandated by their employer (like certain numbers of instructional minutes for each subject or attending IEPs) or that are required for the classroom to function like collaborating with colleagues.

If you can convince the IEP team to write this then I will show up as speech therapy or counseling or possibly special education hours and be assigned to the appropriate professional.

But asking a teacher to rearrange their complex schedule, and then calling them rigid for not being able to magically make time is absurd.

In my experience, teachers basically told us "no, we don't do social groups here." They basically refused to change their schedules. It was ridiculous rigidity.

I have found teachers to be super unhelpful in this regard. Not saying it's any ONE teacher's job to run social groups, but somebody should be doing it.

Figure it out. I encourage parents to advocate and fight.

Regular classroom teachers are not the correct person to lead a social skills group. This is not their area. It is guidance counselors or special ed teachers.

Anonymous wrote:Because teaching social skills and manners is your job as the parent.

ma’am this is the SN board

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because people constantly vote for Republicans who cut school budgets. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Thank you for saying this. I’m sick of the people who want EVERYTHING done in schools, get mad when teacher doesn’t want to give up the 30 minutes they may have “free” to pee, run to the far away fridge to get their lunch, heat it up after waiting for the person in front of them to use the microwave, walk back to their classroom, and then leave 2 minutes early to make sure to pick up their kids from recess on time. Same people complaining are probably the ones who run an errand and cook dinner during work hours while working from home and whine about having to go into the office twice a week. Sick of it.

You want more in education, don’t vote republican, volunteer in schools or for pta, ask teachers what they need, and teach your kids to respect adults so they can at least do their jobs.

x1 million

They cut budgets and then complain about the schools. MFers.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, OP. It's infuriating. In my experience, teachers are super reluctant to give up their downtime.

Following for thoughts, suggestions, support.

Why on earth would you ask a teacher to give up their small window of time for lunch?

This was handled by the counselors at my kids’ school. And they included all kids.

Anonymous wrote:I wish they could do more facilitated recess games. We had a “play team” at one school and it made such a huge difference in the younger grades for all of the kids.

It was an outside vendor who trained staff just to facilitate games at recess. The PE teacher took the lead on maintaining the program.

I would love this. What does it take to make it happen?