This Is Not Education
March 12, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
This post is the unfortunate coda to the previous one, What is Education?. An article entitled School accused of improperly restraining special-needs students in the March 12th Gazette (Colorado Springs) reports that special needs students at Will Rogers Elementary were improperly restrained, forced into “time-out” seclusion, and, well, more that you can read below.
The Legal Center for People with Disabilities and Older People submitted a 21-page report to Colorado’s Department of Education and Colorado Springs School District 11. District 11 “’strongly disagrees’” with the report.
All of the allegations in the report occurred in a self-contained classroom called the “Learning Lab” and an attached time-out room; five students were in the class, all with “mental health or developmental disabilities.” The advocacy group was allowed “free access to the school and staff for its investigation,” according to Heidi Van Huysen, an attorney with the center’s special-education program
Details (not easy to read):
While parents and an attorney for the legal center acknowledge the students involved exhibited extremely challenging behavior, they say the school was ill-equipped to deal with it and the remedial action it chose violated numerous state education regulations.
In one instance, an 11-year-old girl was denied a trip to the restroom and had to sit in her urine, according to the report. An 11-year-old boy reportedly was bloody from hitting himself and banging his head while in seclusion.
Two mothers interviewed by The Gazette said their sons now live in residential facilities, in part because their behavior deteriorated considerably while at Will Rogers.
Christie Penny said her 11-year-old son, Christopher, was put in seclusion several times a week and often denied food until late in the school day.
Christopher has high-functioning autism, and his mother said he gets easily angered and frustrated if not allowed adequate time to finish expressing a thought. “If you don’t go at his pace, he can’t do it. They’re supposed to know that in that kind of setting,” Penny said.
Christopher is now in a “hospital-type setting” in metro Denver, and the family has moved from Colorado Springs to be closer to him, his mother said.
Another mother, Penny Gilliland, said her son, Alex, who suffers mental illness, is also easily agitated over seemingly little things.
“He can go from one to 10 quickly,” Gilliland said of his quick temper. “I believe they should have talked to an outside professional to intervene with Alex because obviously it was out of their hands,” she said.
Alex is now in a residential program at Cedar Springs Behavioral Health System.
A complaint against one of the special education teachers is being filed by the Legal Center for People with Disabilities and Older People. The non-profit agency is also conducting similar investigations in five other school districts in Colorado.
This is not education.
Kristina. I am absolutely gobsmacked!
How such things could be allowed to happen to
these poor children is beyond me.
There is no excuse for such behaviour in this day and age.
Treating these children in such an inhumane way has more than likely traumatized them for life.
Disgraceful!
I felt awful just reading through it all…..one just does not understand.
Shocking. I can’t believe that special education teachers are so completely without compassion and so completely without… clue. Wouldn’t it be good if they were sentenced to go all day without eating and to sit in their own urine? Not much hope of that, of course, but with any luck they’ll lose their teaching credentials and no longer be allowed to torment children.
In an ex-was-hoped-to-have-become-Soviet country (that’s why Lenin allowed independence to Finland in 1917)… even here… most special education teachers have more empathy and compassion than has been described in reports about places like the JRC and the above place…
And Finland is by no means at all anywhere near perfect.
Exhibiting “bad behaviors” either means a student
a) Is a really bad person who must be punished, no matter what it takes, or
b) Doesn’t understand proper human behavior, and thus is not human, and thus exists outside the “rules” for how we treat other humans. It is therefore OK to torture them when we are unfortunate enough to have to care for them.
It is never the case that the student’s bad behaviors are simply a sign that our teaching methods are totally inappropriate, we have absolutely no clue on how to deal with a particular student, and our view of special education students is so jaded that we have absolutely no business being in the same room with them.
At one of the autism centers we looked at a few years ago here in New Jersey, the director made it clear that the aides get a good pension if they are stay on for some years.
That said enough (and a lot) to us.
Where are their Program Specialist? (they should at least have one specialized in Autism)
Where is there crisis training?
Where are the behavior plans?
As an Special Educator it still makes me ill reading these cases.
I have worked with all levels of Autism. I have also worked with adults,teens,children and toddlers.
I feel very sad for these children and families. School should be a SAFE and enriched enviroment for our students. I have always been taught you do not hold food or restroom for punishment. That is ABUSE!!! If the child is not calm for the restroom bring another staff member to help the student. By help I don’t mean restrainment, sometimes a switching of the manager helps. I want to also know what kind of crisis training these people get? I remember one aide writing here saying there was no funding for training. It should be mandatory that these districts and county operated schools should have crisis training.
I feel they need higher requirements and training for Special Education staff. I mean more than 8 hours of lecture. I feel hands on training( on behavior,crisis,PECS,educational, etc.) with a trainer is crucial. I also feel a competence exam should be in place. I have been at trainings and watched too many people balance their check books,knit,or play games on their phones. I feel the exam would really see if they learned anything.I feel blessed have such great trainers. In Butte County two of their Specialist (Cathy Smith and Patty Schetter) made such a difference in my life and the lives of my students. I hope these districts can find and have good specialist to help. My heart and prayers go out to these families and students in these horrible situations. Every child and human being deserves to be treated with respect and compassion. I feel these staff memebers and district should be 110% responsible.
Kristina, unfortunately what is described above is all too common.
sometimes a lot of money is spent on children when they are very little, but when they ‘age out’ of EI or preschool special education, the services and school placements dwindle to nothing if the child is ‘non-compliant’ and cannot test well. All that is left to the families is to ‘home school’ or send their children to classrooms in public or state approved schools that use similar methods. These classrooms are no better than outpatient institutions. I think this is what Alison Singer was referrring to when she talked of her despair. It wasnt her child that caused her despair, but the fate that could befall her as she grew older. Lets face it , the scary reality is that little kids are cute and managable, but older children, not always. It takes dedicated people to work with students. Sometimes the staff are wonderful and dedicated even in the worst schools, but they need to receive proper training.
If children and adolescents are treated as a ’set of behaviors’ and not taught with patience and understanding the student will suffer. Thousands of lives are being ruined by poorly run and underfunded programs. It really should be a federal program and every district, every state should get the same services.
Thanks, Caroline—this article really struck a note in me because it made me think of some things that happened to Charlie. I’ve referred several times to the school district he was in before the current one and, in retrospect, insufficient training and support for the teacher and aides were a serious, and unacknowledged problem. The kind of rationales for “behavior management”—-like the length of a time-out being based on the age in years of a child—-was typical of some of the thinking I saw. Hence, the important of pushing for educating throughout the lifespan!
Hi everyone, especially Kristina and Mika,
the concepts that Mika described above and that Charlie’s school seems to understand so well should be presented somewhere in a formal way that can effect change for all.
How best to do this?
The education system is buckling under the weight of all the need on top of a very tenuous special education system not designed for children with ‘behavioral’ (non-compliant) aspects.
Sometimes the answers in working with kids are so simple but we all forget in the crisis moments of a meltdown, for example.
Maybe we should all draft something practical about education strategies that work and present it to the organization ‘poised to become the largest autism organization in the U.S.’
Yet another idea for a post!
Good communication between teachers and parents is essential—-that might not be the first thing one thinks of, but I think having good and open communication between home and school can be help to build a strong foundation for a sound relationship among all parties. (And the main person I wish to have a good relationship with when it comes to Charlie’s education is his teacher—who spends so much time with him, thinks about how to teach him, writes up his lessons and trains the aides and strategizes……) Trust gets built up this way, too—so essential.
And there has to be training in pragmatic matters. So that, if a child hits an aide, or hits their own head, the mentality is not “this is a terrible crisis!” but “we need to figure this out.” Not exile the child from a mainstream setting, or call for various protective measures.
The teachers need to know we are with them, not against them. Seems so obvious, yet can be so hard.