Bird on the Street

Frustration, Revelation, and Everything In Between

8:50 pm

So today we had Charlie’s second annual Really Big Powwow and man was that a kick in the teeth. Or a punch in the gut. I’ll let you decide.

I cleaned for almost two hours before everybody got here. I generally live in a state of filth, but things seemed especially bad, and there were two extra people coming–Charlie’s case manager and the evaluator. I wouldn’t want them thinking I live in complete squalor, so I scrubbed counter tops and vacuumed and folded laundry in a desperate attempt to make my house look a little more presentable. I think I did OK.

So every single one of Charlie’s therapists came to the meeting–that’s four therapists, the evaluator, and the case manager. I don’t actually have enough room for all those people, but we made it work.

The report was passed out and Charlie is severely behind in everything except social/emotional. Wow, that was a blow. I mean, I know we’re behind, but seeing it there in black and white: severely behind over and over again–depressing. Later that day I was telling Charlie’s Feldenkrais practitioner about it and she asked, “well, how’s he doing compared with a year ago or six months ago?” and I really think that that’s the problem with the whole thing. They don’t know. They can’t tell you if he’s improving or not. You can’t assess the efficacy of your techniques either. He was behind before and he’s behind again–at least part of your brain wonders if the hours of therapy and travel and research are worth it or are you just spinning your wheels. If I could change one thing about Early Intervention, it would be that–I’d like some measure of whether or not he’s improved in addition to information on how he compares to other children.

But I’m a big girl. I have this blog where I recount progress. I have videos and pictures. I know that Charlie is improving–these evals are just hard.

And then, after skimming over that fact that my kid is a disaster area, they come to the big discussion: equipment.

Quickly, two major points come up–transportation and sitting. Transportation is taken care of pretty quickly. We’re buying a high end regular stroller to get us through the next few years. Charlie is tiny, and can ride in any stroller pretty well, so I see no need to waste insurance company good-will on an adaptive stroller at this point. We’re holding out for the big kahuna–some type of power wheelchair.

But then suddenly, and without warning, they throw a dirty bomb in my lap. Charlie’s OT and instructor really want him to have a better seating situation. They want complete torso support and a large tray so he can work on things like coloring, puzzles, and eating with a spoon. They want to spend less time holding him up and more time working on new things. I think this is a great idea, but the idea of equipment is fraught with issues. First, no one knows exactly what we want. They know they want something, but overall I’d say that knowledge of equipment is pretty limited in my area. Second, equipment is expensive, so you don’t want to buy something that’s not a good fit.

This one offers a tray attachment, but it looks huge.

So I google “Special Tomato” because someone somewhere on the Internet has one and I remember the name. Well, that brings up an entire website of adaptive, positional seating–it’s like Pandora’s box of ugly medical crap. And it is ugly. I swear that if I ever get to the point where I’m making money instead of spending it, I’m going to to do two things: one, start a scholarship fund for parents who want to pursue alternative treatments for their children and two, design some medical fabric that doesn’t make me want to barf. I mean, even the stuff that’s less ugly is still pretty unattractive. The Special Tomato is actually getting cuter so that’s a plus. It comes with a LOT of options, though, and since I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know what a good option would be for us. I know I need a tray–do I want a tall seat or a low one? Do I want a wheeled base? Do I want it to be more portable or more integrated into our home life? THERE ARE TOO MANY OPTIONS! And, of course, there’s no way to test it out or even better, to test out multiple options to see what would be best for you. I’m going to makes some calls tomorrow, but my PT didn’t know of a place that handled kid’s equipment and my Internet search yielded nothing as well. Ahhhh, the south. I’m going to have to make a thousand dollar decision based on some teeny-tiny Internet pictures and manufacturer-provided descriptions.

This one doesn’t have a tray but can be put on a regular seat at a table.

So there you go: I’ve got research to do on seating options. The eval has spurred me on and I’m going to try to integrate reading books into our daily routine a little more. I’ve got our usual seven appointments a week. I’ve got ABR hours to get in. I’m still doing research on alternatives to Phenobarb. And, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but there are only so many hours in the day.

Sigh.

Filed Underequipment, therapy

Good Things

9:50 pm

In no particular order, some things that make me happy:

Bones on DVD

Chocolate chip cheese ball (mine doesn’t have any butter).

My brand-new purse in a mustard yellow for fall (don’t worry, I got it on deep discount).

Books from Overstock.com–cheaper than Amazon and cheap shipping too.

The Tigers having a winning season.

The Saints doing well too.

and. . . .

Charlie getting himself into this position all on his own:

Of course once he was up there he had no idea what to do, but I’ll take it. His butt was even higher when he started, but we had to run to find the camera.

Filed UnderUncategorized

Opinions Gone Wild

8:57 pm

Well, I’ve still got some great education questions that I’d like to answer, so I’m back on that today. The Colonel and Luckeyfrog asked two questions that I think dovetail nicely, so I’m going to answer those today.

The Colonel wanted to know when school became so “student-focused.” He seems to feel that many excuses are made for kids these days and that teachers are bending over backwards to accommodate them. He clarified by saying that he didn’t mean children with documented disabilities, but just regular kids.

In my opinion, there’s one big reason for this and then a couple of smaller ones. First and foremost, in this country, education is a right and not a privilege. Regardless of how well a person does or whether or not they show any interest, a person is still required to attend school for most of their young lives. In many states the age a person is allowed to drop out of school is seventeen or eighteen, which means that they will be in the system until adulthood. Furthermore, most states have every single student on a college-prep curriculum.

Piled on top of that are the requirements that teachers have. Teachers are judged on many, many criteria including the number of students who pass their class, the number of students who pass the state test, and possibly even the attendance of their students. When I worked in Texas I received a note from my principal stating that I had more students failing my class than the maximum recommended guideline of 10%. One of my students was a drug addict who had not come to school in over a month. My class only had five students. When one out of five is failing, that means 20%. I’m not sure what they wanted me to do about it–pass a student who didn’t attend? When I worked in Arkansas, we were given a number of students expected to pass the state test each year. Every year we fell short and the next year the number would be even higher. Logic just doesn’t enter into the equation. Some states link the state test to graduation, but Arkansas wasn’t one of them. Basically, the students had no incentive to pass the test. None.

So there’s a lot of pressure on teachers to pass students–to accommodate them. Personally, I think it’s great when teachers bend over backward to enhance student learning, but many times these measures lead teachers to grade inflate or to create enough easy grades so that no one fails.

But Luckeyfrog wanted to know about another group of students that might appear in her class–those with disabilities that are in the mainstream curriculum. When I was in school, this wasn’t discussed AT ALL. I had no idea what it even meant. I had trial by fire, though, as my first teaching assignment had mainstream kids and every job after that actually involved developing modification plans for my students. Here’s a quick list of what worked for me:

Give students a word bank of choices.

Make sure a word bank has about five choices in it–giving them fifteen choices isn’t helpful.

When giving a multiple choice test, eliminate one or two of the choices depending on the student.

Assign only evens or odds on a worksheet.

Put students in pairs and let them read to each other–let students divvy up the material.

Try to plan lessons that appeal to different learning modalities–consider visual and tactile experiences as well as auditory.

Consider contract grading for students who seem dejected.

During seat work, sit next to students and work with them or pull a small group of kids who struggle.

If giving notes, consider creating a “note helper” for students–a sheet with blanks to be filled in rather than just writing down everything you say.

When giving notes, walk around the room and tap desks of students easily distracted.

Try a variety of seating strategies.

When teaching a subject like math or science, focus on the subject and try to remove all barriers to the material. If the child has trouble reading, see if there’s an audio version of the book or text book. If the child has trouble writing, allow them to give you answers orally. Getting hung up on what they can’t do can lead to a loss of learning. Being unable to read or write doesn’t’ mean that their brains can’t process other types of information. I had one student who could barely read, but who could solve complex algebra problems in his head.