Let the Bridges Burn

I have been on the other side of the table-ARDS, special ed meetings, etc as a teacher.  I didn't realize how hard it was as a parent on "that side of the table".  So let me start by apologizing as a teacher if ever did anything to complicate the VERY hard process of getting the best education for a special needs child.  This is new territory for me, meaning not being the teacher and being the parent of a student with lots of needs. I am caught on a fence about the teacher vs. parent thing.  On one side, I KNOW there are not enough hours in the day to give the kind of education Ikester needs in a traditional classroom setting. However, he needs individualized instruction. And he is MY kid.  So I will bulldoze my way through the systems as his advocate, even if it ticks off my closest teacher friends. He is worth it.  This might mean friendships, bridges that I don't want to burn and being on the "list" (you know the one-that "difficult parent list") but if he can read at the end of it, then so be it.  Let the bridges burn.  I will strike the match.

My youngest can put anything together, has a mind for science, puzzles and is quite musical but he has many learning issues. Ikester has learning disabilities in language arts, reading, and math.  Homework is a nightmare.  School is a struggle. Period.  Although he can read and is very bright, he spends so much time decoding that he doesn't have much comprehension and this bleeds into math and writing.  STAAR test is not even on his radar.  And to set the record straight, it is NOT on mine.  (As I have told many a student, testing is a TINY part of a fraction of your life.  There are so many more important things to worry about.)

 He needs a special kind of instructor every year. (Mrs. M.W...ohhhh God broke the mold with her!  I don't know if he will ever encounter such a match!!! But wow-so thankful for her!) We can't afford tutors or private school.  Because of my cancer, I can't homeschool him. Public school will probably fail him in many ways.

Things most kids take for granted, he has to work at three times harder to master or even slide by.  Reading math word problems, for instance, are horrible. By the time he has decoded the mini-paragraph, he has long since forgotten why or what it is asking him to do.  Thus, math scores plummet.  Writing is another whirlwind of confusion. He has great ideas but can not transfer them onto paper.  A simple sentence halts him in his tracks.  As a reading and writing teacher, this frustrates me to no end.  The three kids before him read with such ease and at such early ages.  On the other hand, he gets Biblical truths deeper than most.  I guess when you look at what affects your eternity, I would rather him understand the Bible than the blasted STAAR test.

It breaks my heart to see him realize that he is different. That is probably the hardest part of all of this.  When he asks if he is a "special needs student", I tell him no.  I say, "Some of the most brilliant minds in history had to take a different route to learning.  That is you.  Just taking a different route."  Since he understands maps, this makes sense to him.  Thank goodness because maps don't make sense to me.

While I loved teaching, there are HUGE flaws in the special ed system as well as the state when it comes to learning.  TEKS (objectives written by the state) are ridiculous and out of touch with the average student, common sense has been tossed out of the window in regards to developmental appropriateness, PE time and recess time stripped away, technical classes are deleted and the ones that suffer are this generation of learners. It is time to get fired up about all children's education, not just the elite learners.

                                            I say let the bridges burn.