Day 26

At 9 o'clock in the morning I found myself in my first IEP meeting, where what I/special education supervisor had been doing actually meant something. This case dealt with the child who hit a teacher (yet nothing was done about it). The family is Hispanic and so the communication has been a minor issue. The family brought a family friend who was a teacher where she lived last, and knew quite a bit about the child and history. The meeting did not turned out as I thought it would (although I know it was wrong to have thoughts of how it would go). The family and the special projects leader kept trying to stress the need for a reduced test (in all subjects) that only covered the standards. They also kept stressing a functional behavior assessment. My anger came from the fact he doesn't need a reduced test. He can do all the work. He is given extra time to complete it (as per his IEP) with breaks in between (7-8 minutes). He completes the test and does quite well. He had poor grades on his progress report due to so many zeros, had it not been for the actual good test scores he turned in, he would have even worse grades, but his tests kept him afloat. For the FBA they wanted we knew the antecedent behavior - doing work. If he is given a lot of work at once or given stuff he really doesn't understand he becomes frustrated. This causes him to shut down and not work. We have the documentation saying that, but because a psychologist who met this child the day before decided so, that's what they think they need. It is so frustrating because we knew the issues at hand we just didn't know where to go from there. We knew what triggers the behavior and how to make hiim work. They didn't want to help, they would rather cut something that he can accomplish and does well. It is amazing to me that they "swept under the rug" the incident where he punched a teacher 3x and kicked him 2x. The family friend kept saying that yes it was an isolated incident, but if it should happen again the school should have a trained "team" that would cater to the child and be able to restrain him. But the issue lies in he is not dumb, he knew what he was doing and yet received no punishment. If it got him out of the classroom once, when we try to mainstreem him again, what's to say he won't do it again... he did it once and got away with it.?! Needless to say I know all IEP meetings won't be this crazy, but it was a definite eye opener as far as the school system is concerned. The rest of the day went okay. Very frustrating especially for my ST, but understandable. We were able to get most of the other children and read with them. I took over most, due to circumstances.