Hi Willa Gayle,

Sorry I haven't responded to your 2e question--I've been running around the past couple of days.

First, I have to say that I am by no means an expert or Super Teacher or anything like that. I can only respond from personal experience and this may (probably) not reflect what other teachers do.

Also, as you know, kids like ours are rare, and that's why most teachers don't know what to do with them. They don't have to face situations like this often.

All that out of the way, I did have a similar student to Mite, though not as advanced. He was a middle school student, quite smart, but with no organizational skills at all. He also had attention difficulties. He would rotate between not doing his homework, doing it but forgetting it at home, and doing it but forgetting it was sitting in his backpack. He would also quit in the middle of a project, complete only half his class assignments, etc. I had the advantage of a small class size and a great deal of contact with my students' parents.

We worked on systems for homework--I would put everything in an envelope so his parents could at least find it. I would have all the kids check their backpacks at homework collection time (so as not to single him out). I would explain the directions for the homework to the class, then call on students to explain it back to me, most of the time calling on this student in addition to several others (again not to single anyone out).

He did get better at organizing, but the problem still remained that he didn't see things through to completion. I think that there are certain things that students need to learn and if I felt like this student hadn't mastered it and would need it in the future, I would insist on it being completed, though maybe through a series of steps. Such an example could be a written essay because being able to write well is something he would need in high school and beyond. Breaking it into steps may be assigning just coming up with a topic one night, then starting to outline ideas, etc. until he could eventually complete it. I was not a stickler on timelines. On the other hand, if he was not completing a math assignment, of say 10 algebra problems, but I could see he understood it from his answers to the 4 he completed, I would grade him on what he did, not what he was assigned.

Some parents or students may not find this fair, but accommodations need to be made for certain students, and the accommodations were never broadcasted to the other parents, and I didn't have a problem with it (no complaints from other parents or students).

So, as I said before, this is only my personal experience. I did not have any specific special education training, but this is what I came up with to deal with one specific situation. Hope it helps.

Hopefully you will find some good teachers someday. There are some out there....