Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy UPDATE: Teacher disciplining disability AGAIN

Thanks HK!

I had an email from the school psych last night and she would like to attend our meeting. I am glad to have her join us.

I had emailed her in the morning (before the big issue of the day) about DS not getting subject level acceleration promised (after much effort and many meetings and testing) in Lang Arts and Reading and also with some new information about how his dyspraxia was affecting him in gym class. (The day before we discussed testing results and how "not having anything to learn" was affecting my child with the challenges he has to struggle through only to be "taught" things he knew some time ago.)

She had been in the meetings and administered the tests to decide he needed the acceleration. His new teachers were not involved. She is now saying it is the teacher's responsibility and:

" Also, I think an innocent misconception about gifted children on the part of some teachers is that they assume gifted students have mastered all lower level skills (that their skills are evenly developed) and subsequently may be hesitant to provide accelerated matieral when they notice varying skills. Also, a child's functional ability within the classroom may not coincide with performance on assessment, as these are two very different things. We know it is not this cut and dry, but i think it can be challenging for a classroom teacher to understand. "


Feels like a new day, a new battle.

Thank you Dee Dee. Trying to get my mind ready for discussion and your thoughts are helpful.

I think my "goal" for this meeting is to first get their impressions of how things are going, second be sure he isn't disciplined for disabilities and third to discuss meeting the learning needs he was found to have (by the school) that have not yet been addressed. It will be hard to stay to point.

I'm not interested in a power struggle or debating either his abilities or disabilities just feeling out the teacher perspective and checking that his exceptionalities are being treated fairly in this (awful) interim period.

Oh WOW!! The short meeting with the teachers just got BIGGER. Now I have 20 min with the 2 teachers, the school psych, principal, and the district gifted coordinator... Oh boy...

Help please!

Wear mismatched socks.

I stopped by here this morning because I wanted to send you good wishes on your way to your meeting - I'll be thinking of you! It sounds like you have a wonderful resource in your school psych - I'm glad she'll be at the meeting today And glad the rest of what will most likely be your IEP eligibility team will also be there - it sounds very positive for a good start for the journey ahead


These are great goals - and they will most likely be ongoing goals, as it's not going to be possible to get everything resolved and in order in one 20 minute meeting. Do your best to redirect the conversation back to what needs to be discussed today. It helped me to rehearse in my head a bit before meetings like this - to try to anticipate what arguments or questions about a diagnosis the staff might have and how I would answer. It also helped me to have a *very* brief one-line-few-words well-rehearsed calm comeback to throw out whenever one of the school staff questioned the need for accommodations etc - my go-tos, depending on what was said by the staff, were statements such as "Are you questioning the diagnosis of a well-respected credentialed professional?", "We aren't here to talk about the other students, we are here to put together a plan for ds", "because DS can not rely on handwriting to show his knowledge"... simple brief statements that went a long way to diffusing the tendency of a group conversation to wander off track. I would rehearse them in my head on the drive to the school so that I was able to say them calmly and without emotion even if the meeting turned sour to the point I wanted to leap on the table and scream

I think everything will be fine today. You're well-prepared with an understanding of your ds' challenges, and you're a strong advocate.

Let us know how everything goes!

polarbear

ps - after the meeting is over, type up a brief summary of everything that you understand was discussed and agreed upon and send it to everyone on the team, asking if there is anything that you've missed or anything that needs to be clarified.

Warning - humor ahead!

I used to get really nervous trying to plan for meetings while working through the IEP eligibility process for my ds. The advocate I worked with used to give me the same advice over and over again (and I've seen it mentioned everywhere online and in books) - take muffins. Or donuts. Or cookies. Something baked and yummy and sweet as a token of your good intentions of working as a team, of being on the same side, working together, getting the meeting off to a good "we're all a happy family" start.

Well - I'm a mom of three. I don't have time to know what day it is, much less bake. And oh yeah, I have a child with a disability (who at the time was frequently imploding over school), as well as a child for whom "focus" is still an alien word, and that third child who fights every single darned thing in any given day... all of whom I was constantly driving all over town to all their different activities as well as therapies during all our waking hours. I had no time to bake. Which was really irrelevant anyway, because I don't like to bake. In a previous life, I might have used stronger language about my feelings about baking from scratch

I also had visions of our school "team" - the sped staff, the admin rep who had to be present, the school psych, etc - going to multiple x multiple team meetings for the huge number of students who already had IEPs or who were being evaluated etc.... and having to be faced with a new set of sugar-filled, fattening muffins every time they went to a meeting. I could just imagine one of these people taking one look at my warm-out-of-the-oven magazine-cover-worthy muffins I'd hated baking and throwing up at the thought of having to pretend to enjoy one more muffin, while in the meantime, the rest of the once-skinny and now-portly staff folks politely declined what had taken me hours to create (since I'd burned the first batch and the second batch had fallen flat and I'd had to make a last-minute run by the grocery store with all fingers crossed hoping beyond hope there was a package of freshly backed muffins that didn't have "grocery store" radiating from their look and taste

Soooo... I never brought muffins or anything (although I ate a lot of muffins all by myself before meetings!).

I don't think it mattered

So there you have it - complete non-advice!

Good luck this afternoon,

polarbear

My feeling (adding to polarbear's excellent advice) is that knowing MY luck, one of the people I'm meeting with will have celiac, a second will be diabetic, and yet another person will be food allergic. GREAT impression I just made...

LOL.

In truth, I was advised to 'visualize them in their underwear' which is good... until you stop to think about the survey numbers regarding the people who, er-- go commando.




yeah, the 300lb 5'8" English teacher in a thong? Just... no.


Just remember that things once seen (even in the mind's eye) cannot be UN-seen.

And smile when you think about that.

Polarbear, you have no idea what a relief it is to read that there is someone else in the world who doesn't bring treats to every meeting.

Well if it makes you feel better I had a similar crew (sans gifted coordinator) for my first meeting regarding bully teacher punishing DD's deficits. I didn't have advanced notice, though. I just walked into a meeting room filled with people sitting around the table with very dour faces. I thought to myself. "Great. I have one shot to get this right and I'm being ambushed." I sat down and someone placed a box of tissues in front of me - clearly expecting me to become a sniveling mass of jelly. That's all it took for me to become hyper focused and very serious.

I kept my tone low and measured and said my peace. This was the meeting where the teacher not only admitted to treating my DD this way but actually became indignant about it. School psych brought DD in and had the teacher apologize to her and make carefully worded efforts to welcome her to the class. Everyone in the room, with the exception of the teacher, fell in love with DD during that meeting. I gained credibility. The teacher, well I think she just decided DD and I were going to be pains in the arse...

I realize now that it was all a power trip and I turned the tables on them. They came in expecting to have an over emotional, overprotective parent of a bratty, indulged child. They were shocked that the teacher confirmed my version of what happened and truly thought she was in the right. This was not, as it turned out, my only chance by any means. There have been many, many more meetings and there are many more yet to come. Your school psych sounds like a gem. Hopefully she will set the teacher straight. Hopefully the principal will also get it.

This sounds much better than it did last night. Take a deep breath, put on your internal armor and follow Polarbear's advice. I'm betting you will do great.

Please let us know how it goes.

A box of tissues? How demeaning, Pemberley. I'm impressed at your forbearance.

Good luck HappilyMom!!! May the psych be a staunch ally and the staff see reason.