Welcome

Welcome to my blog – or what I think of as a therapeutic bitchfest where anyone associated with school can: vent their frustrations; find and share resources to help struggling students; share ideas for change; and to find support from others whose school experiences have been less than stellar.

Here’s a little background to help you understand where I’m coming from. I’m a 40 year old mother of one child, a daughter, who is dyslexic and is currently a high school freshman. We live in New York, so those are the laws I am most familiar with. Also, when I refer to school, I am referring to the public school system since I am not familiar with how private schools are affected by the state and federal education laws; though I am curious about how private school experiences compare to those of the public schools.

I do not have any letters after my name or a formal background in the field of education. I do, however, have a child who is a classified, special education student; and it was her troubles in school that lead me to research education and learning like it was a full time job. Through the various positions I’ve held in my local PTAs and SEPTA and through programs held by other local PTA/SEPTAs, as well as the SETRC division of BOCES, I was met to a variety of parents, teachers and administrators whose experiences and frustrations were similar to my own.

My foray into education began about 10 years ago when my daughter’s teachers started reporting things to me that just didn’t make any sense. I made her kindergarten and 1st grade teachers aware that both my brother and brother-in-law are Dyslexic and were classified students. And while both teachers assured me that they did not see any red flag behaviors that suggested my daughter was also Dyslexic, they did recommend her for reading recovery, speech therapy, and the summer reading program. The first grade teacher was concerned that my daughter wasn’t grasping basic mathematical concepts and that it was causing her trouble when participating in lessons. However, she was "a pleasure to have in class" because she followed the rules, didn’t cause any disruptions and was socially well-adjusted. When I shared my concern about homework assignments taking more than double the district’s recommended time frame I was told not to worry about it as kids develop at different rates.

By the end of my daughter’s 1st grade year it was more than obvious to me that something wasn’t right. Here was a kid who screwed the bottle top onto a soda bottle and the age of two and a half, but who couldn’t cut with scissors or hold a pencil correctly; who couldn’t recognize site words, but who could point out the location of her eye doctor’s office through the car window a year after her first visit there. Although her teachers did make recommendations for things for me to do at home to help her with some of the presenting issues, not once did they mention the child study team or the possibility of my daughter’s issues going beyond the normal developmental differences of elementary school children.

That summer I happened to catch a repeat of Oprah featuring Mel Levine and the PBS documentary Misunderstood Minds. The show ended at 5:00pm and by 5:20pm I was in Barnes and Noble buying his book A Mind at a Time. By the time I finished Mel Levine’s book I knew that: a. my daughter needed to be classified, or have a 504 at the very least; b. her teachers and I were not defining Dyslexia the same way; c. the only thing that seemed to “cause” learning disabilities was school itself, and d. I needed to find a place outside of school where my daughter could shine.

From that first reading of A Mind at a Time I realized that the system, if it ever really worked in the first place, was broken, and that what we have all come to call learning disabilities, on closer inspection, seem to be educational disabilities. So what started out as a battle with the school to get my daughter the help she needed very quickly turned into a battle for all struggling students.

Unfortunately, the two prevailing attitudes I keep encountering are: if the majority of students are meeting the course requirements and passing, then there is nothing wrong with the system; and you can’t change the system. I say bullshit to both. For one thing, every (and I mean literally every) parent I have ever talked to has had a complaint about the hours of homework their kids have every night. And almost every other parent I’ve met has hired or is looking for a tutor. The other reason I say bullshit is because the system has already changed. The curriculum in place now is such an accelerated version of what I had in school that in middle school my daughter was expected to learn concepts that I learned in high school. It’s a shame that these changes had nothing to do with actual education and learning and everything to do with political and economical factors, not to mention parents dreams of Ivy League bragging rights.

So, again, I welcome you to the bitchfest that I hope will be supportive and informative enough to help you help your struggling students; and that will also help bring to light the failings of the system that is, regardless of grades and test scores, ultimately failing our students.

Thank you for your time.