News

This is sooooooo fucked up

Also a sobering reminder that this society may not be the best place to bring new children into. I would be beyond irate if that had been my child.

ಠ_ಠ

this is Texas brand cruelty

real men thrive on pain

Okay I'm not defending the teacher here except for the child's right to be recognized and have their needs tended to. This also isn't about "good" and "bad" teachers, but the education system. This is anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth.

My wife, S, is an intervention specialist which is a teacher in a special ed classroom. I think she is a very good teacher, and after years in a underfunded inner city school, she now works in a very large well funded elementary school in a nice area with very involved and stable parents, by and large.

She has a student, L who is non verbal, most of her kids are and she has the most difficult special-ed classroom in her school. She works on a team with two other intervention specialists, one of which, B, was L's teacher for two years previous. L has a muscular disability.

It's S's first year at this school so she is just starting to know the kids. What she is discovering is that these "very low" non verbal children, have basically received no prior schooling on subjects. Their learning plans have each of them marked very low, with the most basic goals. And granted, behavior is usually an issue with these kids who can't communicate. They can lash out suddenly and scratch or bite a teacher or aide, drawing blood more often than not. So behavior will eat up a ton of bandwidth for any teacher. It took my wife months to get her kids to sit with her and do any work whatsoever. But once they started to do work for her so she could test their ability, she discovers that they are all quite advanced in various areas, despite basically never being taught. Kids with educational goals of being able to count to 5 can do multiplication and division for 2 and 3 digit numbers, ahead of their grade; kids who seem to have no concept of reading or conceptual language can spell and construct sentences or answer questions about a story, if it is shown to them in a way that they will interact with.

Back to L, he is another case just like this. Very difficult to work with at first, refused to be taught, lashes out violently when he gets frustrated, but now that he is used to her he will sit and work and also demonstrates advanced ability in multiple subjects.

However the last to years his previous teacher and the head of their team, B, by all accounts from teacher and aides did nothing with him for 2 years. He was basically laid on a mat in a closet, and ignored, everyday for 2 years. My wife says that for the most part he gets around in her class pretty darn well, so even the assumption that he's mostly immobile was wrong.

Special ed teachers spend most of their time some weeks filling out complicated ed plans that are a state requirement, but frankly no one ever checks or even seems to know how to fill these things out. Everyone is just winging it. Bureaucracy is a stand in for education and the needs of the child. Imo my wife is an exceptional teacher who has time and time again achieved breakthroughs with some of her most difficult students. The lead on her team, with over a decade of experience in this job couldn't even see past their own assumptions about the child, and never stopped to question them, and so the poor kid was neglected, uninjured thank God, for 2 years.

So if a pretty good teacher at a good school can fuck up that badly, how dangerous would it be for a inexperienced or disengaged teacher? To me this isn't a problem that comes down to individual teachers but of the American education system as a whole, and it's priorities. Spoiler alert, politics matter more than children.

In a statement to KTRK, Fort Bend Independent School District said: “Staff members involved in this incident are no longer employed by the district. We remain committed to creating a safe and secure learning environment for every student.”

For anyone wondering, this is what those staff ignored for two hours (WARNING: this may well trigger you, it sure as fuck ruined my day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx4in4UpdWE

This video is 43 seconds long. You hear that sound out of a little kid's leg, followed by the screaming for two hours, and don't immediately call the ambulance, you're not a reasonable adult. You're an inhuman monster. Anyone saying "well maybe they thought he was just acting out" is ignoring the basic facts of the case so they can be contrary on the Internet.

if this happened to my kids i would be writing a manifesto

Why didn't he say anything?

This isn't as black and white as it seems. People have pointed out that kids with special needs are different, and sometimes letting them cry it out us appropriate. But others have correctly pointed out, it is only appropriate when you have extremely high confidence about the nature of the crying. What all this points to is improperly trained staff. And probably not enough staff. These types of kids need consistent staff who get to know them well enough to tell the difference between hurt and disregulated. And this overall is a super hard job. Burnout is going to be common. I have yet to see a school have enough budget to provide staff for kids like this and handle burnout. It is extremely expensive for sure. So while the staff deserve a share of the blame, mainly for taking a job they aren't suited for, our not quitting when they were burned out... we can also understand that in this society, people have to work. So we can't expect people to quit when they can no longer do the job. The responsibility for getting them out of there has to fall on the employer. And they clearly had no process or methodology for doing that. So a large part of the blame goes to the employer. But their hands are similarly tied as they have been required by law to do something they are not funded to do. So the greatest blame goes to the government that put all of them in an impossible position.

me seeing the url: SWVA NOOOO

after clicking the link: i'm mostly wondering why on here the url someone shared is local SWVA coverage of something that happened in Texas