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special education

MCAS Day One

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Today, I left work angry, frustrated, and discouraged.

No, this is not typical.

But today, MCAS began.

Today, I sat with my sweet little 3rd grade student from 9 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, while she struggled through a test that she shouldn’t have to take.

Since she qualifies for special education under a language-based learning disability, she is eligible for some MCAS accommodations.

She was allowed to use a place marker to keep her place while reading.

But she couldn’t decode all the words. Let alone comprehend them. Because she’s a third grader with a severe LLD.

I was allowed to clarify directions. But “Yup, so you read the story and answer the questions,” doesn’t help when she has no idea what she’s reading.

She was allowed to type her responses. But that didn’t help when she couldn’t comprehend the story or what the questions were asking.

She doesn’t qualify for the “read aloud” accommodation. Because, to qualify for that, you have to be a “virtual non-reader”. Being significantly below grade level isn’t enough. Because, if I knew the Russian alphabet and could read a few basic words, I should be able to comprehend stories, right? Not to mention the fact that even if she could decode everything, which she can’t, she’s not comprehending. Because she has a disability. 

So today, I sat with her while she struggled to sound out each word in about 10 2-4-page stories. Tried not to tear up when she tried to read the questions, and then laboriously re-read the story, trying so hard to figure out the answer. Tried not to bang my head in frustration on her behalf when she looked at me and said, “I don’t know what this is even saying.”

I tried not to think about how detrimental this is. Because although I made light of it (by the end I was “woo-hoo!!!-ing every time she answered a question, and saying things like, “Only two more yucky questions!” to make her smile), she’s not stupid. In fact, she’s one of the smartest little kids I know. She knew she couldn’t do it. She knew she was supposed to be able to. She knew that if I had been able to help her, encourage her to use strategies, read it to her, she would’ve been able to do better (she said as much). She took breaks where I’d do what I could to make that little perfectionist girl, who hates getting anything wrong, smile as best I could. But it didn’t stop her from sighing, resigned, and saying, “It’s fine. I’ll just keep going.”

And then by the end, when she had given it everything she had – she had to do the sample PARCC session. Which really made MCAS look like a piece of cake, and that’s saying something. She looked at me and said, “This is so hard. I don’t even understand any of it. I’m just going to guess because I can’t do this.”

If we strive for language-based teaching, PARCC is the exact opposite.

“I think they’re hard, too.” I offered.

She looked up, skeptical. “Really?”

“Really.” And sadly, I wasn’t lying.

And so for yet another year, I think, there has got to be a better way. A better way than wasting our teaching time and their learning time on this test. A better way than having testing send us backwards in self-esteem and self-confidence. We spend so much energy teaching our students that having a learning disability doesn’t make them stupid, but really, we might as well be saying, “You’re not stupid. But! You’re going to have to spend some hours doing things that yes is for kids in your grade and yes you’re as smart as them but no you’re not going to be able to read most of it or answer most of it, but don’t even give it a second thought, you’re so smart and this means nothing!”

And we do what we can, and we joke and smile and stay calm and get through it. Year after year after year. There’s no other option.

But it shouldn’t be this way to begin with, where we struggle in this way. Where intelligence is measured by this test. Where a successful education is measured through this test. This test doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t capture how smart my students are (and they are often smarter than me). It doesn’t capture their personalities. It doesn’t capture their strengths. It tells us nothing valuable.

There’s got to be a better way.

This is tolerance

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The following are snippits of conversations that have transpired between kids over the past few months.

The following snippits are proof that things are changing (for the better).

The following snippits give me hope.

—

4th graders.

“I’m going to draw the kid and the mom and the dad.”

“I have two moms.”

 

“Oh.”

“Do you have two moms?”

“Nope, I have a mom and a dad.”

“Cool.”

—

8th graders.

“Bruce Jenner is the man.”

“Dude. You can’t say that anymore. It’s Caitlin Jenner and he’s now a girl.”

“I can still call him Bruce.”

“No, you really can’t. He’s a woman, and his name is now Caitlin.”

—

8th graders.

A problem-solving scenario reads: “A student made fun of a boy for liking the color pink.”

“That’s so mean. And it doesn’t even make sense. There’s no such thing as boy colors and girl colors.”

“Yeah. Like, at the hospital, they only picked pink and blue to tell the boys from the girls. But those aren’t even boy and girl colors, it was just a system they came up with.”

—

6th graders.

“Can we use ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ and ‘him’ in that example?”

“Sure.”

—

7th graders.

“So for example, if a boy was wearing a suit….”

“At my sister’s school there are a lot of transgender students. Anyone can wear anything and some people are boys and some are girls and some aren’t really either.”

—

5th graders.

“Ooh, can I be purple?”

“You like purple?”

“Yeah, it’s the best color.”

“Yeah, true.”

—

6th graders.

“That rainbow you’re drawing is SO beautiful.”

“You like rainbows?”

“Oh yes, they’re magical.”

“I like rainbows too. We have that in common.”

—

“I will always love you, Bob”

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[I could use this post to write about empathy, pretend play, imagination, special education…..but really, it speaks for itself without my commentary.]

A little figurine of Bob the Minion sits on my desk (thanks to my wonderful husband who knows toys are the way to my heart….), with a magenta stuffed turtle, and a little Pinkie Pie figurine, and several others.

At the end of our session on Friday, Polly chose her sticker and was putting back the sheet of stickers when she glanced at Bob. She sees him each time she’s in my office, often referencing how much she loves the Minions, sometimes asking to pet him on the head (obviously that’s what he wants), and sometimes just acknowledging his presence.

Today, she suggested, “I think we need to write him a note. So that he feels happy and doesn’t feel scared.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “What should the note say?”

“It should say ‘I will always love you, Bob.'” Then he will know that you love him and he will be happy!”

She got out a post-it note and handed me a pen.

After angling the note so that he would be able to read it, Polly was satisfied.

Bob

Pro vs. Noob

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With nearly all of my kids, we talk so much about “smart guesses” vs. “wacky guesses” – a concept that applies in social situations as well as academics. For example, if someone tells you, “You’d better bring your umbrella today,” a smart guess about why they said that, is, It’s probably going to rain today. A wacky guess would be, It’s going to be a beautiful sunny day. If a history book says, “By the end of the war, the population was down 20,000 people,” a smart guess about why would be, People died from the fighting in the war, where a wacky guess would be, All of those people moved away to Antarctica.

Essentially, we’re talking about inferences. Situations where information is not explicitly stated, but you use your prior knowledge plus situational information to make a guess about what’s going on. We do this all the time and don’t think twice about it. Our kids have a much harder time with it step-by-step, let alone automatically.

In my sessions with Nellie, we talk about this constantly. So, when we do reading comprehension practice, we talk about making smart guesses by looking back to the text. When we do social inferencing activities, we talk about making smart guesses to figure out what someone is thinking. We’ve been talking about this for years.

Nellie is obsessed with Minecraft – and she’s good at it. She has her own server, she has responsibility within the game, she is successful and happy when playing it; it’s something that makes her shine. Given the option, she would talk about it for our entire session. She has explained to me that in Minecraft there are rankings, and terms for the levels of players. She is considered a “Pro” – professional. Players who have just started playing, and don’t really know what they’re doing, are considered “Noobs” in Minecraft (“newbies”). Sometimes the “noobs” are spotted easily because they do things that others wouldn’t do – like make a house out of dirt (a very weak material), whereas the “pros” are noticed for using stronger materials and better strategies. She explained how a Noob is someone who just doesn’t know how to do it yet, and a Pro knows the techniques and strategies.

So one day, I forget the context, but we were talking about something unexpected, and I was trying to explain why it’s a wacky thing to do, and Nellie just looked at me and said, “That’s such a NOOB thing to do.”

Boom. Lightbulb. It clicked.

From then on, I switched my language, and she took to it immediately. Everything we did, we talked about the Pro way to do it and the Noob way to do it. Nellie is someone who continues to work on matching reaction size to the size of the problem. She’s a kid who might get grumpy about not going first, despite the fact that she’s almost in high school. She might have a huge reaction if someone bumps into her in the hall. She’s LOVES the silly 911 script. We added to it by saying that having a huge reaction to a small problem (like when our printer didn’t work the other day) would be a Noob thing to do, and a Pro reaction would be to just say, oh, well.

When we do our reading comprehension work now, Nellie makes Pro guesses, not Noob guesses.

When we work with another student, we talk about how making unexpected/odd comments in the middle of the conversation is a Noob thing to do, and a Pro thing to do is hold those thoughts in her thought bubble.

More often than not, she’s the one bringing it up, not me.

She laughs and laughs each time she gets to say, “That’s a NOOB thing to do!” And it’s working. She’ll sometimes see me in the hall and quickly tell me something Noob or Pro that happened.

Our kids always, ALWAYS have a way of learning, a way of making sense of what’s going on. Sometimes they’re the ones that teach us the best way to do it. I never would’ve thought of using Pro vs. Noob terminology – and honestly, if it had been my idea, it probably wouldn’t have worked. This is why following their lead is the way to go. This is why we use their special interests. This is why we build on their scripts. This is why we meet them halfway. This.

Playing with the animals

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Polly and I had about ten minutes left in our session today. She had worked so hard, keeping her brain focused, keeping the sillies in her thought bubble, and staying positive, that I gave her the choice of what she’d like to do.

“The animals!” she exclaimed, pointing up.

Do any of you remember those “Critter Counters” that Lakeshore Learning used to sell? It’s a container of rubber farm animals. There are two big and two small of each kind of animal, in each color, and my kids are in love with them.

I got out the animals and we dumped them out, and she got right to work.

“Okay,” she declared. “Come on guys, we need to get in our lines.” She narrated as she went along, and I happily listened, knowing that the presence of pretend play is anything but insignificant. So many of my kids never engaged in pretend play during “typical” developmental time – they just weren’t there yet. So it doesn’t matter how old they are now – if now’s the time, now’s the time. Let’s play.

“Where should I go?” she had a piggy ask. “Over here! Come on, you can go right behind me,” said the Mama pig.

She lined them all up in their respective groups, making sure that each line had a “Team Leader” (a grown-up animal) in the front. Animals frequently seemed to not know where to go, and other animals were very helpful in telling them which line was theirs.

The animals encountered a few problems as they lined up. “Did you just push me?!” Polly made a duck ask. “No!” the sheep replied. “I think you did,” the duck retorted. “I think you bullied me.” Then Polly looked up at me.

“Who could help?” I asked. She brought over a grown-up animal, who said, “I think it was an accident. It wasn’t bullying.”

The animals are talking to each other. They are problem-solving. This is not insignificant. This is Polly learning, and processing, and applying.

After a few more minutes of various line groupings, and discussions among the animals, I regretfully told her, Polly, we’ll need to clean up in one minute. It’s almost time for lunch.”

At first she had the animals hop or gallop back into their container. But then, she seemed to make a decision, sighed, and grabbed handfuls of them, throwing them back in.

“They’re back to normal,” Polly told me.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, curious.

“They’re just toys now. They’re not alive anymore.” She said sadly.

I was fascinated. Speechless.

Not only did Polly, a 10 and a half-year old, engage in some seriously awesome pretend play, not only did she use language and perspective-taking to have the animals talk, not only did she demonstrate an understanding of problem-solving, BUT she demonstrated an understanding of what pretend play is. Polly knew that toys can be two things – real in her head sometimes, but also, ultimately, just toys.

I think tomorrow, we’ll play some more.

Winning materials

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[Ed. note: While these are both affiliate links (meaning if you purchase them from Amazon, using this link – I will receive a very tiny referral fee), this is not a sponsored post. Just sharing some truly wonderful materials!]

As I’m sure nearly every single one of you SLPs can agree with, when a child is motivated by a game, a book, or any sort of material, sessions are infinitely more successful and productive.

So far this year, the two most popular (and most frequently asked for by kids) products have been:

Tell Tale (<–click on link)

bo047

Tell Tale is a game created by Blue Orange, the company who also makes Spot It. There are probably 50 or so cards, and each card is double-sided with two random pictures. A princess, a moon, a pig, a city, a hospital, etc. We play it as a story-telling game. Each player gets 5 (or however many) cards, and one person chooses one of her cards to start the story (e.g., Once upon a time, there was a princess named Jen). The next person chooses any of their cards to add on to the story (e.g., She had a pet pig named Snorty). We go on and on until all cards are done.

There are endless ways to play this game, and endless targets. I use it for articulation, fluency (clear speech, using speech strategies), story-telling, grammar (past tense, future tense), turn-taking (even if you have a great card, it’s not your turn yet), flexibility (hmm, that wasn’t what you wanted to happen in the story, but we are working as a team and he had a different thought in his brain), and the list goes and on and on. (We have also played where one person has to create a story with their five cards; where we put random cards out and then create a story and retell it; we have written out the narrative that we’ve told using story elements; etc.)

The kids are obsessed. I can pretty much motivate them to do anything throughout the period as long as we leave 5-10 minutes for a quick game of Tell Tale at the end of class.

I can’t even stress it enough – this is a MUST HAVE in your bag of tricks, and for such a cheap price, you will not regret it.

The Froggy Books (<–each word is a separate link)

$_35

When you work with little ones who beg to be read to (and who have reading and language disabilities, so you will happily indulge them in being read to), you are constantly on the lookout for books.

The Froggy books, by Jonathan London, are fantastic. They have that repetition and rhythmic sound about them as I read them, and they are also a wonderful balance between predictable (Froggy’s mom always yells, “Frrrooooogggggyyy!!”) and surprising. They hold kids’ attention and the illustrations are interesting enough that even kids who can’t read can practice telling or re-telling the story from the pictures alone. My 8-year-olds loved these books so much that I just ordered three more. We work on story elements, retelling, inferencing, answering WH questions, predicting, and good old reading aloud.

Again – a must, at least one of them!

What are your gold-star materials these days? What motivates your kids at all costs?

The REAL New Year

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For me, for most educators, for most kids, and for most parents, I think that the end of August/early September feels more like the new year than January does. The start of a school year is when things shift. Kids are a grade older. Classes change, teachers change, classmates change. Kids are taller and more grown-up looking. New clothes are bought, new school supplies. Everything is fresh and it’s a true beginning. January? Not so much. Fairly unimportant and insignificant.

I love the first day of school. I had butterflies in my stomach driving to work this morning – anticipatory, excited, beautiful butterflies flying around inside of me.

I loved watching the kids. I loved seeing kids who were petrified just last year, walk in, calmly say hello, and confidently state, “I’m so excited!!”

I loved seeing kids greet their friends, and the exchanges of, “Yes, you’re in my homeroom!”

I loved the trust that the new little kids put in us – to say goodbye to their parents and allow us to lead them into the building.

I loved how one student straight out said: “I am so nervous.” We talked about how teachers, not just kids, feel nervous too, how it was also teachers, not just kids, who might have had trouble sleeping last night. I loved how following that, another student said to me, “This is so weird. I just feel weird being back.” I loved that I could say, “I get that. Me too.”

I loved the idea of a new beginning – clean and crisp where the possibilities seem endless and we all have that new reserve of the core belief that we make miracles happen at this place.

I loved it.

Happy “New Year” to all of you – may 2015-2016 be a truly magical year.