Several years ago my friend "Jen", a relatively new teacher, told me a story about an experience in her previous school district. during her first year of teaching. She was teaching in a classroom for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. There were 2 ASD classrooms right next door to each other so she and the teacher in the other classroom decided to share their teaching responsibilities. Jen taught math and worked on the math goals with students from both classrooms and the other teacher did the same for reading. It seemed like a great idea at the time.
It seemed like a great idea until the other teacher left her position just before the holidays. It was then that Jen realized that the teacher had left no records or data about the students progress on their reading goals. Right around that time, one of Jen's student's parents decided to bring in an advocate during their child's IEP. As you can imagine, the advocate and the parents were unimpressed by Jen's lack of data regarding their child's reading skills and did not accept the excuse that the other teacher had been the one who was supposed to collect that data. Jen was the teacher of record. Ultimately, it was her responsibility to ensure that she had access to that data. She filed that experience away as a lesson learned and was much more cautious when it came to teaming with other teachers.
I was reminded of this story more recently when I came upon an even more troubling situation. An SLP and teacher contacted me with concerns regarding the methods being used to assist a student with accessing his AAC system as well as completing writing tasks. The student was new to her and had transitioned to the building with his one-to-one aide a few months prior. Their concern was that all communication and writing assignments were being accomplished with "wrist support", meaning that the student placed his hand on top of the aides hand while using his communication app or writing using the keyboard on his AAC system. In other words, she was using Facilitated Communication, a communication technique that is not supported by research and has found to carry many risks of misuse. The aide staunchly defended her use of this technique saying that he had used it with great success all through elementary school and no one had ever complained about it. In fact, she argued that, without the use of this technique, he refused to write anything at all. The attempts of other staff members to use this technique of wrist support resulted in the student writing a string of letters, a far cry from the grammatically correct and perfectly spelled sentences he wrote with the aide. Her excuse was that he didn't know the rest of the staff well enough and wasn't comfortable.
Similar to the situation Jen found herself in, this aide requested a transfer and moved to another building. So now a student who previously "wrote" long beautiful sentences and stories is now writing strings of letters. He is frustrated with the staff who aren't able to make his former communication technique work because, and I am speculating here, they refuse to write the words for him. So here we are with an 11-year-old, with limited and completely unintelligible speech, with no form of communication. We have his parents who were under the impression that he was doing well academically who will now realize that his skills were not at the level they thought they were. We are tasked with completely starting over from scratch.
Much like Jen put her trust in her teaching partner, The staff in this student's elementary school put their trust in a teacher's aide and then never checked in or questioned what she was doing. The teacher never spent any time working one to one with this student to verify his skills, she simply trusted the report from the aide and the work that was turned in. The SLP was never able to get the student to do any kind of work for her so she simply dropped him from direct service and put him on consult. Then, she never checked in or realized that the aide was using a communication method that went against the code of ethics that she agreed to when she renewed her ASHA membership at the beginning of the year.
Most of all I blame myself. As a new consultant, I visited this student twice per the request of the classroom. I was there specifically to assist in getting a mount for the student's wheelchair so that he could use his communication system from the chair. I took pictures of the device and chair and place the order. I even went back with our tech specialist to observe while he attached the mount. During that time I never checked in on the communication of the student. I accepted the aide's report that everything was fine without asking her to elaborate on what "fine" actually meant. Like all of the other professionals involved in the scenario, I not only accepted that things were fine but I was relieved that, given my busy schedule, I didn't need to do anything further for this student.
The moral of this story is that, when you are responsible for a student's learning, you need to ensure that the student is in fact learning. It's fine to team teach with others. It's fine to have a teacher's aide assist the student in the classroom. but, a the end of the day, the responsibility for the student's learning is yours and yours alone. Make sure that you know your student's present level of functioning in all areas, even those you don't teach. Make sure that you are in control of what techniques and accommodations are being used with your student and make sure that they are research-based. It is tempting, given the many demands of a special educator, to offload responsibility when you can but resist the urge to completely check out. Resist the urge to accept that things are "fine" without actually checking to see if they are.
So as I face a terrified teacher, a frustrated SLP, and heartbroken parents, I swear to myself that never again will I accept "doing fine" as an answer. I will ensure that the students under my care, however indirect, are receiving quality communication services based on solid research and I hope you do the same. Your students and their families are depending on you.
No comments:
Post a Comment