At the beginning of Sept 2007, I gave a pre-assessment to my class in order to learn their levels and begin the process of differentiation.  I looked through the results and my gaze halted on one essay in particular.  Thus began my fight to get help for a nice young man who was placed in my mainstream 7th Grade Language Arts class.  This kid was sweet, respectful, earnest, and tried so hard with everything…until everything had its way with him.  (...)
Read the rest of The snail wins the race…with RSP (376 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 100% accountability, 2008, blog, btsa, Character Education, differentiation, Ed Tech, education, k-12, k12, middle school, new teachers, rsp, special ed, tween, writing

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So you know when you get your group of kids on the first day, there are those who immediately set off your alarms?  Well, that definitely happened to me on my first day.

I have a student who clearly needs help.  His peers are weary of him already and his confrontational style seems not as intentional as inherent.  The startling comments and “seething anger”, as his last year’s teacher put it only three weeks into the school year, seem uncontrollable.  This same teacher recorded that he asked if her windows were bullet proof.  I wasn’t, of course, given this information up front.  I had to seek it out. 

His first quickwrite of this year centered on cussing out his last teachers and cranking them nightly on the phone.  His pride in his violent video games is apparent.  

Like children with Asperger’s (of which he has not been tested to date), he seems unaware of cues or the goings on around him: calling out with inappropriate comments, walking in front of me while I talk to the class, handing me items while I’m in the middle of instruction.  Annoying, yes, but harmless.  

He also will not make eye contact (could be cultural, but this seems different than others of his ethnicity and nationality) and walks robotically, stiffly, without movement in his shoulders.  Strangely enough, and I’m clearly not a diagnostician (though I play one on TV), the few students in my career who have had symptoms like this seem to also come with apparent sinus problems.  His eyes are puffy with nasal issues, he is sniffy, and I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection.

So I approached the counselors who know me as a real student advocate and as a teacher with a somewhat effective antenna.  I don’t send kids to the office.  I handle my own discipline issues, which are few.  So when I come in, they listen.  The afternoon after the first day of school I walked in and said, “So, what’s up with X?”  They pretty much flopped the file onto the desk, a file the size of our Language of Literature book.(...)
Read the rest of Should a free education be unconditional? (363 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2008. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 100% accountability, 2008, achievement gap, aspergers, blog, collaboration, Curriculum, differentiation, Ed Tech, education, education policy, ELA, employment, free, fundraising, Joanne Jacobs, k-12, k12, learning, metacognition, performance pay, special ed, teaching, technology, test, Title I

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