Some of the kids in the residential school where I teach have incredible behaviors.  They will kick, scream, throw themselves on the floor, bang their heads into the wall or the floor, and rip their clothing off.  Why?  Anger and frustration.

I really believe some of them feel powerless.  They may have little speech or difficulty with speech.  They may have little ability to express what they want.  Daily they are pushed, prodded, poked with needles and have medication shoved into their mouths.

Who wouldn't be frustrated?  Who wouldn't want to just rage?

At the same time I was thinking about the success that one of my students has been experiencing.  I realized that part of his success was he was getting to make some choices.  He was beginning to find the means to communicate what he wanted. I realized that for each of my students, I need to be thinking about how I build some choice into each kid's programs.

It also made me think about the premium that too many schools, especially public schools, put on compliance, quiet, straight lines and following directions.  How many of the behaviors exhibited by special education students are a protest against being, in their own way, pushed, prodded and poked into place without any choice, any sense of power over their own situation.

What kind of choices are you giving your students?  It may be choosing a preferred activity instead of the sticker.  It may be choosing to work on coins before addition.  It may even be to take a break.  After all, we have to start somewhere helping our students make choices for themselves.  Even severely disabled students will need to choose the strawberry shampoo or the lavender shampoo to take back to their group home.  We need to keep in mind that real success for disabled students is not just good data on our data sheets, but helping them realize their potential for independent living in our communities.

What do you do when a student dies?  I thought that question was moot, until I got a call at 5 a.m. telling me one of my kids died in an accident.  I just saw him the day before, happy and whole.  My first considerations were my own grief, and the grieving of my staff. Then it stuck me:  how do I help my class grieve?

Grief won't be strange to our kids.   We may imagine that our more severely disabled kids will be sheltered from grief, yet they might be the most likely to have a classmate or someone they know die.   Some disabled students students are also medically fragile, or their developmental differences make them more vulnerable to disease or accidents.  The fact that our students can't always express that grief doesn't make it less important to help them.  Perhaps the opposite is true. I remember when one of my autistic boys who went home each weekend lost a friend from his disabled Sunday School class.   He flipped out on his Mom on the ways home from church.   She believes it may have been a reaction to the loss.   I wonder if he would have done better if his Sunday School class would have spent time talking about it.

Too often we may ignore the needs of special education students to talk about the loss of a loved one or a friend.   When grandma or grandpa die, why pretend nothing happened?   If you can talk to your child lovingly and in a way that they can understand, and perhaps do an activity together that can help them process some of the really feelings, you will help them build resilience to deal with other losses.

To read more, visit Helping Special Ed Students with Grief.

Pulling the Food out From Under Disabled Children

First Lady  Michelle Obama is talking up nutrition as part of an effort to deal with the obesity epidemic hitting our children.  Certainly prevention is important for dealing with the ballooning cost of medical care.

There is growing pressure to be sure only healthy food makes its way past the lips of children in schools.  But the food Nazis may have gone a step or two further. School Dieticians and School Nurses are handing down new "Zero Tolerance" policies for calories.

Food is tough.  We have to eat food in order to live.  Food is also important to human social interactions.  We stop for a cup of coffee.  We gather as families around turkey and stuffing.  We celebrate birthdays with cake and ice cream.  Many children, especially children on the Autistic spectrum, have difficulty with social interactions and the traditions around food and eating are valuable props.

For children with more severe disabilities requiring hand over hand life skills training, or children with Autism, requiring massed trials, edible reinforcers can be the most powerful.  I don't think in most cases celery would work.

Learning disabled children need reinforcement that includes not only praise, prizes and rewards, but they also enjoy earning or winning lunch with the teacher.  No cake?  No soda?  Nothing special as a treat?

I certainly don't disagree that many families have adopted eating and feeding habits that are less than healthy.  I do wonder that the school dieticians and school nurses feel they are the appropriate people to remedy that single-handedly.  I was once formally reprimanded for ignoring the school "healthy food policy" for buying soda for my monthly "lunch with the learning support teacher" for children that earned 90 percent of their points.  They need to feel special, they need to feel that lunch was a treat.

I currently have a couple of children who will work for long periods  of massed trials for Skittles.  If they had been taught with massed trials when they were younger, I would use points, praise and privileges.  It has been a very effective way to meet IEP goals--goals which they have repeated over and over without much success, but are doing well with ABA.  Because of tightening "Healthy Food" requirements at my school, I will have to be sure that edible reinforcement is in their BIPS.

We need to find middle ground that permits special ed teachers to use every tool that is successful with children with disabilities. Can we talk? Can't we all get along?

What do you think?

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius revealed to the autism community that a pending report from the Centers from Disease Control sets the new prevalence of Autism at one in 100. Another report reviewed by the journal Pediatrics based on telephone interviews places the prevalence even higher, at one in 91.

The discussion now is whether there is really a surge in cases, or whether there is better reporting and a broader definition.

Both reports seem to indicate one thing: there are more cases of young children with Autism Spectrum Disorders than previously believed. Until these new numbers were released, the estimate was one for every 151 children.

The number will have some serious impacts on the profession of special education, on delivery of services to adults with intellectual and emotional disabilities, transition services, medical and independent living for this growing cohort of Americans with autism.

October 13 the Christina School District of Delaware, aching from more than two weeks of derision on the part of the national press (check out the Today Show,) decided to cut first grader Zach Christie some slack.

On September 29 Zachary brought a lovely Swiss dining kit to school to eat his lunch. Hey, any former Cub Scouts out there? I remember how excited my boys were with all things camping and outdoorsy. By the time the school district was done, the school board was recommending Zachary attend a special school for problem behaviors for 45 day. The district changed its policy last night to permit principals to use their own discretion concerning individual cases. Well, duh . . .

Obviously, it's policy gone crazy. Zachary is obviously a lovely kid (check out Help Zachary) with parents who are committed and involved.

I remember well watching the news footage of Columbine in April, 1999 with my two boys, Zach and Nate, when they were 9 and 7 respectively. We spent a lot of time talking about how angry the two boys were and how they should have found someone to talk about how angry they were, instead of killing their friends. It became a really productive time for us to talk about violence and anger at school. We did talk, and a lot.

Little did I know that Zachary would get clobbered by Zero Tolerance. In fifth grade he took a large jack knife that had been his grandfather's (who had died two years earlier) on a school camping trip. Camping, get it? Jack knife, get it? He was suspended for a week, but threatened with expulsion and juvenile detention. We did accept the punishment, but as I look back at it, I should have insisted that Zach have a 504 plan, as it is now obvious that the impulsivity that came with his ADD was a problem.

A lot of the kids we special education teachers work with struggle with both ADD and the accompanying impulsivity. They just don't think! How do we advocate for our kids when they make bad choices? How do we keep childish antics from being criminalized?

So, what do you think?

As classroom assignments are being made, a lot of general education teachers are finding children with disabilities on their rolls.  Some teachers have seen the way special education services have been delivered change over the years, from self contained, to pull out, to mainstreaming, to inclusion.

More than a few teachers see inclusion as a way districts try to cut costs by dumping children with learning disabilities in their classrooms.

Many general education teachers feel completely unprepared to deal with the behavioral and academic challenges that come with these students.

Many special education teachers find that in the push in model, they are running from classroom to classroom with inadequate time with individual children, and they still get blamed by the general education teacher for behavioral problems that spring from the pressure they feel to perform.

Inclusion works when administrators are dedicated and provide the resources and support teachers need to help children succeed.  Whether in the push-in model or the co-teaching model, the administrator has to be sure that the general educator and special educator have had some say in the placement, whether the two are encouraged (with extra planning time and resources) to work out personal and professional differences as well as build a collaborative partnership to deliver instruction.

Please share:

• Your feelings about inclusion.
• The inclusion practice in your state.
• How inclusion has impacted your child/ren, both general education and special education.

This time of year, you can't but stop and reconsider what you put in last year's IEPs.  In most cases, someone else has inherited your case load, and they're trying to figure out what in the world you were doing.  I know as I look at other people's paperwork, that's what I'm wondering.

So, I figure the Golden Rule of IEPs must be "Write IEPs unto others as you would have others write IEPs for you."  Forget the flourishes, the fancy-smancy verbiage and try to make those IEP goals clear, simple and measurable.  I found the best way to write an IEP goal is to write the data collection sheets at the same time.  If I can't figure out what the procedure is going to be, I'm going to deep six that baby!  Start over!

I recently worked with a younger colleague creating IEP goals and pulled up some suggested goals from one of our neighboring state's special ed sites.  The goal starts "Given a question pertaining to her daily activities that requires a few tasks for each period . . . "   What?  The purpose of the goal is for the student to create a picture schedule for her day with picture symbols.  Makes you wonder how many Masters of Education it takes to screw in a lightbulb.

So be kind to your colleagues, okay?

Many states do not permit corporal punishment in any form, but 20 do. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union are asking the Federal Government to extend the prohibition for corporal punishment to the states that permit it. Can you blame them?? According to the New York Times:

The report, based on federal Department of Education data, said that of the 223,190 public school students nationwide who were paddled during the 2006-7 school year, at least 41,972, or about 19 percent, were students with disabilities, who make up 14 percent of all students.

Looking at those numbers, you might say that kids with disabilities are 25% more likely to be spanked. The article specifically cited the case of a 6 year old child with autism.

What? Despite the arguments about teaching violence, scapegoating, etc., there is the specific question of whether that particular 6 year old understood that a spanking was related to his behavior. Children with Autism do not understand the unwritten social contract that neuro-typical or typically developing children do. Children with Autism often learn that violent behaviors including kicking, biting, hitting and throwing furniture get them what they want. Hey!! Let's reinforce those really productive behaviors by making it a school policy to hit children that do things we don't like! Then let's spank them some more when they do those behaviors! Sounds like a recipe for a really violent community.

I work in a facility with "challenging behavior" in it's name. In my state, a professional would be investigated for spanking a child, and would probably earn a place on the state's child abuse reporting system. I have come to believe what research has shown: punishment doesn't work! It may make a behavior go underground, but it doesn't eliminate the behavior.

When I began teaching 35 years ago, corporal punishment was permitted. I took a long term subbing position and found it wasn't the spanking I did, but the token economy I put in place that made a difference for that tough group of 6th graders. I remember the art and music teachers coming to me to find out what had happened: they had hated seeing that 6th grade class at the beginning of the year, but found they had become pleasant and more cooperative and manageable.

The flip side of the spanking question is: what does it mean for the teacher, who spanks? I have to honestly say spanking was a great release for my anger and my sense of powerlessness. But in the end I felt like a bully. Does spanking turn the teacher or administrator into a bully? I think so. How about you?

What do you think? Is spanking an appropriate intervention for problem behavior? Does it actually work?

There are times when you'll want to negotiate with your child or student and there are times where you won't. Know your negotiables. For instance, if a child misbehaves and you have a consequence in place for the specific misbehavior, this is not a time to negotiate. However, if a child wants to change the time that homework would normally be done, this may be a time to negotiate. In any event, your child needs to be well aware of the limits. Set your limits together with these 5 steps and, know what to avoid when giving consequences. Most importantly, remember to catch them doing something right and reward them.

Miscue analysis is a process where one analyzes the strategies the reader uses when the reader gets stuck. It is what most educators use to support a struggling reader or a reader at risk. The best teachers of reading will use miscue analysis to determine the areas of weakness in a reader and then teach strategies for that area of weakness. For instance, as students read:

• Do they skip words when the words are unfamiliar?
• Do they look to the pictures for cues?
• Do they try to sound out the word?
• Do they use context to guide them?

Using miscue analysis helps guide instruction to where the reader needs it. Find out how you can be a better teacher of reading by understanding miscue analysis.

See also the Cloze Worksheets (fill in the blanks).