Education
Ave atque Vale, Change.org
Published July 31, 2009 @ 12:33AM PT
This is my last post here at the autism blog at Change.org. I relate why more towards the end. As this is my final word here, I wanted to focus on a topic that Dora and I think is important to note in writing about autism and disability, the need for critical thinking.
You can now find me at my website kristinachew.com and my new blog, We Go With Him.
Once upon a time I had a very different life.
For one thing, I taught freshman composition at a large Catholic university here in New Jersey (and, briefly, for another prominent institution of higher learning here). I was trained to teach Classics---the culture and history of the ancient Greeks and Romans---and to translate ancient Greek and Latin. I took the composition jobs because I needed to: My husband and I had just packed up and moved back to Jim's native New Jersey from St. Louis, to find the best education for our son Charlie. I first found a 0.333 position teaching Latin at a local public high school and then phoned in to say I wouldn't be able to take it, as I'd gotten a part-time position teaching composition (with benefits).
The students had to write a research essay and this meant I always had to devote one class to "Using Internet Sources." I'd go through the differences between .com, .org, .edu, .info and then show how you can't always judge a website by its "dot whatever." Like many professors, I did not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source on their papers (I still don't). We talked about peer-reviewed journals and used the library's numerous electronic databases. Students ended up with lists of bibliographical sources, URLs, and maybe the printed-out full text of a few articles.
Most of them didn't realize, that their real work began at this point: It's one thing to have a pile of research. It's another thing to read through all of it. And it's yet another to evaluate all that information, to synthesize and analyze and go beyond one's gut reactions and what just "made sense" or "seemed right." Especially when you encounter a source that makes an argument contrary to what you are convinced is right, you must demonstrate that you can, thoughtfully and carefully, evaluate the claims on their own terms, and turn a critical eye on your own views and even your own experience. You must look at the language the writer uses and at how they use the words: Is there rhetoric meant to attract a reader's sympathy? How does the writer use her or his sources---does she or he clearly and accurately represent their theses? Is there irony or obfuscation? You must go and look up the original sources rather than relying only on second- or third-party opinions.
What I often found very difficult to explain to my students was the difference between writing an essay using such critical thinking skills, and more of a response or reaction paper. Very often, students struggled to make arguments based on a careful synthesis of the ideas in their sources. They made arguments that were more akin to opinions and plugged in the sources only if they clearly supported their points.
In many discussions about autism, research, and science, on the Internet and elsewhere, the same sort of thing happens for reasons that are more than understandable.
As of June, I've been blogging about autism every day for four years. I started writing daily accounts of our son Charlie on a blog called My Son Has Autism that became Autismland. I shied away from writing about controversies. But when I started writing Autism Vox and focused more on science and health topics, I quickly found myself blogging about one "hot topic"---vaccines---after another. While I've tried to focus more on issues of education and policy here at Change.org, those "hot topics" have inevitably come up as one follows the latest in the media about autism. There is a lot---an Internet's worth---of information out there. It's become almost too easy to compile lists of sources and links and URLs, to read blog posts and Tweets and articles about all those "hot topics" and to pass them on to support the position one is taking. I know; I do it myself, though I certainly try to evaluate science and other sources for what they say.
And often in the heat of the moment, when we're trying to make a point---that something "caused autism" in a child or that a certain "treatment" is producing miraculous results---we just provide the information without sifting through and analyzing, and reflecting, and discerning, where our emotions are seeping into our views. When you're writing in the ever-changing environment of the Internet and when you're a parent honestly desperate to find something to help your child and to find support for why you're doing the crazy things you're doing, information that says just what you want it to say is hard to resist.
The Meaning of a High School Diploma
Published July 29, 2009 @ 12:49AM PT
While carefully following the latest on the New Jersey political front last week, I also had an eye westward on the budget brouhaha in my native state, California. Included in the California budget deal are changes in the California High School Exit Exam policy that could make a big difference for thousands of students with disabilities who, in previous years, have been denied a high school diploma: Under the deal, the exit exam graduation requirement for special education students will be waived, so that special education students in the class of 2009 and, potentially, afterwards would not have to pass the test to graduate. Education officials are currently trying to figure out what to do for the many, many (over 10,000) students with disabilities from the classes of 2008 and 2009 who passed all their graduation requirements except for the exit exam.
As noted in the July 28th SFGate:
The exit exam "has been an unmitigated disaster for thousands of children with disabilities," said Sid Wolinsky, Disability Rights Advocates' director of litigation. "They've earned (a diploma) by every possible measure except this one-size-fits-all standardized exam."
Wolinsky's organization says 16,000 disabled students fail to pass the exit exam each year. Many of them met all other requirements for graduation.
Susan Schneider's autistic son Michael is one of them.
The Vacaville teenager, a high school senior last year, never passed the exit exam and received a certificate of completion in June.
He satisfied every other graduation requirement, but despite multiple tries, he couldn't pass either the math or English portions of the exit exam. He simply couldn't demonstrate his knowledge that way, his mother said.
Michael is going back to school in the fall; he can do so until he is 22, unless, of course, he is able to graduate.
The changes in the exit exam in California recall a small controversy that occurred in June in Vermont, when 18-year-old Todd Geraci was at first not going to be allowed to graduate from the People's Academy in Morrisville. Geraci had not yet completed work included in his individual education program, including social and other goals; Julie Sullivan, Geraci's mother, filed and won a court injunction that required the school to allow him to graduate with his classmates.
A diploma should be something that one earns because one has completed certain requirements. One concern that might be raised about the new changes to the exit exam is that a(n unintentional) message is being sent to special ed students that requirements are being "watered down" for them. On the other hand, being able to graduate with one's fellow classmates and move on in a group, in a community: These are other, perhaps less tangible aspects of a high school diploma that nonetheless mean a lot.
At the moment, I've just been hoping that Charlie can hang on and get through middle school, in one piece (more or less). If his academics continue at the rate they are now (v-e-e-e-r-r-y slow and gradual), Charlie would not be ready to take something like an exit exam, certainly not in subjects like English and Math. When he is ready to graduate according to his age, I think he should receive recognition for making it through all those years, for hanging in there, in a school and setting that's not the most appropriate for his learning needs---certainly, there are challenges and obstacles he's faced and learned to work through that many of us can only imagine.
Jonathan King Would Have Been 18 Years Old
Published July 28, 2009 @ 02:05PM PT
Jonathan King died almost 5 years ago, on November 15, 2004. He was 13 years old and this past July 13th would have been his 18th birthday.
Jonathan died at school. He hung himself with a rope that teachers had given him to hold up his pants as he habitually didn't wear a belt. The July 27th Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a long article about Jonathan and about the lack of regulation of Georgia's "psychoeducational" schools. There are 24 such facilities in Georgia and some 5,600 students in them who are "emotionally disturbed, autistic or so brain-injured that regular schools can’t control their behavior."
Jonathan was diagnosed with ADHD in kindergarden and "began a regimen of prescription medications." By sixth grade, the school district decided to place him at the Alpine School due to his being "disruptive."
Jonathan was in eighth grade in the fall of 2004. He never complained about school, his parents say, never told them anything other than he had occasionally gone to “time out.”
The Kings’ lawyers, though, eventually learned the extent of Jonathan’s understatement.
A log book for Alpine’s seclusion room showed Jonathan was confined part or all of 15 school days between August and November, sometimes twice in one day. Over two consecutive days in October, Jonathan spent 15 hours in seclusion. The first day, Jonathan ripped the hem from his shirt and wrapped it around his neck in a suicidal gesture. The next day, the log says, he was “threatening to kill himself.”
Rather than using the seclusion room only as a last resort to get the boy under control, the log suggests it became a place where teachers sometimes placed Jonathan for minor infractions. On Oct. 26, 2004, for instance, Jonathan was “cussing, argumentative and disruptive during testing; demanding water bottle be filled; swearing; [and refusing] to follow instructions,” the log says. He spent seven hours, 10 minutes in the seclusion room that day. Ten days later, on Nov. 5, Jonathan was locked up for five hours, 50 minutes after he “refused to accept feedback.”
Alpine never told Jonathan’s parents about any of the seclusions. It didn’t have to. In court papers, Alpine contends the state’s lack of regulation gave it implicit authority to use seclusion as it saw fit.
The "lack of regulation" meant that the school could just use such practices "as it saw fit," without spelling out under what circumstances Jonathan would be placed in seclusion, and without indicating an educational plan so that he would not have to be in such a place?
Jonathan's case sounds too many familiar notes to me. My son has not been placed in a timeout room, but he has been restrained in more than one New Jersey public district. The kind of "psychoeducational" facility that Jonathan died in has been suggested for my son. Certainly many things about the staffing and the training that staff receive at the schools here differs, but the use of restraints and timeout rooms are not at all unheard of.
Jonathan could talk more than my own son, and yet he was still unable to communicate what was really going on to his parents. Besides medication, what educational and behavioral methods were used to help him in the classroom? What had not happened in his education? And what kind of a society are we that allows children with disabilities to be placed in what are in essence cells with bars on the window and locks the door?
Monday Autism News Potpourri
Published July 27, 2009 @ 10:38AM PT
Thumbs Up: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was signed on Friday as planned. Here's print coverage from USA Today and (ironically non-captioned) video coverage from CSPAN. The CSPAN video is of the actual signing ceremony, and it starts off with a nice little speech by Hilary Clinton.
Thumbs ? : The motivation for the ADA-AA came from issues with the way the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had decided to implement the ADA. The original intent for the ADA is as a civil rights law, and the ADA-AA was to restore that original intent. Now debates about EEOC implementation seem to be intent on leeching the power from the amendment. Will the fate of the ADA-AA be to restore the ADA as powerful civil rights legislation, or will we end up back at square one?
Thumbs Down: As the CCA remains off the legislative agenda, CCA rallies continue with confronted the Democratic National Convention. Adapt has set up a sweet action campaign page, complete with (also transcribed) video.
Not all news on the CCA front is bad; some legislators have signed onto it. Check the list for your legislators--if you see their name on it, send them a thank you; if you don't see their name on it, ask them to please sign on!
Thumbs Up!: On a non-policy note of special interests and the path to college successes, here's a lovely article about Cole Kingsbury, geologist and going to college in Alaska. (Side note: volcanoes--YAY!!! Definitely, IMO as well, a perk of living in Oregon!)
Reporting School Abuse
Published July 24, 2009 @ 02:15PM PT
In a recent post on sexual abuse and safety, I wrote that it's highly likely that many cases of abuse against individuals with disabilities may well go unreported. 11-year-old Stefan Ferrari, who is autistic, was abused by an adult at his Atlanta area school; after noting that he came home from school with bruises, Stefan's mother sewed a microphone into his clothes and heard inappropriate comments. As reported by WXIA on July 17th:
Teacher Sherri Jones admitted on the stand to making the inappropriate comments. But she denied ever hitting Stefan -- and the judge never named the adult whom he believes caused these injuries.
Jones continued to teach for eight months after the alleged abuse, continued to teach after admitting to inappropriate behavior on the witness stand. She was not removed from the classroom until the day after the 11Alive News story aired.
The Ferraris went to DFACS, the police, the schools -- and no one helped them. It took suing the Atlanta Public Schools and telling their story to the media to get justice for their son.
In the wake of the Ferraris' experience, the governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, is starting a group to create a new statewide policy on reporting abuse in the school system. The group is to include "educational leaders, law enforcement and abuse experts" and every family in Georgia will receive a copy of the new policy.
Besides the policy, here's a call to Governor Perdue to think pro-actively and see that training and supervision of teachers and parapros is in place to prevent abuse and mistreatment of students with disabilities from happening in the first place. We know that such abuse happens, and, rather than letting it happen over and over, we need to address it from the start.
Strengths and Deficits, Another Sort of Academic Bias
Published July 23, 2009 @ 04:00PM PT
Between my posting Culturally Sanctioned Stigma and Academic Bias and now, Tyler Cowen's excellent article "Autism as Academic Paradigm" has unfortunately been moved to a payed subscriber only area of the Chronicle. From my notes though I still have the quote,
In "special needs" education, there is plenty of effort to teach the skills of the non-autistic to the autistic, but in the regular classroom we are often doing the opposite. I view higher (and lower) education as teaching people to be more autistic in many of their basic cognitive skills...
This filter for looking at the types of skills that are taught in public schools is particularly interesting in light of recent research regarding autistic problem solving skills.
Also of import is the role of point of view and bias in how the education of autistic and non-autistic students is framed. Teaching non-autistic students (the majority) the skills of the minority is considered building strengths. Teaching autistic students (the minority) the skills of the majority is considered remediating deficits.
This relates directly back to Norman Kunc's model of perspectives on disability (see the line item on deficiency and remediation).
The interconnections between broader civil rights issues and seemingly unrelated topics like education and science are subtle, but strong. Civil rights issues color the lens through which people are viewed, framed, and treated in all aspects of life.
Jobs & College Transitions
Published July 19, 2009 @ 05:08PM PT
After some gloom-and-doom-y sort of posts, I wanted to note two more positive developments.
Specialisterne is a Danish company founded in 2005 by Thorkil Sonne, whose son has autism; three out of four of its employees have Asperger's Syndrome. The plan is for all employees to be ISEB test certified; employees have tested software for the likes of Microsoft and Oracle. The BBC reports that the company is hoping to set up a similar program in the UK---am hopeful for that, and then maybe they might migrate across the pond......
And, closer to home (for me here in the Garden State in the US), the Penn Autism Network is holding a four-day workshop on college coaching to assist students transitioning to post-secondary education. Registration is closed but the description for the workshops highlights some important topics, namely:
• How to support students with social skills difficulties in college
• Ways to recognize mental health problems that need referral
• Strategies for supporting personal independence
• Understanding issues of time management, sensory overwhelm, day to day self-management
• Methods of supporting friendships, social relationships, and faculty and staff interactions
• Approaches to collaborating with on-campus student resources
• Development of a plan for a college coaching relationship
Some previous posts here about students on the spectrum and post-secondary education are: post-secondary programs---US college programs for students on the spectrum---an LD-focused California college fair---the need to give students options and they'll take them---the shift for students from high school to college.
Give work skills, and students on the spectrum, a chance!
