Big Sigh!

I just have to laugh sometimes at how little people know or care to know about issues that impact people with disabilities. I must truly enjoy the challenge because I insist on immersing myself in groups that have little to zero focus on disability and becoming their token disability person. Part of a response I just read in an email from someone was about how AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) is questionable because one sentence on a Wikipedia page referred to how users of AAC often have poor literacy and are unlikely to be in employment. I read the entire Wikipedia page and found several more references that explained that it was environmental factors and not having better access to technology that contributed to this among other things. Seriously, show me the respect as an intelligent person to read at least the whole Wikipedia page before you find the one sentence that in your mind shows that asking for access to AAC for students in schools is not some wacky far out thing. For the love of god!!!

Coming out of Blogtirement

Last October I decided that I needed to get off the Internets and also that debating with people was not a good use of my time when I could be helping actual people in real time. In the last year I feel I have found some balance and can handle being on the Internet and out in the world as well.

One of the things that I did after I quit the blogs last year was volunteer in the behavior classroom at my daughter's school. I spent roughly 4 hours a week in the classroom but missed a week here and there. I plan to go back this year starting in October and am excited to see some familiar faces who will pretend they are not happy to see me but deep down I will know they are. These kids were such great teachers and seeing those classrooms from the inside vs. the outside gave me a lot of perspective. In some ways my opinions became fact and in others my opinions turned out to be not quite what it looked like from the outside. As a practitioner of positive behavior supports my horizons were beyond expanded. I remember a few times just thinking to myself, "I have no idea how to handle this right now." I now believe even more that segregation is part of the problem. I remember hearing these kids asking, "When am I going to be mainstreamed?" and my heart just sinking. The teacher and staff were incredible and there was no doubt they were there for the kids 100 percent. It is a shame there is still a segregated class for me to go back to but I am hopeful that I will be a part of a future that ends segregation in our schools forever. I think part of my work is educating the people who have absolutely no idea this world exists.

What is a High-Achiever?

I pondered this question earlier this week during a discussion. I think that we need to clearly define what we mean when we say that about a child. It is not wrong to think of a high achiever as a college bound, ready for AP, IB, Immersion, Sports, Performance etc type child. It occurred to me then though that we really need to take the time to clarify what we mean by it in writing and debate. It can be tedious to be so careful when we talk sometimes but a formal definition of what this archetype of the "high achiever" is will at least shorten the duration of conversations. I am going to be gratuitously self-indulgent and use myself as an example.

I have been able to settle into a pretty great career with less formal education than most of my peers and I dropped out of high school. The reason I dropped out was because I am nocturnal and punctuality-challenged. Basically, I had to get bussed across town instead of going to the walking distance school and kept missing the pre-dawn city bus that only ran once an hour. I had so many tardies and missed days that after I dropped out I had several full days of detention to come back to serve in order to get my final grades counted. Fast forward to 11th grade and I decide to try and graduate on time after missing the second semester of 10th. I enroll in my neighborhood high school and I am living on my own at this point and have a full-time job. I had to take 10th and 11th grade PE and English and 9th grade Algebra that first year back. By the time I graduated I had AP classes under my belt, had published 2 literary journals, had been the president of a club, arranged a rock show at the school, and had been promoted from dishwasher to pastamaker. I meandered my way to the present with no regrets mostly self-taught and feel that I am a pretty high achiever.

In a sound bite my definition of a high achiever is any student that is ready for college, work, athletics, military, family, travel, volunteering, and independence presuming the appropriate steps are taken to remove barriers to these learning opportunities.

Book with a chapter on Portland Civics

I read this book while getting away for the weekend because you spell my middle name "N E R D" and this is the type of stuff I long to read when I have free time.

Portland got it's very own chapter in this book. The chapter on Portland was interesting and I felt it was pretty honest but I have also not lived a lot of this history. While we have a lot to be proud of we still have a very long way to go dealing with the unintended consequences that all of this civic-mindedness has wrought. There was some backstory on why East County feels left out of Portland civic life and also a touch on the issues of the poor and minorities being under represented.

Overall though it was nice to read about what works/doesn't work in Portland from this author's perspective in order to capture some of this for the communities I feel an affinity too and bring the disenfranchised together on the same side of the boulder. Fighting amongst ourselves is not working anymore and the majority community is feeling the heat of poverty and loss now as well so perhaps this is a time to come together vs. split even further apart.

I am tired of paying for someone else to have a private school education

How is it fair to allow poor and minority schools to fail while other schools directly benefit from that failure? Why are we still having these conversations about how to solve this? There is no way to justify the two-tiered system we have in our schools, the history is clear.
Make people go to their neighborhood school starting with current 7th graders and year after next's K-6 grandfathering people who have already transferred but only until the 8th grade and then they have to go to their neighborhood high school. Put community organizers and community partnerships together to ease and guide the transitions of neighborhoods blending into one school and then continue to engage and include families in the decision making process.

Use your words....to KILL Zombies!!!!

Ever wonder how to get those darn kids to practice their keyboarding skills? Well look no further than The Typing of the Dead A charming game where rapid fire typing replaces guns but you still get that satisfying splatter of Zombie guts.

Holy Guacamole!

The Internet murmurs about special education are getting very very interesting. There is some good commentary going at www.cheatinginclass.com.

I am getting a few emails from people that are ready to organize. If anyone out there wants to get connected and involved contact me. I want to hear your stories; the good ones and the bad ones. I have been talking with another mom about collecting stories of surviving Portland Public Schools Special Education. Even if you just want to be in the loop send me an email at stephanie.c.hunter@gmail.com.