I stumbled across this post on a forum discussing the teachers strike in BC. I suggest this is an issue not being discussed in Ontario, at least, I have never seen anything. It tends to fit in with the high drop out rate being experienced in Ontario, plus the conditions under which teachers function.
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Originally posted by cliochannel: A British Columbia Teacher.
A heated topic to be sure. Having said that, I would rather be in the classroom than out on the street. Forget the damn salary increase and put more teaching assistants in the classroom.
Did you know that there are children with the mental age of 2 and 3 years old sitting in intermediate classrooms and they do not have full time teaching assistants?
Did you know that a primary class teacher had to leave her classroom of children and take a wheelchair bound, partially paralyzed, mentally handicapped child with a mental age of 3 years old to the bathroom and toilet him and wipe his bottom because he does not have a full time teaching assistant? As he gets older his TA hours decrease.
Did you know that educably mentally handicapped children (IQ between 55 and 69) do not get funded for any teaching assistant time in elementary school, yet in high school they will be put into a special class?
Did you know that if you have an autistic child in kindergarten for 12 and a half hours per week, he will only be funded for 6 hours of teaching assistant time. Did you know that dyslexia is found in about 10% of the population, and there is no extra funding for them--that means in a high school of 1500 students, there will likely be 150 dyslexic students.
Did you know that moderately mentally handicapped students (IQ below 55) are in the classrooms with only partial TA support.
Did you know that mental illnesses such as bi-polar are also present in young children and they are in classrooms, with no support?
Let me describe a classroom to you, and this is not an unusual classroom--this is today's reality. It is not an inner city classroom but at a 'middle class' school.
The classroom has 30 students. Two students have been diagnosed by their psychiatrists and pediatricians as mentally ill--one has severe depression and sits in class and mumbles and moans, the other child is bi-polar and when on a 'high' sings at the top of his lungs. 3 children have attention deficit disorder, and as it is their parents right to choose treatment options, they are not on medication. There are 4 dyslexic students in the classroom. There are 4 ESL children in the classroom--two speak minimal English, two do not speak English at all. There is one student with a mental age of three who has cerebral palsy, is in a wheelchair, and has major hearing loss and wears a hearing aid.
The reality is that there are more and more special needs students in the system each year. As medical advances increase the survival rate of premature and fragile newborns, more of these children will survive with major health and learning issues, and they will be in the regular classroom. Ten years ago, the one and two pound preemies did not survive. Now they do. Did you know that autism is on the rise? Did you know that Oppositional Defiant disorder is on the rise, and is found in younger and younger children?
Ask me about all the summers over the past thirty years of trying to support the special needs students, that I have spent taking courses with my colleagues.
Ask me about the Crisis Intervention courses we have taken to help us deal with violent students.
Ask me about the times my colleagues and I have been struck at and threatened by a child. Ask me about the children with acquired brain injuries from accidents who don't get teaching assistant support.
Ask me about the 'gray area' students with IQ's between 70 and 80 who will struggle and struggle, but will not fit into a Ministry category.
Ask me about the two year waiting list to have a school psychologist (some of whom work at 9 or 10 schools and are only able to be testing at each school 1 or 2 mornings a month) test a child for a learning disability, or special needs issue such as being in the mentally handicapped range.
The teacher's strike? Both sides need to stop being bull headed and sit down to talk.
The decrease in the numbers of kids in school--true, but the reality is that of those that are still in the school system probably 30 to 35% have some sort of special need.
If you have a grandchild about to enter school? Send them to a private school--not because the teachers are superior, because most of them have screening and entry requirements and do not have to take all comers like the public schools--they can keep out all the special needs kids if they choose, and the teachers can teach without their attention being diverted.
Reality--will funding every keep up with the number of special needs students entering the public school system?No, there are just too many special needs kids coming in to the system--more autistic, more mentally handicapped, more cerebral palsy kids.
I have taught these children for over thirty years as a school based support teacher, and have seen the class composition change over the years.
Do you know someone who has a child graduating from a teaching college? Tell them that that eager graduate should look toward the private system.
I have loved my career with special needs kids.
My own son had hoped to go into teaching--he spent volunteer hours in several classrooms in several different schools, helping out (a criteria now for those entering teaching programs). He saw the reality, and chose to give up a lifelong dream, and take another career path.
So, from a special education teacher's point of view, I wish the top levels of both sides would quit the bloody posturing and sit down and talk, and let me get back to work.
But please, spend money on getting more teaching assistants into the schools--we are quite literally drowning in special needs students, and there is no end in sight. Unquote
Durgan.
