Yesterday, one of my former students contacted me because he wanted advise on switching to a home-school partnership program. The student has always had behavior problems, and has always missed a lot of school because of it.
He has ADHD and was labeled as one of the trouble makers since kindergarten. He was one of those kids who got put in a padded room when he was in primary elementary school. When he came to me he was so shy that he rarely talked and spent as much time as he could in my behavior classroom.
I worked with him, and he was a lot of work. I partnered him with teachers who he could have some amount of success with, and who made sure that the other kids didn't pick on him. When he didn't come to school, I would call him, or have one of the other boys in my program who had grown up with him call him. Eventually, I had him coming to school on a regular basis.
He wasn't the smartest kid, but he was good at reading and writing. He could also read and write in Spanish and loved to work on cars. He wanted to be a mechanic when he grew up. His step father, who his Mom was in the process of divorcing at the time, works picking brush, and the boy went to his work after school to help out.
Because of his anxiety he didn't eat lunch in the cafeteria and left school 5 - 10 minutes early to avoid the crowds, and I could never get him to go to an assembly, but he did get his credits with him. It was a lot of work, but I created an environment that he could be comfortable in. I knew that most days he came to school because he wanted food and someone to talk to more then he wanted an education, but he got one anyway.
This year he went to high school. They never tried to make him feel welcome. They didn't even try to put him in mainstream classes. He spent 4 periods a day in the behavior room getting ignored. He told me that in one of the classes that he did go to, math, his teacher told his class that he was stupid. His attendence had always been bad, but he's to the point where he doesn't even feel comfortable going.
So they're going to talk to him about doing home partnership and taking away his IEP. If he has an IEP, the school is obligated to have a graduation plan for him. If they take it away, which they probably will, because his mother isn't knowledgable enough to advocate for him, they probably will simply push him out.
Bottom line it, when he turns 16 this summer, without any connection to his school, he will probably drop out. He has a pattern of drug use already at 15, and it will probably get worse with no one to check on him. His older sister has already dropped out of school. She is 16 and has already been to rehab.
He isn't a bad enough kid to be on probation, and in all likelihood his Mom will probably just be happy that she doesn't have to take him to truancy court anymore. Unless you are on probation or are recieving mental health services, you don't get an advocate.
Schools preach about building resiliency in there schools. They say that have positive behavior support. But if they find out that a behavior kid is vulnerable, they push them out. They don't want to deal with a kid who just doesn't fit in. It makes me very sad.
I advised the student to ask about staying on his IEP, but he's 15. He isn't going to be able to advocate for himself. It makes me feel like I failed him to see him falling through the cracks.
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