Up until last year, my children had always attended school
in the same district where I worked. I
didn’t realize until we moved and my children started attending school in a new
district how lucky I was to have personal relationships with all of their
teachers. I worked at the same school
with many of the wonderful professionals who taught my children. I always acknowledged that my children we challenging
to teach. So much so that I wouldn’t have
wanted them in my own class because I worried about my own ability to educate
them when I couldn’t even get them to do homework. (I say that with a smile
because being a parent is far harder than being a teacher any day of the week.
As I said, last year we moved. At which time I went from colleague to being an
ordinary parent who walked in off the street.
I found it shocking how differently my children were treated at the new
school compared to their previous. To
cut to the chase, I spent a great deal of time advocating for my kiddos educational
rights last year. And because there was
such as huge disconnect between what I was asking the school to do for my
children and what they were willing to do, I realized that if I was going to
get this school to see things from my perspective as mom, then I would need to
do more than say “at their previous school the teacher___” or “at my school we
___”.
Being the person that I am, I started reaching out to people
who knew me well and asked for advice.
What I came to discover very early on in my journey was that I needed to
have a deep and profound understanding of a facet of 2 areas within education
that I had avoided knowing for years – 1) The Special Education System & 2)
The Education and IDEA laws. In the
past, these two areas of education belonged to the special education/resource
teacher and the principal. In my mind,
it wasn’t my responsibility to understand any of it. It was a foreign and strange world best left
for the experts. My role as the teacher
was to “refer” to SST if I thought the kid might be eligible for testing and
that was where my responsibility ended. I
am embarrassed to say now that I do not recall ever reading any student’s IEP
before and I’ve had many of them in my class over the years.
To cut to the chase in, as the veil was lifted from my eyes as
a parent about these two areas of my profession, I became not only a better mom
and advocate for my children, but also a far better educator. During the course of the year I slowly
unraveled these mysteries. I consider
myself a very smart woman, and I knew that if I hadn’t understood some simple
concepts prior to beginning my journey, then it was likely that most everyone
else was like me. I knew that the new
school didn’t get it either, because if they had, we wouldn’t have been in this
position in the first place.
Because of my unique perspective (teacher/parent) I have
offered to provide trainings to the staff on RTI/PBiS and IDEA at my own school
with the hopes of starting to change the system from within. And I must say: it’s working. The challenge is to push this enlightenment
to the next level, and help the rest of my district especially the upper crust (you
know who I mean), begin to see what changes need to happen within our district
in these areas so that other families do not experience what I have over the
last year. The question I ask is: How does one teacher make this happen? The Answer:
Be like the parent who won’t stop advocating for your child until your
voice is heard.
As I walk my journey of advocacy for change as a teacher and
a parent, I will share my followers my experience, my advice (if needed), and many
of my materials to help you make the changes you desire too. And as always, I will do my best for you to make it fun.
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