Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Ramblings About RTI


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.

No comments:

Post a Comment