20 years Special Education. I resigned and applied as a custodian for the same school district. Just a year in I make way more money and no longer have anxiety attacks. What a broken system we have.
Isn't that just ironic? I'm a 13 year teacher and on my third as a SPED teacher. I'm exhausted and burned out and I'm currently trying to exit my building. I work for a building and district that doesn't have any respect for us as professionals. I'm currently applying for positions and if a new start doesn't work, then I'm done. The system is broken.
I have been teaching as a special area teacher for 15 years and the Sped teachers last about 2-3 years before deciding to do something different. I know that they are trying but some of the kids are so out of control there is no way they can function in a regular classroom.
I was this troubled kid, I was thrown out a window and homeless at 13 and family trafficked. That is still not an excuse for the type of behavior we are seeing in school. I’m a teacher now and I have little to no empathy for a kjd throwing desks at me and destroying my room. Yes, the kids are traumatized, but that doesn't excuse their behaviour.
Agree completely! I can have empathy for students but stop feeling sorry for the kids. I have been throw a lot of trauma in my life too! I hate hearing trauma as an excuse for behaviors. Kids need boundaries and consequences to feel safe. Many children don't have these 2 things in their homes.
Really sorry that happened to you. I definitely have empathy for people who go through these things, and as a trouble child myself I agree that it's no reason to allow the behavior to be tolerated. However I think the emphasis on the kid's is just a way of society finding a scapegoat. Boundaries NEED to be set for the kids and just as importantly Parents(And tbh admin and school authorities who highkey encourage this behavior by giving it a pass while punishing well behaved students when they act out) need to be held accountable and educated on how to raise their children. These behaviors really are just symptoms of abuse. There needs to be a third space for children in these situations because many really would be better off on their own than in a poisonous home.
I agree and actually believe that our society’s permissiveness of this behavior does far more harm than it does help for these kids. It allows them to spiral ever downward without anyone holding them back. And they WILL eventually hit the bottom, likely in adulthood after they’ve seriously harmed themselves or others. Sometimes tough love is necessary to save people from an even more horrible fate.
Abuse is not an excuse for abuse. My grandfather abused me and he was abused by his father. All my siblings have agreed to end the abuse curse with us.
Kids in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s came from broken homes and abusive homes too. I was one of them. I was raised by a single mother, I went hungry, and came from an abusive family in the 70s and 80s. Me and my siblings wouldn’t dare be disrespectful at school. It is a lame excuse and the main reason I left the teaching profession.
Yup, I was physically and mentally abused at home in various ways, and was consistently listed as one of the best behaved kids in class. To the point that a substitute left me ‘semi in charge’ which shouldn’t have happened in grade 4 or so. Made me keep track of kids ‘misbehaving’ while they were absent. It was not a good idea though, and my parents were upset when word reached them, and it sure didn’t help my popularity…
This is a very good point. What about children who grew up during Jim Crow (like many in my family), they still managed to get good educations and didn't attack teachers. Trish, why do you think this is happening so much today?
I am a teacher but I also was a foster child and in the juvenile justice system. It used to be that if you misbehaved the judge threatened you with the lock up and residential placement. If a teacher is attacked, they should call the police. A crime is a crime.
I’m curious, once they get into residential placement can they ever get adopted again?. Also, I’m pretty sure they stopped doing that because of the abuse happening in those residential placements.
For many special needs/nonverbal children, it’s technology “to the rescue!” When in reality, something like an iPad serves as nothing more than a security blanket and pacifier as opposed to a real means of assistance. And of course, who’d want to do any work after playing on an electronic device all day!
I agree like for a kid who has you know level 3 ASD or who is non-verbal? It's an iPad of the rescue but that doesn't help you know it just makes it worse. And that needs to change. I mean come on. No wonder They don't want work. Because all they've had to do is play an iPad their whole life. So does it surprise you that they don't want to work at all.
@@onceupon3805It’s not just about jobs. You also need critical thinking skills and writing and reading skills to navigate the world especially when so many companies try to take advantage of the average person.
@@Window4503 we should be learning critical thinking before we go to college. But the divided states of irony are not in the business of teaching critical thinking. In many respects, the opposite is true, even at college campuses (which, increasingly, are just money-making institutions). Writing and reading? Shouldn't you learn this in elementary school?
I did a 6 month stint as a 50% special day teacher on one time emergency authorization. Worst experience of my life bar none. The level of physical abuse I was subjected to and expected to be okay with as part of the job was wild. It would literally be a crime in any other situation.
I get the kids have a bad home life. Try pulling this nonsense in the grocery store when someone cuts you off with the shopping cart 🤷🏼♀️ it’s just not good pretending that this is okay in a school setting, because it will come into the real world soon
@@TheKnallkorperIn some ways, it already has! As a former teacher, I now work retail and some of my customers will talk over me when I am helping another customer who was there first, or if I am making an announcement over the PA system. Some customers will actually grab items out of my hands while I am scanning them if said customers decide they don’t want them after all, as opposed to simply telling me in a polite manner. Just like rudeness in kids of sorts. The apple never falls far from the tree!
one of my friends in high school got slapped by an autistic student. the teacher had said “no sleeping” and my friend had his head down on his desk with a book in his lap that he was reading. the autistic student thought he was sleeping so he walked up behind him, and slapped him in the back of the head very hard while yelling, “NO SLEEPING!!”. the student did not have any repercussions for doing this because he was special ed. its absurd. i get that they are special ed but if their parents and teachers are not willing to properly discipline the kids it will be very hard for them to succeed in life. special ed programs do not teach special needs students how to deal with the real world, all it does (in my experience) is treat these people like complete toddlers and make excuses for their actions rather than trying to teach them how to actually be a part of society. it feels like a program that ostracizes kid’s and robs them of their potential through the complete lack of accountability they put on them. accountability is what helps people grow, it is a key element to life that should not be neglected by anyone regardless of mental ability.
Hey guys, I don’t know what happened to your friend, but I want to let you know that some behaviors are based in biology and intractable , life long. They cannot be altered by medication or behavior therapy. This could be due to certain abnormal brain electricity or certain enzyme processes that don’t work right. In fact, we have a huge problem societally that these individuals, their caregivers, and their teachers are not getting adequate services including in educational settings. When institutions were closed nothing was put in place for this population. Please be aware. Thank you.
@@StephenieBaileyDEAFMETAL What is your point? This isn't problem? This is all good? I think that the OP here is making a good point, not giving these kids consequences for their actions doesn't help them in the long run. I had a friend whose wrist was broken by a special ed kid. No consequences for him. No sympathy for her. In the real world, he might wind up dead because he didn't learn to behave.
Some kiddos with special needs are capable of learning those things, it does take them longer to learn than the average kiddo and requires reinforcement through a lot of interacting with others. I'm on the fence about kids that aren't able yet to understand how those interactions are supposed to work on a mostly consistent basis. These kids need relationships with others and especially their peers. However, I don't think other kids in the classroom should have to pay for it physically. I think it would go a long way for the other students in the class to know more about a special needs child's needs, things to avoid doing, ways to interact safely, ways to engage with their fellow student that won't scare the special needs child, ways to be helpful for that child. As a substitute, some of the classrooms I observed the whole class had really gotten to know the child and were very supportive, understanding, and accommodating. Most classrooms, that wasn't the case. The students knew the behavioral tendencies of the child somewhat, but the child seemed to be separate from the class despite being in the classroom. I don't know if there is concern about HIPPA laws being broken by revealing information on the child's needs, behaviors, etc maybe? Some special needs children are unfortunately incapable of ever learning the social rules and norms. They have little if any cognitive capacity to even begin to understand those things. I have a 2nd cousin with that situation. She has no comprehension of her strength or even decent motor control. In my opinion those are kids that should not be put in standard classrooms without a dedicated para if they have a tendency to hit, bite, kick, etc. Other kids should not have to be harmed in the name of integration.
Im sorry that happened to your friend. I feel deep sympathy for anyone injured in this way. I myself have suffered life-risking injuries at my own (now adult) daughter’s hands. I do know peoples lives are ending all across the US, wherein behavior crisis are called into law enforcement. I am an advocate and a mother/caregiver, and I just want to again, point out, that my point is that certain types of disorders cause intractable behaviors and it is true, that children and adults with intellectual disabilities, severe forms of autism, and related behaviors need to be re-evaluated for safety services in the community because “discipline “ doesn’t factor into it. Thats like putting someone in time out (or handcuffs) for having a seizure. Im kind of struggling to articulate myself, but I hope you get an idea of what I want to say to the world with urgency, regarding this topic. My point, as an advocate, was that environmental safety and accessibility accommodations need to be reconsidered for this population, all across the board, to protect teachers, classmates, nurses, and the individual, caregivers, siblings. Thank you.
I’m a SPED teacher, been teaching SPED for 2 years; and some kids do not need to be there. Half of my students are ESL, I’m in elementary so those kids learn English in like 6 months! The other half are just “bad" kids the general education teacher doesn’t want to deal with. It’s sad because the students who genuinely need SPED get left behind because SPED is becoming a regular class.
No, I agree, I mean there's some kids who need sped and some kids who don't need it. The point is that you know it should not be a regular class on a daily basis. It should be reserved for those kids who actually need it.
I can’t 100% blame the classroom teacher for not wanting to deal with extreme behaviors. It seems like a trend these days that admin are becoming more and more permissive with the students, and the classroom teacher no longer feels supported. The Gen Ed teacher may not even agree with the possible diagnosis, but suddenly it’s out of their hands. If they receive a diagnosis, it becomes even harder for admin to do anything about the behavior because it looks bad for the school if the teachers didn’t first try everything in the book and spend entirely too much planning and instructional time trying to get the kid to comply. However, I also feel really bad for special education teachers. I really think this is what happens when you remove alternative school as an option.
@@gustavus0013 in some parishes/counties (I’m in Louisiana) they don’t have enough funds to make esl a class, additionally in rural Louisiana very few people speak Spanish or could be esl teachers. When there’s no esl they just throw them in sped and they don’t need to be there
When I was a kid we had a special Ed class for these students with smaller classes and more teachers. To include them they joined us in certain classes, and it worked. In the argument of inclusion, they went too far, and now, one teacher with no special Ed training has 30 students and 5 could have varying degrees of special needs and the one teacher can't do it.
I speak as both a related services provider in special education and the parent of a child with multiple special needs who currently attends what we call and "out of district" placement. Plenty of students come into special education with behaviors as a result of their disorders. So, a child with cognitive impairment or autism or ADHD may ALSO have behaviors. So, these students are entitled to a free, appropriate, public education (FAPE) just like a student that doesn't have challenging learning styles/behavioral issues. That's the whole ethos of the right in America to have your child educated. The problem is that we have the legal obligation to provide FAPE and individual states don't choose to spend or have the ability to spend enough money to provide these students with the APPROPRIATE education. Special education teachers do NOT have training to deal with aggressive and oppositional students and they don't have the resources to keep those students a. engaged in learning, IF possible and b. keeping the rest of the class engaged and learning. I have worked with special needs 20 and 21 year old students (students with IEPs have the right to go to school until 21) who have bitten me (once a student who was seated while I was standing bit me on top of my breasts), punched me, banged my head into a concrete wall, pulled me by my hair, dug into my skin with fingernails that have dirt and feces under them. We have restraint trained teams (one team for 500 kids in a school) who can be code called. You'd be surprised by how much physical damage that can be done to you by an enraged person who has the mental maturity and ability of a 5 year old but the strength of a 20 year old with raging hormones. NOBODY knows how to be successful with these kids. Not the teachers, not the parents, certainly not the admin and of all of them, LEAST of all "the experts". In terms of positivity, the hard truth is that positive ONLY interventions don't work. Punishment does not work. A combination of carefully applied positive reinforcement and rational consequences has the best success rate ,but it's nowhere near 100%. Admin, pressured by "experts" who either have never been in the classroom or haven't been in the classroom for YEARS and are paid, ad paid well, to come up with "interventions" that are published in a book that no one has time to read and are poorly researched. As a society, we have a crisis of youth mental health, a lack of effective interventions, a lack of effective parenting, a lack of money/funding. And it's FAR FAR easier to blame teachers or parents than it is to fix these societal problems.
I am curious your opinion on least restrictive environment? As a general education teacher, I would have many students with IEPs. I was teaching 5th grade material to students who had no idea what was going on. Then the interventionist comes to het the kid for their pull out services and when they get back, they have no idea what going on. Then testing time, omg 😳 i dreaded testing, because I taught English Language Arts, and I had kids who were just learning to read 3 letter words… i couldn’t read the passage to them, only the question and answers…. All of us would be in tears. So again, what is your opinion of least restrictive environment?
RELATED SERVICES REPRESENT! SLP here. I’ve gotten some of the abuse, got grabbed in the crotch and breasts, and hit a few times, but not nearly to the level you have. WHY do the case managers never tell us related services which kids BITE?
I give this person a lot of credit for what he does on a daily basis. This guy is speaking the truth. People have no idea how difficult this job is. Teachers who have these jobs should be paid $100K for a 10 month year (starting) plus full benefits, no deductibles on health insurance. It is so hard to watch society decline while you try to do your best for these kids. I also think there should be a time limit on being a front line teacher like this and then you're rotated out for a break. I know all these suggestions are completely unrealistic but I just wanted to make this comment anyway. I was an occupational therapist for 20 years and I have the utmost respect for teachers who work in these violent special needs schools.
I agree with you; particularly what I think is a very excellent idea is the job needs to allow for a rotation of duty, not unlike the rotation , or “tour of duty” in the military . I made a note of when Trish’s guest commented on how even though he cares deeply about the students, or “his kids”, he also said he had like “ emotional callouses” from the accumulated several years he’s been in service at this school. I think something like a sabbatical or a “tour of duty” model that includes time off to refill the emotional and physical stamina tanks would help keep more teachers in schools, particularly ones like in this episode.
@@gailgrigg Exactly. It is a "tour of duty". It becomes a personal war zone when these kids act out and you can't retaliate. At least in a military was zone, you are allowed to defend yourself.
I’m only 5 minutes in - my child had an IEP for 6 years before I removed him from public school to homeschool him myself. The IEP was essentially the schools free pass to advance my child to the next grade, with passing grades, all while learning NOTHING!
Teachers are not allowed to fail any student with an IEP. I gave a student a failing grade, because he failed the work. The parent reached out to me and I asked admin to help me with my response. I was told to change the grade and tell the parent I had made a mistake when inputting grades. Mind you I was a general education teacher in 5th grade, I was only required to give one grade and the rest of the grades came from the interventionists.
I'm a sped teacher who retired early. I couldn't take it after 5 years. Administration kept making too many decisions based on sped. As the sped teacher I was the face of those bad decisions that I didn't even make.
I have a severe learning disability and was in special education for 5 years, and it was a total disaster. I never had any behavioural problems aside from anxiety (if that counts) but I was put in a class where more than half of the students were violent. There wasn’t a day that went by where the teacher or teachers aide wouldn’t get a black eye or bloody nose. The class was meant for students with learning disabilities but instead a large number of the students had severe behavioural disorders and completely disrupted the learning process. There were also a few students in my class who had a mild intellectual disability and they just sat there the entire time not knowing what to do or understanding what was going on. In high school, I was fully mainstreamed and couldn’t cope because I was never prepared to work in a regular classroom environment so I ended up failing my classes and started having panic attacks everyday. In grade 11, my parents moved me to a private school that was only for students with learning disabilities and not behavioural issues and that is where I was finally able to thrive thankfully. Something in special education needs to change.
I'm glad you were able to thrive. I hate how they throw the violent kids get in with the other children. It unfairly makes the other kids a target. I've witnessed some of our kids just go up and hit a child in the head. We have so many with behavior issues, we can barely get to academics.
My niece was a special Ed teacher in one those schools. It was the only teaching job she could get with her Arts Therapy degree. She was brutally attacked by some of these students. Thank God she got out of that before she got hurt. She's now married to an officer in the Army and a stay at home mother.
Question, when you say arts therapy, are you saying she ended up getting a Master’s Degree in counseling, or she just got the certification for administering arts therapy? The reason why I ask is due to how my state states that you cannot provide counseling services unless you have licensure as a counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. And if their state is similar in anyway, it would be that the arts therapy degree would qualify more as a certification for continuing education and expansion of practice than as a marketable trait on its own. Trust me when I say I know it sucks, because I spent 2 years with my BA in psychology and unable to get a single decent job outside of working in retail…
I always tested in the 98th percentile. I was a nerdy kid, I was in chess club, I had a college reading level by 2nd grade. I never disturbed a class, I did my homework for the weekend of Friday night. In 4th grade I raised my hand politely and asked why Egypt was taught separately from Africa in history class. No follow-up questions, no intention, just a sincere question. They called my mother and told her I had ODD and tried to put me on pills. My mother, who was an arts educator, walked out. This was 1999. Kids weren't cursing in class, we had no phones, we weren't allowed to do homework on computers because not everyone had them at home. Teachers were part of the problem. The diagnosis track for children that you didn't want to teach to out of your class or made them compliant. If my mother didn't advocate for me, I could have had my education sabotaged by one lazy teacher.
As a specialist teacher (15years) in a public school. I have a love hate relationship with Special Ed. The emotionally disturbed kids are on the rise. It is a big issue! I don't have a clue on what is causing the rise, but the only thing that has changed is smart phones and tablets. I really feel there is some sort of connection. 🤷♂
Technology and parental negligence are the two main reasons, and the two main differences between children of the 20th Century and children of the 21st Century.
I'm one of the teachers that ended up with an actual case of PTSD from 27 years of dealing with them every day. The worst year was my 7th, there were many kids who were utterly unpredicatable and violent, I broke up several fights in the classroom. That year I began to get insomnia worrying about dealing with them the next day, and then suddenly it turned into full blown panic attacks. I couldn't simply stop working and went several months panicking constantly, and finally started taking medication. But the damage was done, and to this day suffer with anxiety.
The summer before I started high school, my family moved from Pennsylvania to rural Florida. The public school system in that county was abysmal with high rates of teen pregnancy and low graduation rates, so my parents didn’t want to send my brother and me there. They found a brand new “Christian” school across town that was just getting ready to open for its inaugural year. And they assumed that because it was a “Christian” school, they’d be sparing us from all of the evils of public school. Boy, were they wrong. It was basically an alternative school. My brother and I were among the very few students who were actually there voluntarily from families that were paying tuition. 95% of the students had been expelled from public school, and that’s how this school guaranteed they’d be able to pay their bills- state subsidies. All year, I was bullied by other girls and sexually harassed by linebacker sized 19 year old 10th graders who were too stupid to graduate. Once, this very violent autistic boy (level II support needs but zero emotional control) shoved me in the janitors closet and locked me in. He didn’t get in trouble. Instead, when a teacher let me out and I called the boy a name, I received demerits for “having an un-Christlike attitude.” Another time, my class had an end of year trip to a nearby key. They chartered two boats to take us for the day for swimming, BBQ, volleyball, etc. On the boat ride back, a girl who had relentlessly bullied me all year and never been held accountable dumped a bucket of slimy, bloody, reeking chum all over my lap. She was finally expelled the last week of school after 9 months of tormenting me. Lots of kids used drugs, slept around, beat other kids up, cussed out teachers, broke desks and computers when they were angry. They were horrible human beings. It felt like being sent to prison every day. Anyone who teaches in a setting like that deserves twice what public school teachers earn, IMO. Last year, a friend of mine who taught at an alternative HS quit after a male student kicked her in her pregnant stomach. The school told her she needed to me made of sterner stuff and not let the kids get to her. She said, “He literally tried to kill my baby,” and the principal told her she was being dramatic and that the kid was just having a hard time. So, she quit and will never go back to teaching. It’s awful.
You couldn’t pay me to work at this school and deal with this violence. No ma’am!!!! I did not bust my butt in graduate school to be a babysitter for delinquents.
You're so right, because all it is, is babysitting. Some kids have the ability to learn, but we can't work with them, because we're too busy trying to protect them and ourselves from the violent and disruptive kids.
Basically sounds like parents thinking their kids are just special so they deserve a special education. Our their kids aren't raised with basic manners. Teachers in public schools need to be allowed to have control of their classroom. When a kid is a brat, parents try to automatically blame the teacher instead of teaching their child discipline.
My heart goes out to the general ed students that are expected to put up with this behavior. Special Ed or not no student should be above the needs of others. Every single child has special needs. A piece of paper and/or diagnosis should not allow the needs of one student to hold hostage the needs of all the others.
I was a substitute for three years until Covid. It had been a long time since I had been in a classroom and hadn't had many years under my belt to begin with. You could see it written all over the other kids' faces "why did the rules only apply to some kids and not others?" I subbed a 1st grade class. This class had about 5 kids with known behavioral issues. It was a last minute sick call out, so there were no plans, except another teacher pulled some worksheets out for them and wrote me a schedule of when lunch, recess, and PE/music was. The classroom was located away from the other 1st grade classrooms. Next door was a Sped classroom where they were testing for kids to be able to move on to 5th grade. One of my students refused to sit down and do any work. He kept walking about the classroom shoving and hitting other kids, distracting classmates, etc. would not cooperate. After trying to redirect many times, I finally called the office because the classroom next door had complained we were too loud. Another teacher came in and spoke with the classroom. A few hours later. Same stuff, but now the kids were visibly bothered and concerned that he was continuing to hit, etc. I called the office, principal came down and spoke with the student. Things were a bit better for about an hour. An hour and a half before the end of school, I had had enough of this kid refusing to cooperate and hitting his classmates. My son was a student at this same school in a different grade. Principal came down again and spoke with me in a manner that the kids would not hear and basically told me the boy would not be leaving the classroom and I had to just do what I could to keep things together until the end of the day. I had previously been amazed at this principal and her knowledge of every student. That day I lost my respect for her as a principal. As a parent of a child in that school I was angry. And it was now apparent to me that my child's well being was not necessarily as well as what they sold parents on.
In my state these schools are called “special purpose private schools”, where the most violent students are sent. These schools charge up to $200,000 a school year for students to attend (not exaggerating). My school district only sends kids that are extremely violent or have sexual behavior who have IEPs.
I work in an EBD room and it feels like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. They do what he says, bicker and verbally fight each other, disregard any adult that isn't their buddy and they don't understand their actions have consequences. 30:00 in, there is no repercussion for behavior. The principal does nothing for a kid that has been there and knows she can do nothing.
I was diagnosed with ODD in the 90s. It's not new. My IEP was the only reason I was able to graduate HS and go to college. Teaches have never been able to diagnose kids. But they think so often that they don't even need an assessment or evaluation of any type to determine that a child doesn't have a disability. It's a disservice to children. Disabilities are on the rise. The funding needs to be on the rise too. Not cutting services to kids who need it.
This is a great interview. The heart in this teacher is big. He obviously cares deeply. My child is autistic and epileptic. We did not know this at the beginning.... He was the child that took off his clothes, screamed at teachers, destroyed the classroom.... our teachers fought for him. They recognized that it was not a discipline situation and that he needed the right environment. We lucked out. I cannot say enough good things about the guidance teachers around us have given us. Not so much for the medical situation. Don't even get me started on social security or disability., or any of that kind of stuff, even though he is eighteen at this point.
I’ve been a middle school teacher in California for 22 years and the last 8 have been exactly what you described as a regular day at your school. I’m at a public school and the system is definitely broken. I have over 15 ODD and OHI students with IEPs or 504s which make up about half of the sped students I have in my classes. We do not have alternative schools in our district and yes, our classes have terrible behavior. We also have about 36 students in our classes as well. We are exhausted
Teachers working with students in SPED have been physically beaten up to the point of being hospitalized and hiring lawyers. It's not a safe environment for anyone.
It's horrible. Teachers shouldn't be in a position where they are violently attacked by students. Some schools don't have resource officers to restrain violent students and the responsibility is placed on school staff. It's ridiculous.
There used to be reform schools. Im thinking we need to go back to those. My daughter almost had her ankle broken by one of these out of control kids. The principle deliberatly sat this kid next to her so he could learn good behavior. I put a stop to that. The truth is, a bad home and trauma is no excuse for these behaviors. Another truth is, people tend to drop to the lowest common denominator. If you keep rewarding these bad behaviors others will immitate it. Discipline is whats needed. If the kid is way to out of control, they need to be sent to a reform school type of environment. Kids in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s rarely behaved like this and i guarantee they went through the same kinds of trauma and crap homes with a lot less help than today. So explain that? Something else is going on here and imho it has to do with creating new diagnosis, excusing behaviors due to various adverse situations and lack of any real discipline or consequences. True special ed kids are suffering and losing resourses because of this. Bad behaviors are not special ed.
Exactly. Kids were being abused left right and centre in the 80s and noone did anything yet I never in 12years saw a kid say fuck you to a teacher, throw a chair or just refuse to do any work at all.
It's true what he said about age. It doesn't occur to them. I have many traumatized students with major behaviour and emotional issues. I play therapist and cop every day. Teaching is a luxury tbh. The only thing that matters in this specific educational setting is CONNECTION. That is what I bring to the table when everything else fails. Regarding empathy and compassion, I have a limit. If I have a student with whom I have exhausted all of my resources to no avail and they still don't care or have even an inkling o respect for me, their peers, themselves, then... I withdraw my energy from them and reinvest in myself and the others who DO care.
Really appreciate this interview. I think we medicalize behavior too much. And we employ the word "trauma" to the detriment of young people. We give too many excuses in the name of "trauma" or "being a kid." We have created a generation of the most selfish individuals on planet earth who have no respect for authority or fear of actual consequences (because there are none). We are witnessing the fruits of our psychological society and dealing with problems that would never have been tolerated 75 years ago (regardless of how tough the home life might have been). We aggrandize things that would have been considered petty back then. I can go into detail about the history of kids on the streets during the Great Depression, who sat in classrooms of 50 students and yet had to be respectful because there were actual consequences and nobody placated or excused rotten behavior. This is all fundamentally based on a view of human nature; the education system is based upon theories of human nature that have proven to be false as evidenced by the degeneracy of the school system and its utter confusion over the most basic things people would never have scratched their heads about 75 years ago. Likewise, parenting (by and large) replaces discipline, accountability, and consistency with drugging kids and making endless excuses for the most egregiously rotten behavior. Throwing around pseudo-science labels like "ADHD" and "ODD" makes people (administrators, educators, social workers, counselors, psychologists) feel cutting edge. Teachers are smart but they have been trained to trust in a system utterly deluded. But if they would take the time (as many students of science have done) they would no longer be fooled by this big charade. Unfortunately, it is much harder to swallow the pill of accountability and much easier to lay blame on some "disorder." Pain and trauma are real, but what is happening in society and the school system is so much bigger than that. The sciences of the mind with their view of human nature have inculcated the false ideas that parents or guardians and the school system continue to stand upon---all while society gets worse and worse. And we continue to look to the same system for the answers.... absolute delusion.
I don't disagree with anything you said other than ADHD being pseudo-science. That is a real neurological difference. ODD on the other hand.... not sure about that one.
🎯 I was a substitute teacher for years before I became a full-time teacher. I had a student in one class who wouldn't even try to answer questions correctly. I was told later that he had ODD. I spoke with a special Ed teacher about it, and I asked her, "What's the difference between a child being called lazy and a child being diagnosed with ODD?" And she told me, "Money. Pharmaceutical companies are making a gazillion off of doping up these kids."
@@rtj630 Thanks for your response. Yes, I definitely disagree with the statement that "ADHD" is neurological (as opposed to behavioral/metaphysical). Why? I don't know how familiar you are with pathology and pathophysiology. If treating a diabetic, for example, we know the etiology of the condition. In dissecting human cadavers, for example, we can see the neurodegeneration in Parkinson's Disease (a real neurological condition). This is not the case with so-called "ADHD." Even if someone has an infectious disease we can withdraw blood and see the immune response. In contrast, we cannot withdraw blood and draw a conclusion about "ADHD." It is in fact based on pseudo-science. Articles published on it are full of so much psychological mumbo-jumbo conjecture (that real pathologists don't have to engage in to pretend to be science-based) Why? Because they can actually work in the physical and examine histological tissue. There are so many myths about the brain that people are simply unaware of. The field of psychology has to borrow medical terminology to sound more legitimate (e.g., "therapy," "treatment," "illness," etc.). If psychology was properly understood as metaphysics or philosophy (as it always was until the 20th century) it wouldn't deserve the label "pseudoscience." However, because it is purported to be more than it is, it warrants this pejorative label. Today poor behavior is excused in the name of pseudo-illness labels like "ADHD" and "ODD." This has essentially trained parents and children away from accountability and self-control, leading them to believe they can’t help it because of a so-called chemical imbalances in the brain (although they have quietly tried to move away from this embarrassing hypothesis, which has sadly been utilized to drug millions of precious children). Sadly, people don't even know about this pathological mythology (a smokescreen of psychology as it pretended to be a hard science) even though so many people stand upon it as if they were discussing the law of gravity or actual physical and/or medical science (when in fact they are not). Thanks for reading this and sorry for being long-winded.
@@ViewPoint1517as an individual with a Dx late in middle age for ADHD, I strongly disagree with your claim that ADHD is a “pseudoscience “. I will refer you to Dr Russell Barkley and Dr Ned Hallowell (Barkley has a YT channel now that he is semi-retired from academia). your claims that adhd isn’t real are based on…your personal biases? Please for the sake of anyone in your life who may have adhd, get educated on it before you make further erroneous claims that it is a made up fantasy. You only appear ignorant at best and cruel at worst with your claims
I have a psych degree, and one of my college professors jokingly called Oppositional Defiant Disorder “Bart Simpson Disorder.” They’re usually smart kids, but prone to misbehavior. It’s a pattern of behavior, but it isn’t a disability.
If we are so worried about violence and trauma, why are we allowing teachers and students to be abused in the classroom? And then telling them it's their fault we need to be more understanding.This is how we create violent abusers with an excuse
Kind of feel like this is what that school is made for...but in my experience, these regular public schools are trying to bring these methods into the regular classroom, while also holding us to a higher standard of student growth and achievements. It's so much harder to connect with those kids when your career depends on them actually doing the work, actually learning the materials. In a place like that, you can lower the standards to focus on connection. You can bribe them just to not fight with candy. I feel like I've been in that same school, having those same conversations...but it's different when you have a deadline for them actually picking up a pencil and do an assignment on grade level.
Im a homeschool mom and these kinds of stories make me NEVER want to put my son back in public school. He's autistic and he used to be in one of those special education classes. He was CONSTNATLY coming home with stories about the violent kids in his class and how hard it was for him to focus, and it would overstimulate him and make him SUPER overwhelmed and anxious about school. It was terrible. But he couldn't function in a gen ed setting! It's so crazy what everyone involved in those situations has to endure, the troubled student, their peers, the teachers...etc.
I can tell you what it's like to be in special education, well at least back in the day (late 70s to the end of 1989). Back then when you got labeled "retarded" like my biological mother did just to get rid of me and have me placed into foster care, I was placed into special education. I didn't belong there at all. It was to the point where I was "stealing" educational material starting from the age of 8 years old through 12 years of age where I felt that I was actually learning something. Special education back in the day was merely just a babysitting program, where you hardly learn anything. All one had to do was be occupied and behave. I had to fight tooth and nail to get removed from that program and it literally took me to the 11th grade to accomplish that mission. When I "graduated" high school, I thought to myself to not accept that I had graduated. When I went to college was when I started to claim those accomplishments.
@@TeacherTherapy, at least I had the drive and discipline to not only educate myself, but to get myself removed from that special ed program in which I never should have been placed into. I really feel bad for these kids in the future with nearly zero knowledge, discipline and structure. This world is about to be doomed for sure.
I came from a single-family home and I am a special education teacher. My kids came from a single-family home and my kids had never been disrespectful. We have never been disrespectful because our mother did not play. We never disrespected the teacher. They put too much on a teacher and they expect us to do and be everything to these kids and we just can’t there’s no more teaching in the classroom. They want us to take care of behavior and that’s not our job. Your kids should behave before they come to school. We shouldn’t be running around here making behavior goals. We are teachers, we’re not their parents and they need to start holding these parents accountable or if kids are that destructive, they can’t come to school until they get some discipline and that’s how we should be.
I worked with special needs and behavioral issues in Ontario Canada. I can relate to your guest's experience and approach. I found that I became incredible at reading people's behavior because I had to analyze children's behavior. Finding the balance between "human" and educator is tricky. Emotionally perserve the self while dealing with children from very unfortunate circumstances is also important
I’m wondering if a portion of the issues with kids is due to poor nutrition. When this teacher mentioned giving students snacks, it gave me that idea. All of the nasty stuff that’s in our foods, especially what most people think of as snack foods, can impact mood and behavior. In the past few months, I had to cut out a lot of that stuff from my diet and I’ve noticed differences in my mood and emotional health as well. I’m not saying it’s the entire solution, but sometimes a small tweak can lead to bigger changes.
@@munimathbypeterfelton6251 sleep is definitely a huge factor. I’m not too sure about not eating breakfast. Breakfast foods such as cereal, toast, juice, etc are really unhealthy. Skipping breakfast altogether never bothered me, except maybe having an apple, even as a kid. Also, if kids eat healthier, they will sleep better as well. With the changes in my diet, I sleep better overall even though they amount has lessened. I know a lot of exerts say teenagers need to wake up later and start their day later. That’s not something I ever heard my parents or their siblings talk about. They just got up like everyone else.
@@Flippylover_69I actually don’t trust public institutions to do anything that is actually good for anyone. Our government subsidizes foods that are making the population sick. I do believe in individual responsibility to not buy into the crap. Real change happens one person at a time. With everything that’s happening in our society, I propose helping people wake up. Let’s help parents have the tools to get lids to eat an egg and sausage with some fresh fruit over sugary cereal, fruit snacks, or pop tarts. I don’t have kids, but if I can have them, I’ll be avoiding that stuff like crazy. They’ll be on a low carb, high protein and high fats diet. Definitely no soda allowed in or out of the house. If you train kids well at home, school will be easier.
Didn’t Michelle Obama implement the healthy meals at school? I know lots of children who get free breakfast and lunch in school. I do agree that diet and nutrition is a factor. That is why it was addressed by those in politics. The problem is that a school cannot become the be all, end all of every problem.
Trish, you are great! I am so happy and relieved that you are doing this. I work in an overwhelmed district, and kids are just becoming diluted in this toxic solution that has been concocted for American education. Would love to interview one day but actively teaching and would of course want to prep for exactly what I want to talk about…..there are so many things. But watching this video…it all rings truth.
Really love that you continue to reach out and hear perspectives from professionals in the field. I'm passionate about education but dropped out of the major, largely because of all the warning signs that flashed every time I researched modern standards. It's disheartening for sure, but discussions like this move the dialogue forward.
omg Trish you are the best. you are tackling topics that a lot of teachers are aware of but no one dares to talk about. you are the best. greetings from Greece! (similar problems exist everywhere ! )!
Yes! Not talking, especially honestly and bluntly, is making things worse! These kids are screaming for structure and discipline (not as in punishment, but a set of rules and goals with accountable follow through) and consistency in policy. Both from school and more importantly from home.
As someone who had severe psychosis growing up and was occasionally very VERY disruptive to say the least at school. Mental illness and/or trauma is no excuse for violent and disruptive behavior at class. It’s no excuse for physically destroying property and harming and endangering teachers and students. It explains the behavior but doesn’t excuse it. Students like that need specialized schools and care so they don’t themselves or others
Our district has a school for these behaviorally challenged sped students. There are much lower ratios of student/teacher. The push to move a student into an IEP is not only medicalized and psychologized but it's financial as well. Districts get higher FTE/QBE for these kids. Districts also take sped $ and don't use that money directly FOR those students. All these labels and acronyms bring in big bucks.. we need mental health professionals working along side the sped teachers.. this needs to happen NOW. Btw the med cart was always the focal point at the district alternative school. It's like a mental health facility/jail/school all rolled into one.
I am so glad young women are deciding not to have kids until they feel ready and WANT to. So proud to see that trend. Imagine a world with LESS unwanted children in it. Sounds wonderful. I am so deeply sorry this is the state of public education now. The adults in my time were able to nail down the safety. Becoming a prison guard sounds like a safer career choice than teacher.
This is the flip side. The alternative schooling for extreme behaviourally challenged and a place for those with learning difficulties shouldn’t be under the same roof. That’s going to affect the vulnerable children’s behaviour and outlook in life.
I work one-on-one with children with autism as a behavior therapist. My first job in the field we made $20 an hour, and one of my coworkers was a former special ed teacher. In that role she had made $17 an hour and had to manage 20 special ed students by herself. She found being a behavior tech infinitely easier (though it’s still a hard job, don’t get me wrong) and it paid better! That’s crazy to me.
My question is WHY are there so many? Growing up, there was maybe 1 in a class. What is going on with our society? Parents, y'all need to answer up! There have always been broken children, society has changed, parenting has changed.
No structure at home, no clear ENFORCED guidelines at school, kids relying on their own judgement about how to behave, lost, angry confused and hostile.
@@sharinaross1865 Actually, I am. My son is off to a very top tier college in Texas, graduated top 3% of his class and is well mannered, emotionally stable, hard working young man. Thanks!
I also think that when some children are diagnosed and they are made aware of their diagnosis, that can make them "play up" to those traits. Almost like they're stuck "in a box" and they "can't" be better than those traits or learn to cope and live with their prognosis.
I've definitely seen this! Unfortunately, various disorders are also glamorized on TikTok and social media, so some kids are actively trying to emulate symptoms, especially related to Autism. 😢
I taught non public school the first three years of my career and I loved it. We had a pretty good staff who worked hard to support students and one another. I knew what I was getting into when I took the job. Those kids had absolutely horrific histories and for most of the students I worked with, I was able to establish rapport and trust. Yes I did get assaulted a few times and it was traumatic but mostly because I thought I was getting through to a kid. The majority of the behaviors are due to the nature of the disability coupled with significant trauma.
I teach in a school like this. My biggest problem is the responsibility to protect students from each other. If one student starts hitting another, I'm responsible for breaking up the fight; in doing so, I've been physically hurt. Every time I show up for work, I feel like I'm putting myself in danger. I don't intend to continue teaching in the school.
That’s because you are. As a former teacher who taught in a similar school I strongly recommend you quit. As soon as you are too injured to defend yourself they will fire you and then you will face unemployment, a major injury, and no insurance. Or they won’t fire you. Instead they will demand you return to class and then sue you for breach of contract if you don’t even if you have a badly broken arm or leg. I’ve seen both happen to teachers at least a dozen times over the years. And the students who cause the injury are usually emboldened and back in class before the teacher is out of the hospital. Don’t sacrifice your lifelong health for the industrialized world’s worst education system that graduates illiterate adults with B averages.
@@AngryPug76totally agree with you. Your Job duties do not include getting beat up by students. Also, those districts that demand a fine from teachers who quit during the contract period, I’d love to see those wind through the judicial system to see if that is actually legal for districts to put those early quit fines into teachers’s contracts? I’m not telling any teachers here to voluntarily be the legal test case. But I suspect that if the fines were disputed in court and made there way up to higher courts, those clauses in teacher contracts for fining teachers who resign during an employment contract would not be enforceable
@@gailgrigg It’s been legally tested multiple times and upheld. Some states even require on top of the fine that the quitting teacher pay the full employer end of the long term substitutes salary. Teaching today has the legal protections of a 1800s era coal miner.
Is this a special education public school ? Asking because I currently teach public school and trying to get out ... Have an interview for special needs public school .. but if it's this crazy, I'm not taking the job.
@@truth.is.here23 Yes. A special education public school. I asked around there and found that every staff member who has been there more than a year or two has been physically hurt at least once. Not long ago a student threw a rock at a fellow student and missed; the rock hit a teacher on the head who then had to be hospitalized. Perhaps other special education public schools are not as bad. I have no idea.
Fantastic interview, thank you both. My son is in a similar-ish class that operates in a similar manner. Not exactly, but close enough that almost everything he says applies, and I appreciate the insight from other schools/jurisdictions, etc. I wish more people knew what our kids and teachers are dealing with and the support that is required. I hope more compassionate teachers come forward to help our kids, too.
Your channel name is perfectly suited for your content. It does feel like a therapy session when I watch your videos. The amount of times I yell "EXACTLY" when I hear some of the points you and your guests make. I feel really validated at the end of your videos and some of your videos make me really hopeful with the advice you give. Thank you.
I've seen a huge increase in digital curriculum, and screen use because of it. Kids aren't learning to hold writing tools correctly, let alone learn legible penmanship. We're creating a nation of icon tappers.
Trish, thank you for addressing this issue. Thank you. I agree that kids need to have accountability. I mean especially special ed kids because if they don't they're going to run into problems when they're in the real world. Hello from Iowa.
100% agree with simple behavioural issues being classed as additional/SEN, we're having that same issue in the UK. "We can't control the child in a mainstream school so he/she must have additional needs, lets send them to the Special Education Facility"... where I worked we had so many children who just simply lacked discipline in their life and it took away from us being able to support the children that do have ASD, ADHD, ODD etc, because we're busy trying to calm down a 10 year old having a tantrum just because they can.
In the early 1980s, I was sentenced to spend at least part of the school day in a special ed classroom in a mainstream public school from 5th grade all the way through high school and it did nothing for me except make me a bully magnet.
I worked as a special Ed assistant for years. They pay pennies for the work we do!! The emotional, mental and physical drain is not worth it! I quit happily
It really depends on the specific disability or disorder. There are people with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder who might behave a bit weird and need extra time but are totally non-violent. But people with ODD, IED, and CD probably need to be isolated for the safety of people they would hurt (at least until the condition can be treated). The worst idea is attempting to "mainstream" the most violent kids by putting them in classrooms full of average students and run by teachers without special training.
Crazy as it sounds, I would love to try to teach in his environment. His job sounds like it would be really challenging, but also really rewarding once you manage to break through to a student. I volunteered in a preschool when I was in high school and there was one student in particular that was a so-called "problem kid". I saw he was exceptionally angry and lashing out and he was clearly already given up on. I made it my mission to make friends with him. Didn't take no for an answer and took the verbal and physical abuse from this literal child and kept coming back to teach him that I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't going to abandon him and brush him off like everyone else around him appeared to. Over the semester, I managed to befriend him and was able to see him smile and play, got him to (reluctantly) play with other kids safely, helped him learn to manage his emotions, and saw his face light up when I was able to encourage him to show me how well he could write his name. At the end of the semester, he was crying to see me go, but I was able to help him make friends with some of the other kids who would be in kindergarten with him next year, so he would be okay and would have friends waiting for him next year. It was one of the best feelings seeing him grow and to give him another chance to succeed. I just kept thinking how sad it was that people were already letting him slip through the cracks as a 4 year old kid. If anyone knows how I could be able to do that kind of thing more to potentially help other, please let me know. I need to make a career change and I think that would be a good direction for me to go in, I just don't know how to get there.
It's a difference! I went to school with special education students and years later some of these people are really mentally ill. The school system has not been prepared for that!!
I landed a job in a "private" school in a pretty safe neighborhood. I realized that many of the students had been bounced around. My nephew said, "Oh, I know that school! At lunch they do drugs and steal. We called it 'one stop away from Rikers Island '." In other words...jail!
I have seen every bit of this. Ten years ago, parents didn’t want their kids to get a diagnosis. Now, they seek it out so that their kid doesn’t suffer any consequences for their actions. This overloads the system and kids that actually need help don’t get the amount of help they need. SPED teachers are completely overwhelmed because every parent demands an exorbitant number of minutes for their kid. It’s a broken system.
This guy really gets it. I worked in a similar place to what he described and the whole thing about the two paths is true. When I was still working at a school I would tell kids who didn't care to either drop out or get their GED and they would be surprised and all my coworkers really didn't like me for giving that advice but those same kids almost always went to me for advice for being real with them.
Liked and obviously subscribed. And not just because this spoke to my heart especially while listening during my first year of employment in NJ as a paraprofessional where I spend my days with one friend and appreciate the insight you have provided….🙏💕
I see a lot of people saying things like 'in my day' or 'I, therefore you'. The fact is the system has changed for the worse since 'your day', and we're not in 'your day' any longer, therefore your argument makes no sense. We are here now, in this day. 'I, therefore you' makes no sense either. Our experiences, how we respond to them, all the context involved, whether we're male/ female/ queer/ skinny/ fat/ strong/ weak/ brown/ black/ white, our parents (or lack), our siblings, other relatives, the city or town we grew up in, the school we went to ... all of these factors lend to how we respond to stimuli. No two people's experiences are the same, so it's invalid to say 'I did it, so can you!' or 'I didn't do it, so you don't need to either'. WHAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE AND WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE IT BETTER
The root cause is no discipline. I've seen videos of a classroom that coworker's daughter sends her mom. There is no order or consequences for bad behavior.
Don't forget the issue with all the funding that SPED requires. The law requires that public schools provide whatever will help the student with disabilities to succeed. But more and more students are being labeled emotionally disturbed or OHI and put in SPED program , which causes schools to need more funding. In my state 70% of house taxes and property taxes are used for school funding. They get raised every year.
When IDEA was passed, the federal govt was supposed to fund sped at I believe 45-50%? The feds have NEVER in about 50 years of legislation fully funded the mandates. I think the fed portion of sped funding to the states has, historically , only averaged about 12-15% funding. This means that in the race for the disinvestment, regular programs lose money to sped. On other hand, when was the last time you heard of a school cutting its football program for sped funding? So, you know, priorities.
I thought ODD disorder was a joke too but what I was out done with was how the student’s mood changed each day. For example, some days the student was focused and willing to listen. However, on some days the student would get angry , and defiant when you asked him to do something. Also what I was really out done with is that admin knew that that the student had aggressive behavior and had me working with the kid by myself without being CPI trained smh . I had to speak up about it and advocate . If your new sped teacher please learn to advocate for your self by knowing the sped laws because bad admin will try to put you in weird and dangerous situations because they think you don’t know . The reality is that a lot of youth are getting misplaced especially Spanish (ESL ) kids and kids with behavior issues. The tricky part is you have some kids who are just bad but not smart yet they are only placed in sped because of behavior and if they don’t have a parent to advocate that leaves you in the boxing ring by yourself with the kid and admin who think because they are black or Spanish need to be in sped . Lastly, sped is about money too . Parents get money because their child has a disability and the school gets money for having kids and kids who are in sped
I think every LARGE district has this one school, frankly that it’s very hard to staff. It is usually not the special ed kids that go there, it’s the hard-core attitude type students. I thought they were all one step away from incarceration.
The biggest battle is the kid/kids not caring and the parents doesn’t care. You can tell when a parent doesn’t care they will not ask about homework, and they will not even attend at least 1 parent-teacher conference or they will not ask questions during an IEP. It might be that some parents don’t know what to ask . I had a heart to heart conversation because I knew the kid was not on the reading level that the IEP stated the kid was on . Therefore, I suggested to the parent that they should ask about assessments and ask about homework that way they can know how their child is learning and what their is understanding. Understanding the home life is important but be careful of some of the parents that might be crazy and do not want the school to know
agreed as a special needs person myself and they should get training to deal with complex disabilities and PTSD etc. instead of having to flexi handcuff the kid and put them in an isolation room that never happened to me granted I was in a class specifically for visually/hearing impaired children in elementary school and in a major city where teachers actually get decent pay. my childhood best friend is a 2nd grade Teacher for special needs kids and makes about 80k a year and she owns 2 paid for Mercedes Benz a C63 S Cabriolet and an S 560 long wheelbase inherited from her mum with relatively low miles around 40,000 when she inherited it 19 mos. ago it probably had maybe 40,000 miles on it when she got it and now has around 60k granted the Sedan is worth more than the Similarly optioned Cabriolet $40,000 as opposed to 20,000 as a trade in according to Kelly Blue Book and the sedan is 2 Ft longer than the convertible though that isn't always the case when its sedan and Coupe Convertible models of the same car I.E. Toyota Camry and Camry Solara from 1999-2008 overlapping with the XV20 XV30 and XV40 models of Camry
All these people in their teens and 20s because of social media want some special label to attach to valid trauma, and then they turn around and get their kids diagnosed with all this stuff. Because everyone is special. Teachers need better pay and support. And kids need to be kept off the Internet.
The focus is so often on grades and test scores, that teachers forget the whole purpose of special ed is to give education that is related to a child's disability so that they can be independent one day. Spend money on kids with emotional needs now or taxpayer dollars will end up serving them as adults.
I'm 19 years old, got diagnosed with autism when I was 5 by my school, they I do feel like they made a really dumb decision by just throwing me into full time special ed it's all cuz during kindergarten, the teachers noticed that I was a bit different than others and they thought that I wouldn't able to adapt at all in regular classes. My parents barely knew much about autism back then when I was diagnosed, and the teachers would say that I wouldn't able to adapt at all in regular classes, so then that made my parents think that I wouldn't able to learn in regular classes. But yeah all of this just resulted me in just having complete inadequate education :/
I was labeled emotional disturbed at 10 in 2000. I had a MDD, Asperger’s and combo-ADHD diagnosis but they were seen as a social disability and learning disability you grow out of respectively. I was diagnosed with BP2 as an adult. Most of the people I know who had an ED label around that time have a mood disorder, developmental disorder,schizophrenia/ schizoaffective disorder and/or PTSD diagnosis.
Go beyond behaviours you are doing great in the sense that first comes the relationships. But quit positive reinforcement and consequences. Trauma informed practice is what u need. You know they diserve better❤
I work in CDC and the behaviors not because of the disability is why I am retiring sooner than I wanted to. I totally agree with every thing he said. Gen Ed. students are also arguing with the adults about every thing. He hit the nail on the head with no manners across the board.
My nephew has a chromosomal disorder that causes learning disability. Limited state funding for these programs needs to be going to support students like him, not for kids who act like monsters because their parents can’t do their job.
Special Ed kids are often lumped in with Emotionally Disturbed/behavioral kids and because of the behaviors no one learns. Staff has gotten hurt at my school(-seriously injured. It is crazy.
These catch all diagnoses that are used these days are ridiculous. This is a result of management and school boards not tracking students. Academic goals for the majority of students are unattainable without classroom behavior management and management has abandoned classroom behavior management. There solution is to get rid of students instead of tracking students an putting them in appropriate classes. Parents are also to blame for not accepting that their child may not excell. This is path is unsustainable for students and teachers. The guest is right that all students will eventually be nps students.
As someone who has taught in Nebraska for the last 22 years I can say that your pay is not bad. If you continue your education and factor in cost of living here then it is pretty solid IMHO.
Thank you, I’ve always had a problem with the policy’s of special education, my biggest problem being situations such as shortening assignments, if you have a weakness the policy is more leaned toward reducing the work in that area, this will hinder the student further, the policy needs to be aimed at increasing skill theough remediation or tutoring, this can become an issue related to funding. I agree that we are heading down a path of qualifying the majority of students as special ed. One policy I would like to see changed is mandatory upper level math and science for all students, this are specialized areas that the majority of students are not going to fit the mold, the result being increased discipline problems and a decrease in learning for the students who want that class, not to mention higher rates of teacher burnout. I’m a child of the 60’s, when I graduated they only required one math and one science, there was no school grading, teachers presented information and the student worked to learn what was being taught, it’s my belief that subjects should have a basic limit of what should be learned and the administration all the way to the top should be focused on actual learning with an expectation of basic critical thinking skills.
I'm 33, class of 2009. At my high school there was Goodrich which was the "bad kid school." If you got suspended 3 times, you went to Goodrich for a month. If you kept getting suspended, you got expelled and stayed at Goodrich. You could appeal over time to re-matriculate. A lot of kids just graduated from there.
20 years Special Education. I resigned and applied as a custodian for the same school district. Just a year in I make way more money and no longer have anxiety attacks. What a broken system we have.
Isn't that just ironic? I'm a 13 year teacher and on my third as a SPED teacher. I'm exhausted and burned out and I'm currently trying to exit my building. I work for a building and district that doesn't have any respect for us as professionals. I'm currently applying for positions and if a new start doesn't work, then I'm done. The system is broken.
I have been teaching as a special area teacher for 15 years and the Sped teachers last about 2-3 years before deciding to do something different. I know that they are trying but some of the kids are so out of control there is no way they can function in a regular classroom.
Sometimes we have to do what’s best for us.
I worked in an alternative school. It’s all about community and parenting.
@@optomix3988So now there is co-teaching in California. No real special ed anymore.
I was this troubled kid, I was thrown out a window and homeless at 13 and family trafficked. That is still not an excuse for the type of behavior we are seeing in school. I’m a teacher now and I have little to no empathy for a kjd throwing desks at me and destroying my room. Yes, the kids are traumatized, but that doesn't excuse their behaviour.
Thank you.
Agree completely! I can have empathy for students but stop feeling sorry for the kids. I have been throw a lot of trauma in my life too! I hate hearing trauma as an excuse for behaviors. Kids need boundaries and consequences to feel safe. Many children don't have these 2 things in their homes.
Really sorry that happened to you. I definitely have empathy for people who go through these things, and as a trouble child myself I agree that it's no reason to allow the behavior to be tolerated. However I think the emphasis on the kid's is just a way of society finding a scapegoat. Boundaries NEED to be set for the kids and just as importantly Parents(And tbh admin and school authorities who highkey encourage this behavior by giving it a pass while punishing well behaved students when they act out) need to be held accountable and educated on how to raise their children. These behaviors really are just symptoms of abuse. There needs to be a third space for children in these situations because many really would be better off on their own than in a poisonous home.
I agree and actually believe that our society’s permissiveness of this behavior does far more harm than it does help for these kids. It allows them to spiral ever downward without anyone holding them back. And they WILL eventually hit the bottom, likely in adulthood after they’ve seriously harmed themselves or others. Sometimes tough love is necessary to save people from an even more horrible fate.
Abuse is not an excuse for abuse. My grandfather abused me and he was abused by his father. All my siblings have agreed to end the abuse curse with us.
Kids in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s came from broken homes and abusive homes too. I was one of them. I was raised by a single mother, I went hungry, and came from an abusive family in the 70s and 80s. Me and my siblings wouldn’t dare be disrespectful at school. It is a lame excuse and the main reason I left the teaching profession.
Thank you for telling it like it is!
Yup, I was physically and mentally abused at home in various ways, and was consistently listed as one of the best behaved kids in class. To the point that a substitute left me ‘semi in charge’ which shouldn’t have happened in grade 4 or so. Made me keep track of kids ‘misbehaving’ while they were absent. It was not a good idea though, and my parents were upset when word reached them, and it sure didn’t help my popularity…
I think you probably still managed to learn emotional regulation where today I don’t think they learn that
This is a very good point. What about children who grew up during Jim Crow (like many in my family), they still managed to get good educations and didn't attack teachers. Trish, why do you think this is happening so much today?
@@littleeva Good point.
I am a teacher but I also was a foster child and in the juvenile justice system. It used to be that if you misbehaved the judge threatened you with the lock up and residential placement. If a teacher is attacked, they should call the police. A crime is a crime.
I’m curious, once they get into residential placement can they ever get adopted again?. Also, I’m pretty sure they stopped doing that because of the abuse happening in those residential placements.
OMG! He actually said it.”the kid been on his IPad since he was 4 years old & now he’s not interested in education.
Well it’s probably true 🤷🏼♀️
Yep! I have been teaching for over 15 years and these kids are addicted to the screens.
It's refreshing to hear the truth, especially when it's not being hidden or watered down!
For many special needs/nonverbal children, it’s technology “to the rescue!” When in reality, something like an iPad serves as nothing more than a security blanket and pacifier as opposed to a real means of assistance. And of course, who’d want to do any work after playing on an electronic device all day!
I agree like for a kid who has you know level 3 ASD or who is non-verbal? It's an iPad of the rescue but that doesn't help you know it just makes it worse. And that needs to change. I mean come on. No wonder They don't want work. Because all they've had to do is play an iPad their whole life. So does it surprise you that they don't want to work at all.
I was a foster kid - this is not an excuse. I was absolutely blessed that a teacher bluntly told me education was the way out. It changed my life.
But there isn't that hope now that 'education is a way out'. Most people in the U.S. work service jobs that don't require much education.
@@onceupon3805It’s not just about jobs. You also need critical thinking skills and writing and reading skills to navigate the world especially when so many companies try to take advantage of the average person.
@@Window4503 we should be learning critical thinking before we go to college. But the divided states of irony are not in the business of teaching critical thinking. In many respects, the opposite is true, even at college campuses (which, increasingly, are just money-making institutions). Writing and reading? Shouldn't you learn this in elementary school?
@@onceupon3805 edit the sentiment with "go into a trade" lol boom fixed.
Education aint the way out of shit anymore.
I did a 6 month stint as a 50% special day teacher on one time emergency authorization. Worst experience of my life bar none. The level of physical abuse I was subjected to and expected to be okay with as part of the job was wild. It would literally be a crime in any other situation.
I get the kids have a bad home life. Try pulling this nonsense in the grocery store when someone cuts you off with the shopping cart 🤷🏼♀️ it’s just not good pretending that this is okay in a school setting, because it will come into the real world soon
@@TheKnallkorperIn some ways, it already has! As a former teacher, I now work retail and some of my customers will talk over me when I am helping another customer who was there first, or if I am making an announcement over the PA system. Some customers will actually grab items out of my hands while I am scanning them if said customers decide they don’t want them after all, as opposed to simply telling me in a polite manner. Just like rudeness in kids of sorts. The apple never falls far from the tree!
I got smacked in the face a month ago. My eye was a bit swallen for about a week. Talk about abuse.
Right! It's absurd what they let kids get away with!
one of my friends in high school got slapped by an autistic student. the teacher had said “no sleeping” and my friend had his head down on his desk with a book in his lap that he was reading. the autistic student thought he was sleeping so he walked up behind him, and slapped him in the back of the head very hard while yelling, “NO SLEEPING!!”.
the student did not have any repercussions for doing this because he was special ed. its absurd. i get that they are special ed but if their parents and teachers are not willing to properly discipline the kids it will be very hard for them to succeed in life. special ed programs do not teach special needs students how to deal with the real world, all it does (in my experience) is treat these people like complete toddlers and make excuses for their actions rather than trying to teach them how to actually be a part of society. it feels like a program that ostracizes kid’s and robs them of their potential through the complete lack of accountability they put on them. accountability is what helps people grow, it is a key element to life that should not be neglected by anyone regardless of mental ability.
If we had such situations met with the need to properly apologize for it - as a starting point - it would be some help.
Hey guys, I don’t know what happened to your friend, but I want to let you know that some behaviors are based in biology and intractable , life long. They cannot be altered by medication or behavior therapy. This could be due to certain abnormal brain electricity or certain enzyme processes that don’t work right. In fact, we have a huge problem societally that these individuals, their caregivers, and their teachers are not getting adequate services including in educational settings. When institutions were closed nothing was put in place for this population. Please be aware. Thank you.
@@StephenieBaileyDEAFMETAL What is your point? This isn't problem? This is all good? I think that the OP here is making a good point, not giving these kids consequences for their actions doesn't help them in the long run. I had a friend whose wrist was broken by a special ed kid. No consequences for him. No sympathy for her. In the real world, he might wind up dead because he didn't learn to behave.
Some kiddos with special needs are capable of learning those things, it does take them longer to learn than the average kiddo and requires reinforcement through a lot of interacting with others. I'm on the fence about kids that aren't able yet to understand how those interactions are supposed to work on a mostly consistent basis. These kids need relationships with others and especially their peers. However, I don't think other kids in the classroom should have to pay for it physically. I think it would go a long way for the other students in the class to know more about a special needs child's needs, things to avoid doing, ways to interact safely, ways to engage with their fellow student that won't scare the special needs child, ways to be helpful for that child. As a substitute, some of the classrooms I observed the whole class had really gotten to know the child and were very supportive, understanding, and accommodating. Most classrooms, that wasn't the case. The students knew the behavioral tendencies of the child somewhat, but the child seemed to be separate from the class despite being in the classroom. I don't know if there is concern about HIPPA laws being broken by revealing information on the child's needs, behaviors, etc maybe?
Some special needs children are unfortunately incapable of ever learning the social rules and norms. They have little if any cognitive capacity to even begin to understand those things. I have a 2nd cousin with that situation. She has no comprehension of her strength or even decent motor control. In my opinion those are kids that should not be put in standard classrooms without a dedicated para if they have a tendency to hit, bite, kick, etc. Other kids should not have to be harmed in the name of integration.
Im sorry that happened to your friend. I feel deep sympathy for anyone injured in this way. I myself have suffered life-risking injuries at my own (now adult) daughter’s hands. I do know peoples lives are ending all across the US, wherein behavior crisis are called into law enforcement. I am an advocate and a mother/caregiver, and I just want to again, point out, that my point is that certain types of disorders cause intractable behaviors and it is true, that children and adults with intellectual disabilities, severe forms of autism, and related behaviors need to be re-evaluated for safety services in the community because “discipline “ doesn’t factor into it. Thats like putting someone in time out (or handcuffs) for having a seizure. Im kind of struggling to articulate myself, but I hope you get an idea of what I want to say to the world with urgency, regarding this topic. My point, as an advocate, was that environmental safety and accessibility accommodations need to be reconsidered for this population, all across the board, to protect teachers, classmates, nurses, and the individual, caregivers, siblings. Thank you.
I’m a SPED teacher, been teaching SPED for 2 years; and some kids do not need to be there. Half of my students are ESL, I’m in elementary so those kids learn English in like 6 months! The other half are just “bad" kids the general education teacher doesn’t want to deal with. It’s sad because the students who genuinely need SPED get left behind because SPED is becoming a regular class.
No, I agree, I mean there's some kids who need sped and some kids who don't need it. The point is that you know it should not be a regular class on a daily basis. It should be reserved for those kids who actually need it.
40 years in Spec. Ed. this coming Sept.
I can’t 100% blame the classroom teacher for not wanting to deal with extreme behaviors. It seems like a trend these days that admin are becoming more and more permissive with the students, and the classroom teacher no longer feels supported. The Gen Ed teacher may not even agree with the possible diagnosis, but suddenly it’s out of their hands. If they receive a diagnosis, it becomes even harder for admin to do anything about the behavior because it looks bad for the school if the teachers didn’t first try everything in the book and spend entirely too much planning and instructional time trying to get the kid to comply. However, I also feel really bad for special education teachers. I really think this is what happens when you remove alternative school as an option.
Are ESL and SPED not seperate classes??
@@gustavus0013 in some parishes/counties (I’m in Louisiana) they don’t have enough funds to make esl a class, additionally in rural Louisiana very few people speak Spanish or could be esl teachers. When there’s no esl they just throw them in sped and they don’t need to be there
When I was a kid we had a special Ed class for these students with smaller classes and more teachers. To include them they joined us in certain classes, and it worked. In the argument of inclusion, they went too far, and now, one teacher with no special Ed training has 30 students and 5 could have varying degrees of special needs and the one teacher can't do it.
I speak as both a related services provider in special education and the parent of a child with multiple special needs who currently attends what we call and "out of district" placement.
Plenty of students come into special education with behaviors as a result of their disorders. So, a child with cognitive impairment or autism or ADHD may ALSO have behaviors. So, these students are entitled to a free, appropriate, public education (FAPE) just like a student that doesn't have challenging learning styles/behavioral issues. That's the whole ethos of the right in America to have your child educated.
The problem is that we have the legal obligation to provide FAPE and individual states don't choose to spend or have the ability to spend enough money to provide these students with the APPROPRIATE education. Special education teachers do NOT have training to deal with aggressive and oppositional students and they don't have the resources to keep those students a. engaged in learning, IF possible and b. keeping the rest of the class engaged and learning.
I have worked with special needs 20 and 21 year old students (students with IEPs have the right to go to school until 21) who have bitten me (once a student who was seated while I was standing bit me on top of my breasts), punched me, banged my head into a concrete wall, pulled me by my hair, dug into my skin with fingernails that have dirt and feces under them. We have restraint trained teams (one team for 500 kids in a school) who can be code called. You'd be surprised by how much physical damage that can be done to you by an enraged person who has the mental maturity and ability of a 5 year old but the strength of a 20 year old with raging hormones.
NOBODY knows how to be successful with these kids. Not the teachers, not the parents, certainly not the admin and of all of them, LEAST of all "the experts".
In terms of positivity, the hard truth is that positive ONLY interventions don't work. Punishment does not work. A combination of carefully applied positive reinforcement and rational consequences has the best success rate ,but it's nowhere near 100%. Admin, pressured by "experts" who either have never been in the classroom or haven't been in the classroom for YEARS and are paid, ad paid well, to come up with "interventions" that are published in a book that no one has time to read and are poorly researched.
As a society, we have a crisis of youth mental health, a lack of effective interventions, a lack of effective parenting, a lack of money/funding. And it's FAR FAR easier to blame teachers or parents than it is to fix these societal problems.
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Big yup.
I am curious your opinion on least restrictive environment?
As a general education teacher, I would have many students with IEPs. I was teaching 5th grade material to students who had no idea what was going on. Then the interventionist comes to het the kid for their pull out services and when they get back, they have no idea what going on. Then testing time, omg 😳 i dreaded testing, because I taught English Language Arts, and I had kids who were just learning to read 3 letter words… i couldn’t read the passage to them, only the question and answers…. All of us would be in tears.
So again, what is your opinion of least restrictive environment?
RELATED SERVICES REPRESENT! SLP here.
I’ve gotten some of the abuse, got grabbed in the crotch and breasts, and hit a few times, but not nearly to the level you have. WHY do the case managers never tell us related services which kids BITE?
I give this person a lot of credit for what he does on a daily basis. This guy is speaking the truth. People have no idea how difficult this job is. Teachers who have these jobs should be paid $100K for a 10 month year (starting) plus full benefits, no deductibles on health insurance. It is so hard to watch society decline while you try to do your best for these kids. I also think there should be a time limit on being a front line teacher like this and then you're rotated out for a break. I know all these suggestions are completely unrealistic but I just wanted to make this comment anyway. I was an occupational therapist for 20 years and I have the utmost respect for teachers who work in these violent special needs schools.
I agree with you; particularly what I think is a very excellent idea is the job needs to allow for a rotation of duty, not unlike the rotation , or “tour of duty” in the military . I made a note of when Trish’s guest commented on how even though he cares deeply about the students, or “his kids”, he also said he had like “ emotional callouses” from the accumulated several years he’s been in service at this school. I think something like a sabbatical or a “tour of duty” model that includes time off to refill the emotional and physical stamina tanks would help keep more teachers in schools, particularly ones like in this episode.
@@gailgrigg Exactly. It is a "tour of duty". It becomes a personal war zone when these kids act out and you can't retaliate. At least in a military was zone, you are allowed to defend yourself.
Teachers here in NYC can max out well over 100k.
@@URestURust It takes a lot of years...at least 10 or more from my understanding. Send me the step schedule from the DOE.
@@URestURust"max" is different from "starting out"
Also, NYC is expensive to live in.
I’m only 5 minutes in - my child had an IEP for 6 years before I removed him from public school to homeschool him myself. The IEP was essentially the schools free pass to advance my child to the next grade, with passing grades, all while learning NOTHING!
Teachers are not allowed to fail any student with an IEP. I gave a student a failing grade, because he failed the work. The parent reached out to me and I asked admin to help me with my response. I was told to change the grade and tell the parent I had made a mistake when inputting grades.
Mind you I was a general education teacher in 5th grade, I was only required to give one grade and the rest of the grades came from the interventionists.
this is my step kid's reality. lol yep...
I'm a sped teacher who retired early. I couldn't take it after 5 years. Administration kept making too many decisions based on sped. As the sped teacher I was the face of those bad decisions that I didn't even make.
This!!! I had to look like I was case managing in reality I was being case managed.
I have a severe learning disability and was in special education for 5 years, and it was a total disaster. I never had any behavioural problems aside from anxiety (if that counts) but I was put in a class where more than half of the students were violent. There wasn’t a day that went by where the teacher or teachers aide wouldn’t get a black eye or bloody nose. The class was meant for students with learning disabilities but instead a large number of the students had severe behavioural disorders and completely disrupted the learning process. There were also a few students in my class who had a mild intellectual disability and they just sat there the entire time not knowing what to do or understanding what was going on. In high school, I was fully mainstreamed and couldn’t cope because I was never prepared to work in a regular classroom environment so I ended up failing my classes and started having panic attacks everyday. In grade 11, my parents moved me to a private school that was only for students with learning disabilities and not behavioural issues and that is where I was finally able to thrive thankfully. Something in special education needs to change.
I'm glad you were able to thrive. I hate how they throw the violent kids get in with the other children. It unfairly makes the other kids a target. I've witnessed some of our kids just go up and hit a child in the head. We have so many with behavior issues, we can barely get to academics.
Basically special ed teachers deserve respect and support and better pay.
All teachers do...
So do the paraeducators.
Agreed.
Yes, they do so much extra work!
special ed teachers need better training and backround checks like how the police need them
My niece was a special Ed teacher in one those schools. It was the only teaching job she could get with her Arts Therapy degree. She was brutally attacked by some of these students. Thank God she got out of that before she got hurt.
She's now married to an officer in the Army and a stay at home mother.
Question, when you say arts therapy, are you saying she ended up getting a Master’s Degree in counseling, or she just got the certification for administering arts therapy? The reason why I ask is due to how my state states that you cannot provide counseling services unless you have licensure as a counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. And if their state is similar in anyway, it would be that the arts therapy degree would qualify more as a certification for continuing education and expansion of practice than as a marketable trait on its own. Trust me when I say I know it sucks, because I spent 2 years with my BA in psychology and unable to get a single decent job outside of working in retail…
I always tested in the 98th percentile. I was a nerdy kid, I was in chess club, I had a college reading level by 2nd grade. I never disturbed a class, I did my homework for the weekend of Friday night. In 4th grade I raised my hand politely and asked why Egypt was taught separately from Africa in history class. No follow-up questions, no intention, just a sincere question. They called my mother and told her I had ODD and tried to put me on pills. My mother, who was an arts educator, walked out. This was 1999. Kids weren't cursing in class, we had no phones, we weren't allowed to do homework on computers because not everyone had them at home. Teachers were part of the problem. The diagnosis track for children that you didn't want to teach to out of your class or made them compliant. If my mother didn't advocate for me, I could have had my education sabotaged by one lazy teacher.
This teacher's self reflection and emotional intelligence is off the charts. Great man.
As a specialist teacher (15years) in a public school. I have a love hate relationship with Special Ed. The emotionally disturbed kids are on the rise. It is a big issue! I don't have a clue on what is causing the rise, but the only thing that has changed is smart phones and tablets. I really feel there is some sort of connection. 🤷♂
Technology and parental negligence are the two main reasons, and the two main differences between children of the 20th Century and children of the 21st Century.
@@munimathbypeterfelton6251Yup.
Parenting, the food, technology & environment even the air we breathe. The world as we knew it just doesn't exist anymore. I grew up in the 90s.
iphones, IMO.
"Gentle" parenting basically and that whole philosophy that kids should never be held accountable for anything
I'm one of the teachers that ended up with an actual case of PTSD from 27 years of dealing with them every day. The worst year was my 7th, there were many kids who were utterly unpredicatable and violent, I broke up several fights in the classroom. That year I began to get insomnia worrying about dealing with them the next day, and then suddenly it turned into full blown panic attacks. I couldn't simply stop working and went several months panicking constantly, and finally started taking medication. But the damage was done, and to this day suffer with anxiety.
This guy sounds like a genuine good person, these kids are lucky to have him.
The summer before I started high school, my family moved from Pennsylvania to rural Florida. The public school system in that county was abysmal with high rates of teen pregnancy and low graduation rates, so my parents didn’t want to send my brother and me there. They found a brand new “Christian” school across town that was just getting ready to open for its inaugural year. And they assumed that because it was a “Christian” school, they’d be sparing us from all of the evils of public school. Boy, were they wrong. It was basically an alternative school. My brother and I were among the very few students who were actually there voluntarily from families that were paying tuition. 95% of the students had been expelled from public school, and that’s how this school guaranteed they’d be able to pay their bills- state subsidies. All year, I was bullied by other girls and sexually harassed by linebacker sized 19 year old 10th graders who were too stupid to graduate. Once, this very violent autistic boy (level II support needs but zero emotional control) shoved me in the janitors closet and locked me in. He didn’t get in trouble. Instead, when a teacher let me out and I called the boy a name, I received demerits for “having an un-Christlike attitude.” Another time, my class had an end of year trip to a nearby key. They chartered two boats to take us for the day for swimming, BBQ, volleyball, etc. On the boat ride back, a girl who had relentlessly bullied me all year and never been held accountable dumped a bucket of slimy, bloody, reeking chum all over my lap. She was finally expelled the last week of school after 9 months of tormenting me. Lots of kids used drugs, slept around, beat other kids up, cussed out teachers, broke desks and computers when they were angry. They were horrible human beings. It felt like being sent to prison every day. Anyone who teaches in a setting like that deserves twice what public school teachers earn, IMO. Last year, a friend of mine who taught at an alternative HS quit after a male student kicked her in her pregnant stomach. The school told her she needed to me made of sterner stuff and not let the kids get to her. She said, “He literally tried to kill my baby,” and the principal told her she was being dramatic and that the kid was just having a hard time. So, she quit and will never go back to teaching. It’s awful.
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Thank you for your comment. I’m so sorry what you went through and pray you are blessed abundantly 🙏
You couldn’t pay me to work at this school and deal with this violence. No ma’am!!!! I did not bust my butt in graduate school to be a babysitter for delinquents.
They have it worse than a corrections officer at these schools.
Agreed, you couldn't even make pay me to volunteer in one of those places.
I agree. Too much violence.
You're so right, because all it is, is babysitting. Some kids have the ability to learn, but we can't work with them, because we're too busy trying to protect them and ourselves from the violent and disruptive kids.
Basically sounds like parents thinking their kids are just special so they deserve a special education. Our their kids aren't raised with basic manners. Teachers in public schools need to be allowed to have control of their classroom. When a kid is a brat, parents try to automatically blame the teacher instead of teaching their child discipline.
My heart goes out to the general ed students that are expected to put up with this behavior. Special Ed or not no student should be above the needs of others. Every single child has special needs. A piece of paper and/or diagnosis should not allow the needs of one student to hold hostage the needs of all the others.
I was a substitute for three years until Covid. It had been a long time since I had been in a classroom and hadn't had many years under my belt to begin with.
You could see it written all over the other kids' faces "why did the rules only apply to some kids and not others?" I subbed a 1st grade class. This class had about 5 kids with known behavioral issues. It was a last minute sick call out, so there were no plans, except another teacher pulled some worksheets out for them and wrote me a schedule of when lunch, recess, and PE/music was. The classroom was located away from the other 1st grade classrooms. Next door was a Sped classroom where they were testing for kids to be able to move on to 5th grade. One of my students refused to sit down and do any work. He kept walking about the classroom shoving and hitting other kids, distracting classmates, etc. would not cooperate. After trying to redirect many times, I finally called the office because the classroom next door had complained we were too loud. Another teacher came in and spoke with the classroom. A few hours later. Same stuff, but now the kids were visibly bothered and concerned that he was continuing to hit, etc. I called the office, principal came down and spoke with the student. Things were a bit better for about an hour. An hour and a half before the end of school, I had had enough of this kid refusing to cooperate and hitting his classmates. My son was a student at this same school in a different grade. Principal came down again and spoke with me in a manner that the kids would not hear and basically told me the boy would not be leaving the classroom and I had to just do what I could to keep things together until the end of the day. I had previously been amazed at this principal and her knowledge of every student. That day I lost my respect for her as a principal. As a parent of a child in that school I was angry. And it was now apparent to me that my child's well being was not necessarily as well as what they sold parents on.
Thank you.
@@dawnmitchell11 Good grief 🤦🏾♀️.
In my state these schools are called “special purpose private schools”, where the most violent students are sent. These schools charge up to $200,000 a school year for students to attend (not exaggerating). My school district only sends kids that are extremely violent or have sexual behavior who have IEPs.
I work in an EBD room and it feels like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. They do what he says, bicker and verbally fight each other, disregard any adult that isn't their buddy and they don't understand their actions have consequences.
30:00 in, there is no repercussion for behavior. The principal does nothing for a kid that has been there and knows she can do nothing.
Nothing happens and if it does, they return to school and continue to resort in violence.
Love the empathy from this man, who takes a lot of abuse, and still returns love
I was diagnosed with ODD in the 90s. It's not new. My IEP was the only reason I was able to graduate HS and go to college. Teaches have never been able to diagnose kids. But they think so often that they don't even need an assessment or evaluation of any type to determine that a child doesn't have a disability. It's a disservice to children. Disabilities are on the rise. The funding needs to be on the rise too. Not cutting services to kids who need it.
tons of respect for the teachers who deal with these kids
Much respect. Kids shouldn't be like that.
It is emotionally and physically exhausting
This is a great interview. The heart in this teacher is big. He obviously cares deeply. My child is autistic and epileptic. We did not know this at the beginning.... He was the child that took off his clothes, screamed at teachers, destroyed the classroom.... our teachers fought for him. They recognized that it was not a discipline situation and that he needed the right environment. We lucked out. I cannot say enough good things about the guidance teachers around us have given us. Not so much for the medical situation. Don't even get me started on social security or disability., or any of that kind of stuff, even though he is eighteen at this point.
I’ve been a middle school teacher in California for 22 years and the last 8 have been exactly what you described as a regular day at your school. I’m at a public school and the system is definitely broken. I have over 15 ODD and OHI students with IEPs or 504s which make up about half of the sped students I have in my classes. We do not have alternative schools in our district and yes, our classes have terrible behavior. We also have about 36 students in our classes as well. We are exhausted
It's 36 students a large number. Does your state have unions?
Teachers working with students in SPED have been physically beaten up to the point of being hospitalized and hiring lawyers. It's not a safe environment for anyone.
It's horrible. Teachers shouldn't be in a position where they are violently attacked by students. Some schools don't have resource officers to restrain violent students and the responsibility is placed on school staff. It's ridiculous.
It absolutely isn't. My teacher is home right now with a concussion and black eye. We told them for a long time that we didn't feel safe.
@MJ-vt4nb oh, I believe it and not surprised
There used to be reform schools. Im thinking we need to go back to those. My daughter almost had her ankle broken by one of these out of control kids. The principle deliberatly sat this kid next to her so he could learn good behavior. I put a stop to that. The truth is, a bad home and trauma is no excuse for these behaviors. Another truth is, people tend to drop to the lowest common denominator. If you keep rewarding these bad behaviors others will immitate it. Discipline is whats needed. If the kid is way to out of control, they need to be sent to a reform school type of environment. Kids in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s rarely behaved like this and i guarantee they went through the same kinds of trauma and crap homes with a lot less help than today. So explain that? Something else is going on here and imho it has to do with creating new diagnosis, excusing behaviors due to various adverse situations and lack of any real discipline or consequences. True special ed kids are suffering and losing resourses because of this. Bad behaviors are not special ed.
Exactly. Kids were being abused left right and centre in the 80s and noone did anything yet I never in 12years saw a kid say fuck you to a teacher, throw a chair or just refuse to do any work at all.
It's true what he said about age. It doesn't occur to them. I have many traumatized students with major behaviour and emotional issues. I play therapist and cop every day. Teaching is a luxury tbh.
The only thing that matters in this specific educational setting is CONNECTION. That is what I bring to the table when everything else fails.
Regarding empathy and compassion, I have a limit. If I have a student with whom I have exhausted all of my resources to no avail and they still don't care or have even an inkling o respect for me, their peers, themselves, then... I withdraw my energy from them and reinvest in myself and the others who DO care.
Yup.
Really appreciate this interview. I think we medicalize behavior too much. And we employ the word "trauma" to the detriment of young people. We give too many excuses in the name of "trauma" or "being a kid." We have created a generation of the most selfish individuals on planet earth who have no respect for authority or fear of actual consequences (because there are none). We are witnessing the fruits of our psychological society and dealing with problems that would never have been tolerated 75 years ago (regardless of how tough the home life might have been). We aggrandize things that would have been considered petty back then. I can go into detail about the history of kids on the streets during the Great Depression, who sat in classrooms of 50 students and yet had to be respectful because there were actual consequences and nobody placated or excused rotten behavior. This is all fundamentally based on a view of human nature; the education system is based upon theories of human nature that have proven to be false as evidenced by the degeneracy of the school system and its utter confusion over the most basic things people would never have scratched their heads about 75 years ago. Likewise, parenting (by and large) replaces discipline, accountability, and consistency with drugging kids and making endless excuses for the most egregiously rotten behavior. Throwing around pseudo-science labels like "ADHD" and "ODD" makes people (administrators, educators, social workers, counselors, psychologists) feel cutting edge. Teachers are smart but they have been trained to trust in a system utterly deluded. But if they would take the time (as many students of science have done) they would no longer be fooled by this big charade. Unfortunately, it is much harder to swallow the pill of accountability and much easier to lay blame on some "disorder." Pain and trauma are real, but what is happening in society and the school system is so much bigger than that. The sciences of the mind with their view of human nature have inculcated the false ideas that parents or guardians and the school system continue to stand upon---all while society gets worse and worse. And we continue to look to the same system for the answers.... absolute delusion.
Preach!!!
I don't disagree with anything you said other than ADHD being pseudo-science. That is a real neurological difference. ODD on the other hand.... not sure about that one.
🎯
I was a substitute teacher for years before I became a full-time teacher. I had a student in one class who wouldn't even try to answer questions correctly. I was told later that he had ODD. I spoke with a special Ed teacher about it, and I asked her, "What's the difference between a child being called lazy and a child being diagnosed with ODD?" And she told me, "Money. Pharmaceutical companies are making a gazillion off of doping up these kids."
@@rtj630 Thanks for your response. Yes, I definitely disagree with the statement that "ADHD" is neurological (as opposed to behavioral/metaphysical). Why? I don't know how familiar you are with pathology and pathophysiology. If treating a diabetic, for example, we know the etiology of the condition. In dissecting human cadavers, for example, we can see the neurodegeneration in Parkinson's Disease (a real neurological condition). This is not the case with so-called "ADHD." Even if someone has an infectious disease we can withdraw blood and see the immune response. In contrast, we cannot withdraw blood and draw a conclusion about "ADHD." It is in fact based on pseudo-science. Articles published on it are full of so much psychological mumbo-jumbo conjecture (that real pathologists don't have to engage in to pretend to be science-based) Why? Because they can actually work in the physical and examine histological tissue. There are so many myths about the brain that people are simply unaware of. The field of psychology has to borrow medical terminology to sound more legitimate (e.g., "therapy," "treatment," "illness," etc.). If psychology was properly understood as metaphysics or philosophy (as it always was until the 20th century) it wouldn't deserve the label "pseudoscience." However, because it is purported to be more than it is, it warrants this pejorative label. Today poor behavior is excused in the name of pseudo-illness labels like "ADHD" and "ODD." This has essentially trained parents and children away from accountability and self-control, leading them to believe they can’t help it because of a so-called chemical imbalances in the brain (although they have quietly tried to move away from this embarrassing hypothesis, which has sadly been utilized to drug millions of precious children). Sadly, people don't even know about this pathological mythology (a smokescreen of psychology as it pretended to be a hard science) even though so many people stand upon it as if they were discussing the law of gravity or actual physical and/or medical science (when in fact they are not). Thanks for reading this and sorry for being long-winded.
@@ViewPoint1517as an individual with a Dx late in middle age for ADHD, I strongly disagree with your claim that ADHD is a “pseudoscience “. I will refer you to Dr Russell Barkley and Dr Ned Hallowell (Barkley has a YT channel now that he is semi-retired from academia). your claims that adhd isn’t real are based on…your personal biases? Please for the sake of anyone in your life who may have adhd, get educated on it before you make further erroneous claims that it is a made up fantasy. You only appear ignorant at best and cruel at worst with your claims
Wow, this guy is a rock star. He gets it, and he’s able to keep his head above the water and show up everyday for these kids. God bless this man.
I have a psych degree, and one of my college professors jokingly called Oppositional Defiant Disorder “Bart Simpson Disorder.” They’re usually smart kids, but prone to misbehavior. It’s a pattern of behavior, but it isn’t a disability.
Your guest has a special talent to be where he is. I wish him a blessed life.
If we are so worried about violence and trauma, why are we allowing teachers and students to be abused in the classroom? And then telling them it's their fault we need to be more understanding.This is how we create violent abusers with an excuse
I ask myself the same question!
Yep and the girls are learning from the very beginning that it's okay for men and boys to bash women.
You said it!! I agree. I am one of the teachers that is physically attacked EVERY DAY. Nobody cares!
@@lorihill9129 I am so sorry this is what we've come to. I do care.
Kind of feel like this is what that school is made for...but in my experience, these regular public schools are trying to bring these methods into the regular classroom, while also holding us to a higher standard of student growth and achievements. It's so much harder to connect with those kids when your career depends on them actually doing the work, actually learning the materials. In a place like that, you can lower the standards to focus on connection. You can bribe them just to not fight with candy.
I feel like I've been in that same school, having those same conversations...but it's different when you have a deadline for them actually picking up a pencil and do an assignment on grade level.
Im a homeschool mom and these kinds of stories make me NEVER want to put my son back in public school. He's autistic and he used to be in one of those special education classes. He was CONSTNATLY coming home with stories about the violent kids in his class and how hard it was for him to focus, and it would overstimulate him and make him SUPER overwhelmed and anxious about school. It was terrible. But he couldn't function in a gen ed setting! It's so crazy what everyone involved in those situations has to endure, the troubled student, their peers, the teachers...etc.
I can tell you what it's like to be in special education, well at least back in the day (late 70s to the end of 1989). Back then when you got labeled "retarded" like my biological mother did just to get rid of me and have me placed into foster care, I was placed into special education. I didn't belong there at all. It was to the point where I was "stealing" educational material starting from the age of 8 years old through 12 years of age where I felt that I was actually learning something. Special education back in the day was merely just a babysitting program, where you hardly learn anything. All one had to do was be occupied and behave. I had to fight tooth and nail to get removed from that program and it literally took me to the 11th grade to accomplish that mission. When I "graduated" high school, I thought to myself to not accept that I had graduated. When I went to college was when I started to claim those accomplishments.
I'm so sorry you had such terrible experiences in school! 🥺💔🙏🏽
@@TeacherTherapy, at least I had the drive and discipline to not only educate myself, but to get myself removed from that special ed program in which I never should have been placed into. I really feel bad for these kids in the future with nearly zero knowledge, discipline and structure. This world is about to be doomed for sure.
I’m sorry you went through this & am so glad you fought for yourself when nobody else was! God bless you 🙏
I came from a single-family home and I am a special education teacher. My kids came from a single-family home and my kids had never been disrespectful. We have never been disrespectful because our mother did not play. We never disrespected the teacher. They put too much on a teacher and they expect us to do and be everything to these kids and we just can’t there’s no more teaching in the classroom. They want us to take care of behavior and that’s not our job. Your kids should behave before they come to school. We shouldn’t be running around here making behavior goals. We are teachers, we’re not their parents and they need to start holding these parents accountable or if kids are that destructive, they can’t come to school until they get some discipline and that’s how we should be.
I worked with special needs and behavioral issues in Ontario Canada. I can relate to your guest's experience and approach. I found that I became incredible at reading people's behavior because I had to analyze children's behavior. Finding the balance between "human" and educator is tricky. Emotionally perserve the self while dealing with children from very unfortunate circumstances is also important
I’m wondering if a portion of the issues with kids is due to poor nutrition. When this teacher mentioned giving students snacks, it gave me that idea. All of the nasty stuff that’s in our foods, especially what most people think of as snack foods, can impact mood and behavior. In the past few months, I had to cut out a lot of that stuff from my diet and I’ve noticed differences in my mood and emotional health as well. I’m not saying it’s the entire solution, but sometimes a small tweak can lead to bigger changes.
I hear you there. Topped off by the fact that many kids come to school without eating any breakfast and/or are sleep deprived every morning.
@@munimathbypeterfelton6251 sleep is definitely a huge factor. I’m not too sure about not eating breakfast. Breakfast foods such as cereal, toast, juice, etc are really unhealthy. Skipping breakfast altogether never bothered me, except maybe having an apple, even as a kid. Also, if kids eat healthier, they will sleep better as well. With the changes in my diet, I sleep better overall even though they amount has lessened. I know a lot of exerts say teenagers need to wake up later and start their day later. That’s not something I ever heard my parents or their siblings talk about. They just got up like everyone else.
Are you proposing schools actually start spending more than a dime on the lunches they provide for their students? Yeah, right.
@@Flippylover_69I actually don’t trust public institutions to do anything that is actually good for anyone. Our government subsidizes foods that are making the population sick. I do believe in individual responsibility to not buy into the crap. Real change happens one person at a time. With everything that’s happening in our society, I propose helping people wake up. Let’s help parents have the tools to get lids to eat an egg and sausage with some fresh fruit over sugary cereal, fruit snacks, or pop tarts. I don’t have kids, but if I can have them, I’ll be avoiding that stuff like crazy. They’ll be on a low carb, high protein and high fats diet. Definitely no soda allowed in or out of the house. If you train kids well at home, school will be easier.
Didn’t Michelle Obama implement the healthy meals at school?
I know lots of children who get free breakfast and lunch in school.
I do agree that diet and nutrition is a factor. That is why it was addressed by those in politics. The problem is that a school cannot become the be all, end all of every problem.
My school just stuck us (special needs kids) in a different room away from the other kids and mostly just ignored us.
Trish, you are great! I am so happy and relieved that you are doing this. I work in an overwhelmed district, and kids are just becoming diluted in this toxic solution that has been concocted for American education. Would love to interview one day but actively teaching and would of course want to prep for exactly what I want to talk about…..there are so many things. But watching this video…it all rings truth.
Really love that you continue to reach out and hear perspectives from professionals in the field. I'm passionate about education but dropped out of the major, largely because of all the warning signs that flashed every time I researched modern standards. It's disheartening for sure, but discussions like this move the dialogue forward.
omg Trish you are the best. you are tackling topics that a lot of teachers are aware of but no one dares to talk about. you are the best. greetings from Greece! (similar problems exist everywhere ! )!
Yes! Not talking, especially honestly and bluntly, is making things worse! These kids are screaming for structure and discipline (not as in punishment, but a set of rules and goals with accountable follow through) and consistency in policy. Both from school and more importantly from home.
As someone who had severe psychosis growing up and was occasionally very VERY disruptive to say the least at school.
Mental illness and/or trauma is no excuse for violent and disruptive behavior at class. It’s no excuse for physically destroying property and harming and endangering teachers and students.
It explains the behavior but doesn’t excuse it.
Students like that need specialized schools and care so they don’t themselves or others
Our district has a school for these behaviorally challenged sped students. There are much lower ratios of student/teacher. The push to move a student into an IEP is not only medicalized and psychologized but it's financial as well. Districts get higher FTE/QBE for these kids. Districts also take sped $ and don't use that money directly FOR those students. All these labels and acronyms bring in big bucks.. we need mental health professionals working along side the sped teachers.. this needs to happen NOW. Btw the med cart was always the focal point at the district alternative school. It's like a mental health facility/jail/school all rolled into one.
I am so glad young women are deciding not to have kids until they feel ready and WANT to. So proud to see that trend. Imagine a world with LESS unwanted children in it. Sounds wonderful.
I am so deeply sorry this is the state of public education now. The adults in my time were able to nail down the safety. Becoming a prison guard sounds like a safer career choice than teacher.
Exactly, 👍🏼 My niece is a great student but learns at a slower rate! No behavior problems!
🎉🎉🎉
I was like that,and was stuck in a classroom with bad kids
This is the flip side. The alternative schooling for extreme behaviourally challenged and a place for those with learning difficulties shouldn’t be under the same roof.
That’s going to affect the vulnerable children’s behaviour and outlook in life.
I work one-on-one with children with autism as a behavior therapist. My first job in the field we made $20 an hour, and one of my coworkers was a former special ed teacher. In that role she had made $17 an hour and had to manage 20 special ed students by herself. She found being a behavior tech infinitely easier (though it’s still a hard job, don’t get me wrong) and it paid better! That’s crazy to me.
My question is WHY are there so many? Growing up, there was maybe 1 in a class. What is going on with our society? Parents, y'all need to answer up! There have always been broken children, society has changed, parenting has changed.
The culture is falling apart.
No structure at home, no clear ENFORCED guidelines at school, kids relying on their own judgement about how to behave, lost, angry confused and hostile.
Are you a successful parent?
@@sharinaross1865 Actually, I am. My son is off to a very top tier college in Texas, graduated top 3% of his class and is well mannered, emotionally stable, hard working young man. Thanks!
@@txspacemom765 well that's good. I wasn't expecting a response. Thanks for sharing your accomplishments.
I also think that when some children are diagnosed and they are made aware of their diagnosis, that can make them "play up" to those traits. Almost like they're stuck "in a box" and they "can't" be better than those traits or learn to cope and live with their prognosis.
I've definitely seen this! Unfortunately, various disorders are also glamorized on TikTok and social media, so some kids are actively trying to emulate symptoms, especially related to Autism. 😢
I taught non public school the first three years of my career and I loved it. We had a pretty good staff who worked hard to support students and one another. I knew what I was getting into when I took the job. Those kids had absolutely horrific histories and for most of the students I worked with, I was able to establish rapport and trust. Yes I did get assaulted a few times and it was traumatic but mostly because I thought I was getting through to a kid. The majority of the behaviors are due to the nature of the disability coupled with significant trauma.
I teach in a school like this. My biggest problem is the responsibility to protect students from each other. If one student starts hitting another, I'm responsible for breaking up the fight; in doing so, I've been physically hurt. Every time I show up for work, I feel like I'm putting myself in danger. I don't intend to continue teaching in the school.
That’s because you are. As a former teacher who taught in a similar school I strongly recommend you quit. As soon as you are too injured to defend yourself they will fire you and then you will face unemployment, a major injury, and no insurance. Or they won’t fire you. Instead they will demand you return to class and then sue you for breach of contract if you don’t even if you have a badly broken arm or leg.
I’ve seen both happen to teachers at least a dozen times over the years. And the students who cause the injury are usually emboldened and back in class before the teacher is out of the hospital. Don’t sacrifice your lifelong health for the industrialized world’s worst education system that graduates illiterate adults with B averages.
@@AngryPug76totally agree with you. Your Job duties do not include getting beat up by students.
Also, those districts that demand a fine from teachers who quit during the contract period, I’d love to see those wind through the judicial system to see if that is actually legal for districts to put those early quit fines into teachers’s contracts? I’m not telling any teachers here to voluntarily be the legal test case. But I suspect that if the fines were disputed in court and made there way up to higher courts, those clauses in teacher contracts for fining teachers who resign during an employment contract would not be enforceable
@@gailgrigg It’s been legally tested multiple times and upheld. Some states even require on top of the fine that the quitting teacher pay the full employer end of the long term substitutes salary. Teaching today has the legal protections of a 1800s era coal miner.
Is this a special education public school ? Asking because I currently teach public school and trying to get out ... Have an interview for special needs public school .. but if it's this crazy, I'm not taking the job.
@@truth.is.here23 Yes. A special education public school. I asked around there and found that every staff member who has been there more than a year or two has been physically hurt at least once. Not long ago a student threw a rock at a fellow student and missed; the rock hit a teacher on the head who then had to be hospitalized.
Perhaps other special education public schools are not as bad. I have no idea.
Fantastic interview, thank you both. My son is in a similar-ish class that operates in a similar manner. Not exactly, but close enough that almost everything he says applies, and I appreciate the insight from other schools/jurisdictions, etc. I wish more people knew what our kids and teachers are dealing with and the support that is required. I hope more compassionate teachers come forward to help our kids, too.
Your channel name is perfectly suited for your content. It does feel like a therapy session when I watch your videos. The amount of times I yell "EXACTLY" when I hear some of the points you and your guests make. I feel really validated at the end of your videos and some of your videos make me really hopeful with the advice you give. Thank you.
I've seen a huge increase in digital curriculum, and screen use because of it. Kids aren't learning to hold writing tools correctly, let alone learn legible penmanship. We're creating a nation of icon tappers.
Trish, thank you for addressing this issue. Thank you. I agree that kids need to have accountability. I mean especially special ed kids because if they don't they're going to run into problems when they're in the real world. Hello from Iowa.
100% agree with simple behavioural issues being classed as additional/SEN, we're having that same issue in the UK. "We can't control the child in a mainstream school so he/she must have additional needs, lets send them to the Special Education Facility"... where I worked we had so many children who just simply lacked discipline in their life and it took away from us being able to support the children that do have ASD, ADHD, ODD etc, because we're busy trying to calm down a 10 year old having a tantrum just because they can.
In the early 1980s, I was sentenced to spend at least part of the school day in a special ed classroom in a mainstream public school from 5th grade all the way through high school and it did nothing for me except make me a bully magnet.
I worked as a special Ed assistant for years. They pay pennies for the work we do!! The emotional, mental and physical drain is not worth it! I quit happily
It really depends on the specific disability or disorder. There are people with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder who might behave a bit weird and need extra time but are totally non-violent. But people with ODD, IED, and CD probably need to be isolated for the safety of people they would hurt (at least until the condition can be treated). The worst idea is attempting to "mainstream" the most violent kids by putting them in classrooms full of average students and run by teachers without special training.
Crazy as it sounds, I would love to try to teach in his environment. His job sounds like it would be really challenging, but also really rewarding once you manage to break through to a student.
I volunteered in a preschool when I was in high school and there was one student in particular that was a so-called "problem kid". I saw he was exceptionally angry and lashing out and he was clearly already given up on. I made it my mission to make friends with him. Didn't take no for an answer and took the verbal and physical abuse from this literal child and kept coming back to teach him that I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't going to abandon him and brush him off like everyone else around him appeared to. Over the semester, I managed to befriend him and was able to see him smile and play, got him to (reluctantly) play with other kids safely, helped him learn to manage his emotions, and saw his face light up when I was able to encourage him to show me how well he could write his name. At the end of the semester, he was crying to see me go, but I was able to help him make friends with some of the other kids who would be in kindergarten with him next year, so he would be okay and would have friends waiting for him next year. It was one of the best feelings seeing him grow and to give him another chance to succeed.
I just kept thinking how sad it was that people were already letting him slip through the cracks as a 4 year old kid.
If anyone knows how I could be able to do that kind of thing more to potentially help other, please let me know. I need to make a career change and I think that would be a good direction for me to go in, I just don't know how to get there.
It's a difference! I went to school with special education students and years later some of these people are really mentally ill. The school system has not been prepared for that!!
I landed a job in a "private" school in a pretty safe neighborhood. I realized that many of the students had been bounced around. My nephew said, "Oh, I know that school! At lunch they do drugs and steal. We called it 'one stop away from Rikers Island '." In other words...jail!
I have seen every bit of this. Ten years ago, parents didn’t want their kids to get a diagnosis. Now, they seek it out so that their kid doesn’t suffer any consequences for their actions. This overloads the system and kids that actually need help don’t get the amount of help they need. SPED teachers are completely overwhelmed because every parent demands an exorbitant number of minutes for their kid. It’s a broken system.
I just noticed that when you talk, you sound like you're talking to middle school students. It makes you easy to listen to.🍎
This guy really gets it. I worked in a similar place to what he described and the whole thing about the two paths is true. When I was still working at a school I would tell kids who didn't care to either drop out or get their GED and they would be surprised and all my coworkers really didn't like me for giving that advice but those same kids almost always went to me for advice for being real with them.
Liked and obviously subscribed.
And not just because this spoke to my heart especially while listening during my first year of employment in NJ as a paraprofessional where I spend my days with one friend and appreciate the insight you have provided….🙏💕
God bless all the teachers. They are true gifts from God.
I see a lot of people saying things like 'in my day' or 'I, therefore you'. The fact is the system has changed for the worse since 'your day', and we're not in 'your day' any longer, therefore your argument makes no sense. We are here now, in this day.
'I, therefore you' makes no sense either. Our experiences, how we respond to them, all the context involved, whether we're male/ female/ queer/ skinny/ fat/ strong/ weak/ brown/ black/ white, our parents (or lack), our siblings, other relatives, the city or town we grew up in, the school we went to ... all of these factors lend to how we respond to stimuli. No two people's experiences are the same, so it's invalid to say 'I did it, so can you!' or 'I didn't do it, so you don't need to either'.
WHAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE AND WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE IT BETTER
The root cause is no discipline. I've seen videos of a classroom that coworker's daughter sends her mom. There is no order or consequences for bad behavior.
So interesting to hear this perspective. Thank you Trish!
Don't forget the issue with all the funding that SPED requires. The law requires that public schools provide whatever will help the student with disabilities to succeed. But more and more students are being labeled emotionally disturbed or OHI and put in SPED program , which causes schools to need more funding. In my state 70% of house taxes and property taxes are used for school funding. They get raised every year.
Dang!
When IDEA was passed, the federal govt was supposed to fund sped at I believe 45-50%? The feds have NEVER in about 50 years of legislation fully funded the mandates. I think the fed portion of sped funding to the states has, historically , only averaged about 12-15% funding. This means that in the race for the disinvestment, regular programs lose money to sped.
On other hand, when was the last time you heard of a school cutting its football program for sped funding? So, you know, priorities.
@@gailgrigg Yup.
I thought ODD disorder was a joke too but what I was out done with was how the student’s mood changed each day. For example, some days the student was focused and willing to listen. However, on some days the student would get angry , and defiant when you asked him to do something. Also what I was really out done with is that admin knew that that the student had aggressive behavior and had me working with the kid by myself without being CPI trained smh . I had to speak up about it and advocate . If your new sped teacher please learn to advocate for your self by knowing the sped laws because bad admin will try to put you in weird and dangerous situations because they think you don’t know . The reality is that a lot of youth are getting misplaced especially Spanish (ESL ) kids and kids with behavior issues. The tricky part is you have some kids who are just bad but not smart yet they are only placed in sped because of behavior and if they don’t have a parent to advocate that leaves you in the boxing ring by yourself with the kid and admin who think because they are black or Spanish need to be in sped . Lastly, sped is about money too . Parents get money because their child has a disability and the school gets money for having kids and kids who are in sped
I think every LARGE district has this one school, frankly that it’s very hard to staff.
It is usually not the special ed kids that go there, it’s the hard-core attitude type students. I thought they were all one step away from incarceration.
The biggest battle is the kid/kids not caring and the parents doesn’t care. You can tell when a parent doesn’t care they will not ask about homework, and they will not even attend at least 1 parent-teacher conference or they will not ask questions during an IEP. It might be that some parents don’t know what to ask . I had a heart to heart conversation because I knew the kid was not on the reading level that the IEP stated the kid was on . Therefore, I suggested to the parent that they should ask about assessments and ask about homework that way they can know how their child is learning and what their is understanding. Understanding the home life is important but be careful of some of the parents that might be crazy and do not want the school to know
Not a teacher, but a Teacher's Aide for special needs. It's tough work, and little pay. 💔
agreed as a special needs person myself and they should get training to deal with complex disabilities and PTSD etc. instead of having to flexi handcuff the kid and put them in an isolation room that never happened to me granted I was in a class specifically for visually/hearing impaired children in elementary school and in a major city where teachers actually get decent pay. my childhood best friend is a 2nd grade Teacher for special needs kids and makes about 80k a year and she owns 2 paid for Mercedes Benz a C63 S Cabriolet and an S 560 long wheelbase inherited from her mum with relatively low miles around 40,000 when she inherited it 19 mos. ago it probably had maybe 40,000 miles on it when she got it and now has around 60k granted the Sedan is worth more than the Similarly optioned Cabriolet $40,000 as opposed to 20,000 as a trade in according to Kelly Blue Book and the sedan is 2 Ft longer than the convertible though that isn't always the case when its sedan and Coupe Convertible models of the same car I.E. Toyota Camry and Camry Solara from 1999-2008 overlapping with the XV20 XV30 and XV40 models of Camry
All these people in their teens and 20s because of social media want some special label to attach to valid trauma, and then they turn around and get their kids diagnosed with all this stuff. Because everyone is special. Teachers need better pay and support. And kids need to be kept off the Internet.
The focus is so often on grades and test scores, that teachers forget the whole purpose of special ed is to give education that is related to a child's disability so that they can be independent one day. Spend money on kids with emotional needs now or taxpayer dollars will end up serving them as adults.
I'm 19 years old, got diagnosed with autism when I was 5 by my school, they I do feel like they made a really dumb decision by just throwing me into full time special ed it's all cuz during kindergarten, the teachers noticed that I was a bit different than others and they thought that I wouldn't able to adapt at all in regular classes. My parents barely knew much about autism back then when I was diagnosed, and the teachers would say that I wouldn't able to adapt at all in regular classes, so then that made my parents think that I wouldn't able to learn in regular classes. But yeah all of this just resulted me in just having complete inadequate education :/
I was labeled emotional disturbed at 10 in 2000. I had a MDD, Asperger’s and combo-ADHD diagnosis but they were seen as a social disability and learning disability you grow out of respectively. I was diagnosed with BP2 as an adult. Most of the people I know who had an ED label around that time have a mood disorder, developmental disorder,schizophrenia/ schizoaffective disorder and/or PTSD diagnosis.
Go beyond behaviours you are doing great in the sense that first comes the relationships. But quit positive reinforcement and consequences. Trauma informed practice is what u need. You know they diserve better❤
I work in CDC and the behaviors not because of the disability is why I am retiring sooner than I wanted to. I totally agree with every thing he said. Gen Ed. students are also arguing with the adults about every thing. He hit the nail on the head with no manners across the board.
This show really helped me after work today.
Reassessing my day's experience.
Moving forward. Thanks.
My nephew has a chromosomal disorder that causes learning disability. Limited state funding for these programs needs to be going to support students like him, not for kids who act like monsters because their parents can’t do their job.
Special Ed kids are often lumped in with Emotionally Disturbed/behavioral kids and because of the behaviors no one learns. Staff has gotten hurt at my school(-seriously injured. It is crazy.
I have to say "Amen " about Takis. My students will do anything for Takis or Hot Cheetos
😂😂😂😂 "It's crack in a bag"
Thank you for such an enlightening interview on the reality of NPS schools! Frankly, I do not how you handle it all! James
These catch all diagnoses that are used these days are ridiculous. This is a result of management and school boards not tracking students. Academic goals for the majority of students are unattainable without classroom behavior management and management has abandoned classroom behavior management. There solution is to get rid of students instead of tracking students an putting them in appropriate classes. Parents are also to blame for not accepting that their child may not excell. This is path is unsustainable for students and teachers. The guest is right that all students will eventually be nps students.
As someone who has taught in Nebraska for the last 22 years I can say that your pay is not bad. If you continue your education and factor in cost of living here then it is pretty solid IMHO.
Thank you, I’ve always had a problem with the policy’s of special education, my biggest problem being situations such as shortening assignments, if you have a weakness the policy is more leaned toward reducing the work in that area, this will hinder the student further, the policy needs to be aimed at increasing skill theough remediation or tutoring, this can become an issue related to funding. I agree that we are heading down a path of qualifying the majority of students as special ed. One policy I would like to see changed is mandatory upper
level math and science for all students, this are specialized areas that the majority of students are not going to fit the mold, the result being increased discipline problems and a decrease in learning for the students who want that class, not to mention higher rates of teacher burnout. I’m a child of the 60’s, when I graduated they only required one math and one
science, there was no school grading, teachers presented information and the student worked to learn what was being taught, it’s my belief that subjects should have a basic limit of what should be learned and the administration all the way to the top should be focused on actual learning with an expectation of basic critical thinking skills.
I'm 33, class of 2009. At my high school there was Goodrich which was the "bad kid school." If you got suspended 3 times, you went to Goodrich for a month. If you kept getting suspended, you got expelled and stayed at Goodrich. You could appeal over time to re-matriculate. A lot of kids just graduated from there.