Teacher issues

[orval]

My ds (6th grade) has dysgraphia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia.  He has an older English teacher who I don't think really believes in learning disabilities. Yesterday she kicked him out into the hallway to finish a paragraph they were writing as he didn't have his done yet.  The rest of the class moved on to something else.  He sat on the floor in the hall to do his work. 
I emailed her as I didn't think this was a good thing for a student with a disability in written expression and asked if he could come during recess or after school to finish when he can't get it done in class.  Private school, not public.

I am about to go off on her so I need to calm down!  He has a disability in WRITTEN EXPRESSION for God's sake!   It takes a while for him to think of what to write and get it on paper.  We have other issues with her as well but this makes me nuts. Any tips for me what to say and to not go crazy?

Here is her response:


First, *** is certainly not the first student to finish work in the hall, and I refute his 30 minute estimate.




The paragraph was a “sloppy copy,” response writing warm up, so 7-10 minutes is allotted. This was maybe our 8th paragraph this month. *** received a 95% grade for 5 “warm up” paragraphs on 1/17/2019, so clearly he can do the work.



He had written nothing in about 12 minutes, this after we discussed the prompt and had the first sentence “starter” on the board. It was very similar to last weeks “dream for our world,” after discussing the Dr.ML King Jr. holiday. Most other students were finished, so we began sharing our writing. A potential distraction.


*** seems a bit stubborn when asked to do work, and getting started takes practice. I was merely holding him accountable to that practice. He may come during recess to complete writing in the future.

[waverly]

She needs to have some other tools in her tool box then that to get him thinking about what he is going to write. That seems like a last resort kind of thing when she could have been working with him during the first 12 minutes. Also her tone is ugh.

[orval]

Thanks for replying. I think her tone is not so nice. I feel like it is a bother for her to have to think about his issues. Part of the problem is - he is pretty smart. So it is not always obvious he has a problem. I found a video that a kid with dysgraphia made about what it is like, I may send that to her.
She previously got mad at him for keeping his agenda on his Chromebook(instead of paper). She also did not want him to type out his vocabulary words (flashcards) instead of hand writing. She has marked down his grade even though it was exactly as she requested.
I basically had written her off and told my DS to just do exactly what she says, but kicking him out of class was wrong.

[mightymaude]

Caveat: I teach 10th grade.

Speaking as a teacher, I do, in fact, move students to a separate area to finish work if necessary. Sometimes this is the hallway, sometimes this is the room adjacent to mine if it is unoccupied. I generally move students if they are taking significantly longer than the rest of the class and we need to move on, but they cannot be there for that portion of the class--say, we're going to go over the assignment they are still doing. I'm not going to give answers away by letting them remain. A writing assignment such as this would count--once we started going over others' thoughts, he'd easily be able to take those ideas as his own. For this reason, I wouldn't ask the student to just complete it at a later time. There are other assignments that I would be willing to do this for, though, and do allow this frequently.

I do not see this teacher's actions as "kicking out". This is moving to a new location so that the class can move along. When the student who has been moved finishes, I make sure I take the time to review their work and discuss the things that they missed. I don't expect them to just jump in without context.

I agree that the teacher's tone is a bit brusque. You may want to re-read your original e-mail and check what your tone was. I do tend to be snappier in reply if I feel like I am being attacked by a parent. What I wrote above is how I would reply to you had you e-mailed me. However, I have had parents jump in and immediately accuse me of not paying attention to disabilities and I'm a bit rougher with my replies.

______________________________________________________________

Re: your second post.

Is typing his assignments in his IEP? If not, I understand why the teacher may not have allowed it on the flash cards. I do not allow typed vocabulary because it is easy to cut and paste from an online dictionary without thinking about the definition. I actually require all vocabulary to be written in the student's own words, but that's a more complex assignment than I think most elementary/middle school teachers would give.

As for the agenda, well that's silly, and I'm on your side for that one.

[waverly]

I agree that moving to another location can be a valid teaching tool for some students. Do you have any kind of IEP in place that might cover this kind of thing? Like DS’s states he will be presented with visual aids due to his hearing loss. I wasn’t sure if they had guidelines that covered this.

[orval]

Thanks for the info on moving out of the classroom. It makes sense if they don't need extra time for assignments, he does. He used the words "kicked out" and felt that it was a punishment. He was upset as he is a big rule follower.
He does have an accommodation plan. It includes extra time and typing on all assignments. She does not allow him to type an assignment like this in class. Not sure how she reads it, as I can't read most things he writes.

LIke I said, I gave up on trying to to argue with her about his accommodations because I would be fighting every day.

[orval]

Jan 23, 2019 19:02:46 GMT -5 mightymaude said:

______________________________________________________________

Re: your second post.

Is typing his assignments in his IEP? If not, I understand why the teacher may not have allowed it on the flash cards. I do not allow typed vocabulary because it is easy to cut and paste from an online dictionary without thinking about the definition. I actually require all vocabulary to be written in the student's own words, but that's a more complex assignment than I think most elementary/middle school teachers would give.

As for the agenda, well that's silly, and I'm on your side for that one.

With dysgraphia, he has to concentrate so much on actual handwriting, he has no idea what he wrote. He has to think about forming every letter (still does it incorrectly).  So writing the cards for him is a waste of time. The first time he did the cards (20 words), it took him over 3 hours and he had to stop many times because his hand hurt. She was shocked it took him so long and insisted it will help him remember They do have to write a sentence in their own words using the vocab word, which he also types.  She doesn't actually collect or look at the cards, but gives them a grade.