LI Idol Season 9 Week 14 - A Little Girl Who Never Smiles
o/` "Don't laugh at me, don't call me names
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes we're all the same
Someday we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me." o/`
-- "Don't Laugh at Me" performed by Mark Wills
I just finished my annual education evaluation for our adopted daughter Lix. It's something all parents who home school in the state of Florida must do in order to comply with the state's requirements for administering a home education. Our Lix has several psychological issues, including disinhibited attachement disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, as well and so there are some extra hoops to be jumped through and a bunch of red tape to be carefully navigated. Done improperly, we could lose custody of her. The state isn't particularly happy with this arrangement anyhow, since she has three parents (myself, Dee, and his brother Callistus) named in the adoption papers and by extension also an uncle in the person of my husband, Mr. Shapeshifter. We didn't self diagnose; Lix has a psychiatrist who did that for us and he was the third whose opinion we obtained in order to be absolutely certain she would get the treatment she needed.
The state and its schools, however, sometimes think they know better.
Since Lix is a child with special needs as dictated by state and federal law, she ought to have an individualized education plan. The fact that she didn't and that the school's officials tried to argue against it using the laws which are supposed to protect her are the primary reasons why we now go to the extra pains and paperwork involved in home schooling.
In the first place, if the child can respond appropriately and understand her surroundings, the child is supposed to be included on any and all meetings to discuss the IEP. Until we began homeschooling, Lix had never been asked about what she wished to learn, what she thought she could handle, or what suggestions she could give regarding maintaining good behavior in a mainstream environment. Heck, they didn't even have her in a mainstream environment! She's dyslexic but certainly not stupid.
Parents are supposed to be present as well when these meetings occur, but more often than not the school refused to allow all of us to participate. I had no way of knowing what they were teaching Lix or in what type of environment. I didn't find out until I dropped by to pick her up for a routine medical appointment.
The room in question seemed far too small for the number of students it contained. Clearly it served as classroom, bathroom, cafeteria, and entertainment without much differentiation. The room wasn't handicapped accessible; I could not get my own chair further inside than the short hallway and the aides (I later learned there were no teachers present at all) had simply put the two children with cerebral palsy in the bathroom/laundry room to one side of the entry. I expected to see adaptive learning devices or perhaps individualized work areas. Instead the walls were painted an ugly institution green with a few small slatted windows set high in the walls near the ceiling. An absolutely ancient letter board depicting simple printed letters and an object representing short sounds wound around the top of the blackboard; it was the only decoration and some of the decals had faded to illegibility. The entire room smelled faintly of old food, disinfectant, and feces.
On our way to Green Cove, I asked Lix, "Do you have a teacher in there?"
"Nope," she responded, chewing on the end of her braid. "Just the aides for changing diapers and feeding the ones who can't feed themselves."
"Do you have books?"
She smirked. "Not unless I bring 'em m'self."
"Do you ever leave the room?"
"Nah, we morons might scare the normals." Lix paused, as though considering telling me something, before she said shyly, "Sometimes I sneak out. There's a door in the beanie corner. I picked the lock. That room's got a piano and all kinds of encyclopedias!"
No child left behind, my ass. Obviously someone there had forgotten not only my child but everyone else's as well.
I went back the next day, without Lix, long enough to read the school the riot act. By then they'd discovered Lix's illegal entry into the old music room and had manufactured a key theft. That, combined with her other behaviors (hey, I'd have shoved something much larger somewhere far more painful if that pipsqueak had grabbed me), left them disinclined to listen. It didn't matter that I had state and federal law on my side. It didn't matter that what they'd done bordered on criminal negligence and child abuse. You can't get blood out of a turnip, you won't get a confession out of an empty chair, and you won't get an IEP out of a school whose state believes that the disabled are simply people of inconvenience.
Lix, incidentally, will likely graduate ahead of schedule and will start taking classes at one of the community college campuses in Jacksonville come December.
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes we're all the same
Someday we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me." o/`
-- "Don't Laugh at Me" performed by Mark Wills
I just finished my annual education evaluation for our adopted daughter Lix. It's something all parents who home school in the state of Florida must do in order to comply with the state's requirements for administering a home education. Our Lix has several psychological issues, including disinhibited attachement disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, as well and so there are some extra hoops to be jumped through and a bunch of red tape to be carefully navigated. Done improperly, we could lose custody of her. The state isn't particularly happy with this arrangement anyhow, since she has three parents (myself, Dee, and his brother Callistus) named in the adoption papers and by extension also an uncle in the person of my husband, Mr. Shapeshifter. We didn't self diagnose; Lix has a psychiatrist who did that for us and he was the third whose opinion we obtained in order to be absolutely certain she would get the treatment she needed.
The state and its schools, however, sometimes think they know better.
Since Lix is a child with special needs as dictated by state and federal law, she ought to have an individualized education plan. The fact that she didn't and that the school's officials tried to argue against it using the laws which are supposed to protect her are the primary reasons why we now go to the extra pains and paperwork involved in home schooling.
In the first place, if the child can respond appropriately and understand her surroundings, the child is supposed to be included on any and all meetings to discuss the IEP. Until we began homeschooling, Lix had never been asked about what she wished to learn, what she thought she could handle, or what suggestions she could give regarding maintaining good behavior in a mainstream environment. Heck, they didn't even have her in a mainstream environment! She's dyslexic but certainly not stupid.
Parents are supposed to be present as well when these meetings occur, but more often than not the school refused to allow all of us to participate. I had no way of knowing what they were teaching Lix or in what type of environment. I didn't find out until I dropped by to pick her up for a routine medical appointment.
The room in question seemed far too small for the number of students it contained. Clearly it served as classroom, bathroom, cafeteria, and entertainment without much differentiation. The room wasn't handicapped accessible; I could not get my own chair further inside than the short hallway and the aides (I later learned there were no teachers present at all) had simply put the two children with cerebral palsy in the bathroom/laundry room to one side of the entry. I expected to see adaptive learning devices or perhaps individualized work areas. Instead the walls were painted an ugly institution green with a few small slatted windows set high in the walls near the ceiling. An absolutely ancient letter board depicting simple printed letters and an object representing short sounds wound around the top of the blackboard; it was the only decoration and some of the decals had faded to illegibility. The entire room smelled faintly of old food, disinfectant, and feces.
On our way to Green Cove, I asked Lix, "Do you have a teacher in there?"
"Nope," she responded, chewing on the end of her braid. "Just the aides for changing diapers and feeding the ones who can't feed themselves."
"Do you have books?"
She smirked. "Not unless I bring 'em m'self."
"Do you ever leave the room?"
"Nah, we morons might scare the normals." Lix paused, as though considering telling me something, before she said shyly, "Sometimes I sneak out. There's a door in the beanie corner. I picked the lock. That room's got a piano and all kinds of encyclopedias!"
No child left behind, my ass. Obviously someone there had forgotten not only my child but everyone else's as well.
I went back the next day, without Lix, long enough to read the school the riot act. By then they'd discovered Lix's illegal entry into the old music room and had manufactured a key theft. That, combined with her other behaviors (hey, I'd have shoved something much larger somewhere far more painful if that pipsqueak had grabbed me), left them disinclined to listen. It didn't matter that I had state and federal law on my side. It didn't matter that what they'd done bordered on criminal negligence and child abuse. You can't get blood out of a turnip, you won't get a confession out of an empty chair, and you won't get an IEP out of a school whose state believes that the disabled are simply people of inconvenience.
Lix, incidentally, will likely graduate ahead of schedule and will start taking classes at one of the community college campuses in Jacksonville come December.