One of my students told me that he was considering dropping out of school. He has filled out all the paperwork; he's just waiting for a bit. I was very surprised, because he does not strike me as one of the students who is merely marking time. He is attentive, cooperative, and participates, but he can't pass his math class. Without math, he can't graduate, and if he can't graduate, he doesn't want to waste his time.
Another teacher mentioned to him that he should be tested for a learning disability. It makes sense; if he is showing a discrepancy between his ability (as evidence by his progress in other subjects) and his performance, he could be LD. He was asking me about the possibility, and what it meant, and my thoughts. I told him that it was possible to have a disability in only one area (i.e. math) and not in others (i.e. reading and writing). It is something that needs to be investigated, and I would look into it to see if it was a possibility.
That's what we do, right? We assess our students' needs and abilities and make judgement calls on the next steps. No one is saying he IS LD, but that he COULD be. He could also just need serious remediation because he missed key concepts early in his math education. He is a language learner, so that is also a viable scenario. Regardless, without intervention, he will not graduate: he's telling us that.
I sent an email off to his counselor. I'm not sure how to call an intervention meeting or to assess if one is necessary, but the counselors should know how to do that. I get back a rather snippy email saying that he will talk to the student, but he hopes that whoever made the "allegation" was qualified to do so (no, I am not "the teacher").
Allegation? No one alleged anything. A professional told a worried student that there were other options to consider before dropping out. Furthermore, it is my understanding that as classroom teachers we are OBLIGATED to notify others if we suspect a disability is present. Yes, the testing and diagnosis is made by those trained to do so, but if those professionals had to do all the initial identification on their own, no student would ever get identified! This student shows a discrepancy, and we still work on a discrepancy model.
This whole conversation could help keep a student in school through graduation. It could get a student the help he needs to succeed in school (and maybe even in life -- gasp), whether it involves SPED or remediation. I just don't get the attitude. We're all doing our jobs.
Earth Sized Planets
2 days ago
2 comments:
I'm not sure I'd trust the guidance counselor. Can you contact the SPED people directly and see what the process is?
In the same position in high school (bad at math, great at history and language), my guidance counselor told me that I would never graduate from college and should go into the military. At the time, I had a 2.3 GPA, mostly because I kept getting C- and D+ in math classes.
I ended up graduating from high school with a 2.7 and college with a 3.4 after going to night school and working full time, which is at least a magnitude of difficulty harder than slamming through a big four-year school as a full-time student. Most of this was through the intervention of an IEP that allowed me to use some helper tools during math tests.
It's good to hear from the success stories. I don't always get that in this profession. I do plan on following up with his math teacher and the SPED department chair. Me and the Spedlies are good friends.
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