“Oppositional Defiance Disorder” is a diagnosis that can get a student an IEP.
So a disruptive, violent child can show up to school every day - throw chairs, bring drugs to school - then get mom or dad to take them to the doc to diagnose them with ODD. It’s a manifestation of their disability.
“Inclusion” also means that these children need to be placed in the same classroom as all the other children. So 29 children are subject to the violence of 1.
You were at the edge and took a step forward.
How do you think a classroom with 30 children, with 15 of them needing individualized attention as laid out in a thirty page document works?
Plus another four sections.
If half of the students have “preferential seating,” what does your seating chart look like?
By the way, you read these documents during the 50 minutes you get for your “planning period.” 50 minutes to read hundreds of pages of documentation, while also grading, responding to student and parent emails, filling out random bullshit paperwork, planning for your next day. I’ve haven’t ate lunch in two weeks because I take those twenty minutes to just clean my room and set up the next activity.
With absolutely no sympathy from parents or the general public. No one calling me a bad teacher in this thread has had to figure out what to do when a kid decided to climb on their table and try to kill themselves. I’m not a mental health professional, and I don’t have the ratios that mental health professionals have.
I didn’t call you a bad teacher. And I’m much more forgiving of your rant now that I know. And I’m sorry I explained your chronic underfunding to you, like you didn’t know.
I am more forgiving of ableist attitudes ≠ completely forgiving of it. You’re mad at the situation. Everybody needs to let off steam.
I’m going to assume you have already sent your problematic experiences up the flagpole, to no avail. How are your prospects for changing jobs? Not necessarily profession but maybe at a different school? It’s no use trying to ride that tiger every day when this affects you this much.
For your own protection, you need to take the venting offline. I think you may have already given enough details for your bosses to identify you here. The days of shouting anonymously into the digital void are over. An LLM has the computing power and patience of an army to find and ID you. So if I were you, I’d delete this post, delete the account, and look for trustworthy ears who won’t rat you out next time the pressure in your cauldron is redlining.
I can tell you that every teacher in a title 1 school in the United States would echo what I have been saying right now.
I guess I’m just trying to raise the alarm. The system is absolutely falling apart at the seams in many parts of the U.S.
I had a student leave my classroom to jump another kid into his gang in the bathroom. He was suspended for 1 day. How is that safe?
I was Googling the Abby Zwerner case to link here, and found another teacher shot in the last five days.
It is cheaper to put severely behaviorally disturbed students in a classroom with no supports and call it “inclusion” than it is to put those children in an environment which meets their needs. It is destroying many schools in the U.S. right now.