homeschooling rocks. In all honesty, public school doesn't work, if my kids did not have a diagnosis, I still would have struggled a great deal with the matter, but as luck would have it, the school told me to homeschool, and that's fine by me.
However, here are a few of my experiences I had while in the current school environment, I had the privilege to witness firsthand many different incidents, policies, and procedures:
my primary observation was that the equipment used was not age-appropriate, and in many cases developmentally underwhelming, which to some people who have knowledge on childhood development, realize this is counterproductive and in extreme cases (none in this case that I saw, fortunately) harmful.
secondarily, there were only limited visual supports in the environment, and none whatsoever to encourage pairing between the child and environment, this can cause discrepancies between therapists even with a single student, this causes drastically more issues with efficiency, prolonging the periods between IEP re-evaluations, which causes plateaus to occur.
last but not least, it is a clinical environment, modeled by a former IBI therapist, who's program is a great deal different than the IBI program that is experienced by young kids nowadays, even in this community.
my beef? is that stuff happens at schools, and parents don't know about it, especially in these contained classrooms where on one hand they must follow school policies on a whole, but in reality, just be quiet, go along with your eyes and nose on your own education, career, or employment situation, because they are not open to change. This was a pilot program, with barebones to start and was estimated to be at least 5 years before the school would catch up to what would be considered a fluid transitional environment from preschool to IBI.
The great challenge to a person who has home-cared for their child up to school-age is that others have already accepted the values and principles of the school system, they have been in it since their children were young, the transition to school as a parent is harder, you may ask more questions, you may make requests to smooth out transitions, and you may wish to remain on the same page as your child, and keep more of a watchful eye on changes in your little one. I'm not saying this is everyone, it is certainly not the majority either, but ...
I'm proud to say I did try public school, I would be lying to say we experienced it, we did wind up with a middle to lower grade elementary school, in a pilot program, for a contained classroom ASD program, which has been quickly becoming obsolete in many parts of the province, country, and continent. It is becoming more reasonable to expect aspies and auties to integrate, regardless of how much experience they have in a clinical environment, they are in other places, being aided in social skills development, and carried along academically, making transitions from other environments a breeze.
I'm routinely confused why parents allow schools to make their own choices about a child's care, education, or belief structure and growth. I'm frequently bewildered by the claims of service providers and heartbroken to learn they couldn't incorporate strength based and deficit based formats, or move from one to the other depending on the need of the individual child. I'm astounded at the lengths to which some school board officials or school administration will go to protect their fragile world within the four cinder block walls. I'm saddened to see my stories go in one ear and out the other of other parents whom I hold a great deal of respect of for various character traits or achievements, I'm disappointed in myself for hoping that these other parents would stand with me for some change, I'm frazzled at the stories I hear, or the claims made, by my own children's former classmates' parents about an environment that I'm not sure if they know very well, but I certainly made an effort to sit in and observe as much as possible.
An ASD contained classroom, with limited resources, limited experience, and limited accommodations.. is not what you are dreaming it up to be.
However, thank you. Thank you for showing me how different programs produce different children, how to confuse children and avoid complicated issues, to see and ignore a need because of structure and the importance of conformity. Thank you for offering me all the excuses under the sun why my questions cannot be answered, why the paperwork I request could not be produced, and why my son suddenly hated school. Thank you, so very much for bringing me to tears, for reminding me of my own elementary school experience, and why I hoped to never go back to that. Thank you for discounting the abilities of my children, and of me as a mother.
Thanks a bunch. I wasted my children's time, with plans for integration, with social skills opportunities, to work on their autism challenges with the idealistic belief that their academics could catch up while in school. Thanks for being the exception to the rule of all the fantastic accommodations I have read and heard about at schools across the continent, where a child's medical needs, came first. To think, how does a child's autism needs come in last as a priority in an autism program?!
Well anyway thank you for showing me how homeschooling doesn't have to be. I am done modelling my home education after the supposed best of the best in the 'integrative' stream. If it was integrative, neither of my children would have started out in a contained classroom.
signed.
- a freeschooling mom
P.S. Thank you, for discouraging me from fighting 'the good fight' within your system, for leaving me hanging when change was needed, for helping me to realize, that my heart is with their continued overall well-being, and not with changing society. Society will not and does not change, but I fortunately have.
Happy Back-to-School Everyone!!
May your report cards gleam, and the germs stay away.. <3
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more"
