as in Dorothy, we're not....
? ? 50, 30, ? As we near the middle of a marking period, I scan my grades to check on general progress. That is what I came across in the math section of my record book. It is a student I have been struggling to reach. He clearly has some intensive special education needs. I’ve seen some small progress in the area of writing but math remains a mystery. In a class of 25, I feel like I can never get to everyone the way I want, the way I need to.
I have made special effort here, instituting after school help twice a week and even offering a program for the December break. I’ve tried to line him up with a tutor but it gets tricky in that area. He really needs a qualified teacher, I believe, to make any kind of true progress and they are hard to come by.
I decided to approach the administration to find out exactly what it is I’m supposed to do with this child. Retention is hardly appropriate, nor do I believe it would adequately fill in the gaps that are missing. Many of our students have gaps.
I’m not sure what I was expecting or hoping for. I suppose that may have been my first error. Never go into a meeting without some idea of the desired outcome. I wasn’t thinking long range either. Error number 2. I left the meeting in a daze, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach. Error number 3. Always keep yourself composed. I felt like being physically ill, and I know my face showed every bit of it. I had to work to close my mouth as it hung open in shock. And I can’t get past the outright racism of the statement to determine if that’s what it actually was.
I’m told to write a letter requesting a meeting with family based on my concern about the student’s future at the school. Long before, when I knew nothing, I thought there might be some kind of entrance exam or application to get in. But there is not. And if there is no screening process to weed out potential difficulties, how do we then institute a process where we kick them out once a problem is identified? I’m told there is a screening process but I believe it has yet to be clearly identified. If there is no initial judgment, how can it be brought about mid-year? Oh, oh you mean that kind of learning difficulty? No, we don’t take those.
But I’m not really sure what that means, because he is not the only one in my class suffering from broad gaps or lack of adequate progress and achievement. He is not the only who will require support and modification of program in order to be successful. But I am told that he is an African child and as such, already of higher education and status than most of his compatriots. He can continue in any number of the available schools from the other private ones in the area to the “public” African schools.
Maybe I think of Guy, who is suffering so much to learn to read. And I recall how he was pushed through an African school, where no one seemed to recognize his difficulty or care, or have the means to deal with it. But we have the means. We are able to support and modify, we are able to present in multilayered ways. So why is he being shoved into a system where they cannot or will not be able to help him?
Or maybe I am just thinking about how shy and awkward this student was during his first few weeks of school. He is new to the country and it was not an easy transition. He had difficulty making friends and being accepted. But I see him now and I see the way he has branched out and blossomed. And I see the way all of that will contract again. He will become lost and ignored in the back of a class where he will daydream his days quietly away. And he will have me to thank for that.
