In my entry of 11/18/08, I spoke about the earthquake drill here in Southern California, and the problematic response I observed at one high school.
My friend Michael Hoggatt, makes a similar observation in his blog entry today regarding a situation in Texas. Check it out at http://manger-hoggblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/disasters-drill-in-buda-texas.html
McNair
This week a friend's daughter started volunteering an hour a day in her high school's multi-handi-capped class. She called her mother crying, because the staff spent the time sitting around chatting, ignoring the children. (She has a brother who will be in the class next year.)
ReplyDeleteJulana,
ReplyDeleteHow sad. Your friend's daughter is experiencing something far too common in SPED settings, I see it every day, and it breaks my heart.
My school is a non public school(NPS), my kids are what some call "the worst of the worst", meaning, almost without exception, that their parents and districts have discarded them, leaving me, and school staff to make the best of a bad situation, without much hope of effecting real change in our students lives, and without meaninigful support from the school's administration to affect real change in students lives.
But, as difficult as teaching them is, I care for them; and I feel guilt for wishing I were some place else.
Most days there seems little point in tilting at the wimdmills with which I am engaged. But I'll go back to work tomorrow. Someone has to.