This is the question I not only asked myself daily last year, but nearly everyone I knew as well.  After years of having mostly Juniors and Seniors on my caseload for Special Education, I took on the deceptively undaunting challenge of having Freshmen.  I thought it would be relatively simple – communicate regularly with parents, stay on top of what was going on in the General Education classes, make sure my students were organized, and make sure they were doing their homework on a nightly basis.  Easy.  After all, it’s what I always do with kids on my caseload.  I figured freshmen might need a little more guidance, at least up front, and perhaps parents might need to be included in the loop a little more, but that’s really about it.

It wasn’t long after the year started that I started to get slammed.

Let me back up a bit and give a little perspective.  We SpEd teachers are used to difficult students.  Our kids come to us with a variety of challenges, and for the most part we are able to handle things in stride – but it takes a well-coordinated department and a true team of individuals to make things work well.  For years I had used a small network if school personnel that I count reliably count on to help with classroom situations or more difficult IEP’s as the need arose.  I thought I was a team player and could stay within my bubble of experience to handle anything that came my way.  What I’m trying to say without sounding too much like an idiot is that I was woefully unequipped to deal with my 9th graders.  I thought I had it down but I didn’t.  In the end, without sounding too much like a complete drip, I learned more from them then they probably did from me.

Here’s what I found out:

1. The freshman class did not come in with a host of new, undocumented, unrecognized, non-DSM IV (or is it V?) disabilities.  For the most part it was pretty standard.  The tools used to identify and document the learning challenges kids with LD face are still good tools, and the strategies used to help them are still good strategies.  The IEP paperwork was a different story altogether. I’m going to generalize here, but when a kid is transitioning from one school to another, or from one level within a District to another – like from Middle School to High School – IEP’s need to be rock solid.  There should be no guesswork as to what services were provided, and what accommodations were implemented.  The line between accommodations and modifications needs to be clarified and clearly delineated in the IEP.  High school is the critical period when kids move from adolescence to adulthood, and the accommodations and modifications needed to assist them on their way to independence should reflect this.  Starting in 9th grade, there needs to be less hand-holding, not more.  I can’t tell you how many meetings the 9th grade caseload managers at my school needed to have at the beginning of the school year to make sure that accommodations and modifications were clear for the parents.  It’s not that the SpEd teachers were saying that a student couldn’t have a particular accommodation/modification, it’s that we needed to be very clear about what was what.
2. Parents need to back off.  Sorry parents, but in the long run it will be the best for both you and your kid.  I know it’s hard: my son was in 9th grade this past year and sometimes It was all I could do to keep myself from strangling him and/or his Biology teacher.  Let the system work.  Give everyone the time a space needed to get to know your child free from your natural parental love and bias.  Let us see for ourselves how wonderful your kid is.  I’m not saying Don’t Ask Questions.  I’m not saying Blindly Accept Everything That Happens.  I’m saying Let the Process Work for your child.  In many ways high school is a completely new environment for kids.  There are so many more challenging academic and social situations that arise, and kids need to be able to navigate these with as much independence as possible.  Let the process work.

An example from this past school year might illuminate the above two points a little more:

I had a student who came to my caseload with the “accommodation” of unlimited time to complete all schoolwork.  His parents were adamant that he be given this accommodation in all his classes, and that his grades not be allowed to suffer in any way if he was not completing homework.  I met with his mother before the school year started and she went to great lengths t tell me how smart her child was was, that he was doing online courses to advance himself, and how he found school boring because it was so easy for him.  I should have of course seen imminent disaster approaching, but at that point I felt that everything would sort of “even out” once the school year started.

Things did not even out.  The student in question did not do any work.  I’m absolutely serious…maybe a modicum of classwork, but definitely zero homework.  Nothing.  You can imagine how very quickly this became an issue.  His mother began immediately emailing me daily about each and every missing assignment.  If he has unlimited time, her argument went, then there should never be “0” entered for any grade on any assignment he never turns in.  By this logic, the student could conceivably turn in an assignment in June that was due in January.

The student’s parents wanted to child to attend a University after graduation.  They had (and still have) big dreams for him.  We all have big dreams for our kids, right?  The mismatch however between what the parents wanted and what the kid was actually able to do – despite his intelligence I might add – was huge. Eventually after much stress, worry, concern, failing grades, meetings and negotiations, we were able to get an IEP together that I think better served the child.  There will be more work to do in the future, but parents needed to be clear that unlimited time is not an accommodation.  It is a modification, and if they wanted to include it in the IEP then it would change the nature of the grade the student received in that class.  It’s not that the kid would not be able to attend a University, it’s just that with modified grades  a community college would be more appropriate right after high school, and this is something the parents could not abide by. In the end we settled on an “extended” time agreement that at least pacified for the time being both parents and educators.

3. It’s getting harder and harder to get kids to focus on anything but their technology.  9th graders in many cases do not yet possess the maturity and restraint to put their phones away and turn their attention to schoolwork.  SpEd 9th graders can be even worse in some cases.  For the first time ever I had to physically take all cell phones from my Freshmen, just so they could turn their attention to academics.  It was if I had asked them to chop off their own arm or awoken them from a six month-long coma.  I would walk around the room with a box and had each kid drop their phone into it, promising them that their technology would be safe and that it would be returned at the end of the period.  No matter how many times I did it, I was greeted daily with looks of pain, bafflement, or just outright resistance.  I also got quite a few “hold on a minute’s” as the kid twisted his or her phone this way and that to try and catch the last millisecond of a video or defeat the whateveritwas in a game.  The thing itself is not as much an issue as the complete absorption into their devices for quick entertainment that is alarming to teachers like myself.  Its not as if distractions just sort of popped up out of nowhere to destroy the minds of children.  After all, in the 80’s we had Sony Walkmans, which were the coolest thing you could ever own at the time.  And yes, we had them on walking to school, between classes, or standing in line to get food.  When class started however, they were put in backpacks and left there.  Never was there any question that they would be allowed during class.  Pagers and similar pod-like electronic devices that required you to keep a little creature alive throughout the day were distractions as well, but all you had to do was ask that kids turn them off or put them away.  No big deal.  If you forgot to feed the tiny dinosaur and it died then a new one was created.  Now kids are not only cut off from their games, videos, and music when the cell phone is turned off and put away, but their virtual social world as well.  You’d get a more favorable reaction if you asked them to shoot their own mother.  It has become increasingly difficult to hold the attention of kids whose minds are becoming attuned to lightning fast chunks of flash and color, even if you do transition from lecture to activity fairly quickly, as is standard in most classrooms.  Anything longer than 20-30 seconds begins to seem like a protracted road trip to visit the grandparents in Florida.

4. As distractions have increased in number, yet magically contained within slim, rectangular packages with spider-web cracks on the glass, academic pressure has ratcheted up as well.  The things kids are required to do in high school is absolutely amazing, and far beyond what anyone of my generation was expected to do.  9th graders today are expected to already have learned Algebra by the time they walk in the door, and will start either in Geometry or Algebra II.  I have seen this change happen before my eyes at the high school where I teach.  Even SpEd classes have become increasingly academic, with the expectation that Common Core Standards are covered with nearly as much detail and accuracy as in the Gen Ed setting.  The average student becomes relegated to the level of struggling, and students with learning disabilities become marginalized and eventually disenfranchised within this environment, with the ultimate effect that only those with a GPA of 4.0 or above are considered ready for college.  Group work, projects, public speaking and performance, and Socratic Seminars are supposed to mirror the workplace, a dynamic atmosphere where ideas are presented and discussed intelligently, but it is poor simulation at best.  Sadly what the US is producing seems to be an army of extremely well-educated, yet woefully unprepared for the actual world of work, high school graduates.
5. Family dynamics plays a bigger role than I thought.  This goes above and beyond parents just learning to back off and let the process work, as I stated previously.  It has to do with the entire set of values and beliefs that a family brings to education and school in general.  Academic pressure from peers is one thing, but the pressure from within families can tip the balance to create an unbearable situation. At a young age kids become tested. The question becomes: what will they do under this pressure from within and without? Some will rise to the challenge and learn to work harder and better than they ever thought they could.   Others will try the best they can but feel as if they can never measure up, and so they resort to self-destructive behaviors as a cry for help. Others still give up before they even really try because they feel that no matter what they do will ever be enough. These last two scenarios are on the rise – not only in my school and throughout my District, but nationally as well. The problem with kids identified early as requiring Special Education support and services is that they will learn to use the system to never actually do much. A lifetime of giving up before you start is difficult to reverse once a child is in high school, and by this time families are resigned to the same old story. For teachers this simply means that we need to maintain clear and consistent lines of communication, and to be as upfront and honest as possible. I thought I had always done a pretty good job of communicating with parents, but this past school year taught me that I needed to tailor the type and amount of communication depending on what I learned about the family. Some parents never respond to email at all, but will readily react to a text message. Some only want to be called. For some parents an email or two is fine, and for others no amount of emails or responses to emails is ever enough. You could spend hours just emailing a parent about their kid in some cases. Get to know the family dynamic and work within it to the best of your ability, or whatever is comfortable. Let parents know your limits, and if things aren’t working then sometimes a different case manager will make all the difference.

This next school year will be a true test if anything I did the previous year made any difference whatsoever. Not just me, but the entire IEP team – teachers, parents, administrators, school psychologists, counselors, behavior specialists, speech and language pathologists – all of us. I am hopeful for a calmer year overall, but that is probably just a dream at this point.  What is wrong with all these 9th graders is what’s wrong with all of us, with what we’ve created.  The more we expect of kids that are not yet ready to handle the pressure of these expectations has made an academic world that is very challenging to manage.