I’m a teacher mentor. I support new special education teachers. I’m currently working at a middle school classroom program geared towards students with low academic skills and moderate behavior needs. There is a teacher, myself (I’m there twice a week minimum), and 5 instructional assistants. The class has 8 students.
We have a student, an 8th grader, who is just a terror. The poster child for “unchecked behavior 100% enabled by parent.” This kid has never been successfully assessed for academic skills in his entire school career because he either couldn’t sit down for longer than 10 seconds or flat refused every academic request and would yell, destroy school property, or assault staff. He’s well over 6 feet and over 300 lbs. He’s new to our school this year because he gave numerous staff at his old school concussions and mom threatened to sue the school if any consequences were enacted because, “his behavior is directly related to his disability (ASD).” She also refuses to have him in a personal learning environment, she wants him in class with everyone else.
We have pages upon page of behavior data, interventions, etc. We’ve held 6 IEP meetings in the last 5 months for this kid asking alone. Revised and revised and revised his behavior plan and safety plan. He’s only getting worse. Constant eloping from the classroom and school property, yelling when he doesn’t get his way, breaking Chromebooks, stealing from other students, and charging at and injuring staff. He needs a different, more intensive placement. The education of the other students have suffered greatly solely because of this kid due to the constant disruptions, room clears, and monopolizing of teacher and IA attention. He has injured 7 staff members (including me) multiple times and a medically fragile student from another classroom (not intentionally, she was collateral damage).
And through all of this, Mom completely enables the behavior and insists we’re at fault:
Why don’t you just let him do what he wants? Because that’s not how the world works?
Why are you allowing him to leave the classroom? Because your son charges at staff and he’s fucking huge.
Why are you putting yourself in his way? Because you literally complained about us not stopping him!
Why is his plan not being followed? It is, and we can prove it.
Admin is 100% supportive of my teacher, myself, and the IAs. They are fed up of this kid and parent. Literally everyone on this kid’s team is in agreement that this kid needs a more supportive learning environment… Except parent and the two district level people that can make this happen. We’ve brought up the sheer number of staff injuries, loss of instruction time, lack of progress despite many many MANY targeted interventions, and the fact that BCBAs, behavior specialists, autism team, and more are now involved. The district office does not care. They said it doesn’t matter what he does, they are not moving him because he is already been moved to our school and he will be going to high school next year. We have also been gaslit constantly throughout the year saying that we are exaggerating his behaviors and that we are not interacting with him enough. We are constantly interacting with this kid, to the point where other students in the class are not getting their needs met. We are not exaggerating his behaviors, and I’m very surprised to hear them say that considering they have witnessed one of his biggest blow ups when he almost took down a classroom door in an attempt to get to another student and had to go through five different staff members.
As it is right now, I am leaving at the end of the year, my teacher is leaving at the end of the year, and three of the five IAs are leaving at the end of the year. All because of the mistreatment and lack of concern for our safety from the district office.
We are tired of not being supported, heard, or even cared about. I work in the same office as these people, and my voice does not even matter.
And people wonder why no one wants to work in special education.