This is probably a good time for a couple housekeeping details, starting with an apology to anyone who is a regular follower of this blog, or who may have tried to post a comment or become a "friend" of the blog. My techie skills are not as sharp as I might like, and in all these years I have not figured out how to make the site more user-friendly. I generally post on both FaceBook and Twitter whenever I publish a new blog, but that isn't much help to those of you who are not on social media. If someone has a suggestion to help out with this, it would be much appreciated. Or, if you have additional comments or questions, please do email me at: crbrandl777@gmail.com
One unresolved problem has been that links I have inserted into the blog postings only seem to work for a short period of time. From now on, I will try another way to provide these links.
And then, when I started this blog, I was thinking it would be a chronological story of my journey as a teacher, as well as a grandma, and most recently a retired teacher still working part-time doing something I love (and now a great-grandma). But, alas, my brain doesn't work that way, and there have been so many detours and side stories that any such order is long gone. I have always been an abstract-random sort of person, and offer apologies once again to those of you who might prefer a little more order or structure.
And now, moving on.
My personal history with special education and the movement toward inclusion has had an uncanny similarity to what has been true of the field in general, at least here in my home state of Wisconsin. Sometimes it seems things were just meant to be - and I have been blessed to be a part of the progress we have experienced. Have I mentioned that I was born in 1943, the year that Leo Kanner was credited with first describing what we know as autism? How's that for synchronicity?
I stumbled into a brand new college major, mostly because I was always trying to figure out how to afford the next step in my education. For all of you who are much younger, it might be hard to believe that this was difficult at a time when tuition was a mere $150 per semester. But it was! In the middle of the 20th Century, schools were not required to provide an education to children with disabilities, although some had programs that were being taught by kindhearted teachers who were willing to give it a try. Somewhere around 1964 (Was this maybe part of the Great Society?) funds became available to train teachers at the university level in the area of Special Education. I applied for a grant and was one of three students accepted into the inaugural program at the University of Wisconsin. When I graduated with my M.S. degree and Special Education certification n 1966, the three of us had our pick of schools throughout the state who were looking for people just like us.
My very first teaching job was an elementary class for the "educable mentally retarded" (EMR) and we started out in a church basement room just a block away from the elementary school. See link below for a description of that assignment. Suffice it to say, we were not being "included" in any way at all, even once we were moved into the regular school.
Along the way in my education, I spent time as a volunteer in a residential facility for kids with significant disabling conditions of great variety. Most were confined to cribs, and those who were mobile spent most of their time in a stark, virtually empty day room. There was no educational programming and no opportunity for inclusion of any kind, just relative safety, regular meals, and a clean bed to sleep in.
I also helped out in some classrooms that were contained in regular public school buildings. Those programs at that time tended to be entirely self-contained, and the students, for the most part, would be labeled "Learning Disabled" today. The curriculum was essentially a watered-down version of what was being taught in the regular classroom, and these kids spent no time at all with "regular" kids.
You may have heard statistics for the number of kids with autism, starting at about one in 10,000 --- most likely in the mid to late 1970's. That is about the time I first became aware of the condition we now know as autism, with current numbers running at about one in fifty.
The 1975 "Education for All" act opened schoolroom doors for students of all levels of intellectual functioning as well as all levels of need for support and accommodations, later known more popularly as IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). In yet another coincidence in my life, I started working at almost exactly that time in another residential facility - one specifically designed for children between the ages of six and 18 with severe autism and/or childhood schizophrenia. It broke my heart to think these kids weren't home with their families, especially when I realized that many of the families rarely came to visit, and the kids went home for a visit even more rarely. But they were by far the most challenging students I have ever had the privilege to know --- and to learn from.We tried to provide something in the way of educational programming, but the main emphasis was on managing behavior. All we had to offer in that regard at that time was medication (lots of it) and some variation of "B-Mod" --- our shorthand for behavior modification, using rewards and punishment (way too much of that).
By 1980, I was teaching in what is best described as a "segregated" school serving kids from across our county, between the ages of six and 18. Once again, some of the students with learning disabilities were getting watered-down academics, but now they were joined by kids with some very significant needs who were getting mostly therapy and help with basic needs, with something new thrown in - functional life skills. A large room in the school was converted to a fully furnished apartment where kids could practice things like setting the table, making a bed, sorting silverware or folding towels. As a busy mother in my off-duty hours, I found myself wishing that my so-called "regular" kids at home could learn to do some of these things. But I also had to consider that most kids did not learn these tasks in a school setting. It didn't help that many of them had significant motor impairments making these household tasks almost impossible for them. Obviously, there were still no opportunities for inclusion.
I started to question the value of what we were doing, becoming more aware all the time that we were warehousing these kids in a rather restrictive learning environment. Certainly some of them --- maybe all of them --- deserved a chance to be around typical children their own age. Once I started voicing my doubts it wasn't long before I was challenged to put my money where my mouth was - and I was moved out into the real world with a group of six students with autism, Down syndrome, and usually mild/moderate/severe "retardation" thrown in based on IQ scores.
Finally, we had some hope of being part of a regular school environment. Many great, and some not so great experiences were to follow, and of course my education was just beginning.
For more reading:
http://grandmacharslessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/03/special-education-in-early-years.html
http://grandmacharslessonslearned.blogspot.com/2011/04/autism-my-early-education.html
http://grandmacharslessonslearned.blogspot.com/2018/08/thoughts-about-inclusion.html
http://grandmacharslessonslearned.blogspot.com/2021/10/my-life-as-behaviorist-total-fail.html
http://grandmacharslessonslearned.blogspot.com/2021/10/my-life-as-behaviorist-total-fail.html
