Huh.
Michelle on Mar 29 2007 at 2:08 am | Filed under: The Teaching
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I am stumped.
I have an additional job now, doing homebound tutoring after school. I pulled up to the colorful blue and pink house without a front door and walked up and introduced myself to the girl on the steps. She invited me in. The stench was sooo bad that I almost left within the first ten minutes. It smelled like mildew + animal urine + something unidentified. Baaad poverty.
The school had asked me if I could take the job on Friday. I started today, and they gave me no paperwork, nada. Turns out the 10th grader I am tutoring cannot read or write. I mean, he cannot read or write. At all. As in, cannot spell c-a-t.
He was born with no brain function in the right hemisphere. As a result, the left-hemisphere is going crazy, firing off neurons rapid-fire, causing lots of petite mal seizures and then “medium” mal seizures nightly. As an added bonus, Kiddo got lead poisoning by the time he was four.
It turns out that he was sent to my program last year. He has been in regular classes where teachers call him “lazy”. He is on six different medications–five of which have the label “may cause drowsiness or dizziness“. Kiddo sleeps a lot in class. The reason he was sent to my program last year was because he cursed out one of the teachers who called him lazy.
It would be nice if people would communicate with each other about things like this.
Thank goodness his mom has saved all of the papers. They are a Spanish-speaking family, and have been pretty darn frustrated with the system. I wonder why?? I read his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) goals today, and they said things like, “Student will revise paragraphs, editing for clarity of expression, blah blah blah”. That is total bullshit, obviously. I still can’t get over the district not giving me a clue what I was walking into.
I had a great time after I got used to the smell. The family was really glad to see me, since the last teacher simply never showed up. It is their first experience with homebound. They seemed happy to vent some of their frustrations. Kiddo can mulitiply some numbers and remember most of the steps to two-digit multiplication. This is encouraging. He is a damn good artist, which is awesome.
Meanwhile, Kiddo cannot write the letter “b”. I have a challenge in front of me. I’ll do the best that I can, but he is sixteen, and you know, if he is still at this point, I’m not sure if I can make much of a difference. He seems severely dyslexic. I’ll try though. A good thing that could happen is that I will now get invited to his ARDs, where I can recommend that he be in a self-contained environment, which is what he wants. He doesn’t like being around all of the other kids. He is small and still sleeps with his mom. He keeps telling me that he wants to go back to my program, since the teachers there are nice. Whoa.
Anyway, it’s a good gig.
ITK code for Singing The Sky:
What a reality check for all of us. I can’t imagine how frustrated the kid and the family must be. But I know that someone is dropping the ball in informing the teachers and school of this young man’s issues. I can’t believe that people would treat him as lazy if they knew his history.
My Mum used to do home-tutoring for kids which didn’t quite fit elsewhere. I don’t think she ever had any kids quite so bad, one time she had a kid that had been excluded numerous times for disruptive behaviour and was way behind where he should of been educationally. I think she made some impact and got him learning some stuff just because he’d never had any kind of one on one adult attention before (I think he was about 14).
Anyway, sounds a bit like cause this kid is Spanish-speaking and so has been labeled lazy and as that fits a stereotype no one has ever bothered to dig any deeper. It is sad he’s got to 16 and never had his needs/ problems properly flagged up before. In the UK he’d no longer be in the education system at all at 16. Anyway, good luck!
I think people are brought into our lives for a reason … I can obviously think of all the things that you can do for this kiddo, but it will also be interesting to see what kiddo and this experience bring into your life.
Glad you liked the nomination on my blog - you deserve it! Keep writing Michelle, keep that voice of yours coming … JP
Good grief, Michelle. I don’t envy your chosen role, but I have nothing but respect for you.
(Did my comment disappear into thin air? Usually the number changes on the front page, but it didn’t this time. Apologies if double post…)
Good grief, Michelle! I don’t envy you your role in life, but I respect you immensely for it.
Reality check for sure. Man. You are a saint.
Wow, Michelle. I don’t know how you face these administrators day in and day out. Makes the incompetency in my former world (the church!) pale! But GOOD JOB!
Michelle,
Girl please! For the love of God, please get some psychiatric help. Please! If not for me do it for yourself!
Sounds like a tough challenge, Michelle. I guess his IEP hasn’t helped so far but maybe with you being there and caring he can finally progress a little. Any progress sounds like more than he has had so far. Good luck with building upon his strengths. It breaks my heart to hear about 16 year olds who are already disposed of by the educational system. Bless your heart for caring about him when most others don’t. At least he may see that all teachers aren’t unfeeling lumps. Good luck and keep us posted on how he is doing. Have a good weekend. (I’m off on Spring Break!!! Yea!!!)