Aspies For Freedom

http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/10350661.htm

PALMYRA, Pa. - Under state rules, secondary school teachers must be certified in all the subjects they teach to be called "highly qualified" - a rule that angers those who teach multiple subjects, as is often the case in special education.

"Learning British literature or calculus will not help my students," Palmyra Area School District teacher Michelle Rubey said. "I would be better off taking classes on Asperger's syndrome instead of spending a lot of study and time on something I won't teach."

Rubey said she is worried for her job, despite having a master's degree in special education and 11 years of experience. She and some other teachers of special-needs students say the requirements are unreasonable.

"I'm very knowledgeable about psychology and evaluation reports, but not algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics," said Brian Kolisak, a learning-support teacher at Palmyra Area High School. "But that's not what I teach in special ed. I'm teaching banking, how to do taxes, how to purchase a car."

Members of the State Board of Education plan to vote next month on changing the rules for special-education teachers.

"Most of us here are thinking that the rigor has to have a reasonable component to it," board Chairman Karl Girton said. "Asking somebody to be certified in five subject areas doesn't meet the test of reasonableness."

But some advocates for special-needs children say the rules are there for a good reason - that students in special education need the best teachers.

"This state would be putting itself in jeopardy if the state would say that the only reason these children will get teachers who meet lower standards than other kids is because (the students) are disabled or because they speak another language," said Baruch Kintisch, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Education Law Center.

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Information from: The Patriot-News, http://www.pennlive.com/patriotnews

Wouldn't it make more sense for the teachers of special ed students to be experienced in teaching such students and to have personal qualities such as empathy, patience and ability to explain things in such a way that their students can understand.

Academic excellence in itself does not guarantee that a teacher will be good at teaching special education classes.

Hm. I am looking into becoming certified in special education teaching. I didn't even know that one could have the time to become certified in BOTH special ed. and in five subjects. Although I tend to agree that this standard seems unreasonable for most in special education, the idea that this might well be possible for an ambitious person intrigues me, as I would love to be certified in subjects ranging from math and science and language.

I do think it is a good idea to have this for people who deal with teaching a lot of the "high-functioning" people - I know at my school, that there are a lot of people who are aspie who get help from the instructors in special services, and very often I know more of the chemistry, physics, and math than they do. That's not to say that they aren't bright or knowledgeable or anything; they are in fact very nice and very helpful in helping me to understand instructions that, while to most being basic, confuse the heck out of me.

Of course, that kind of difficulty is so often encountered in regular education, where perhaps a teacher knows enough of the subject to teach it (such as a first-grade teacher teaching math), but when encountered with questions as to the why of it (which I have seen firsthand lead to kids very poor at math and kids very exceptional at math to both have struggles), the answers are few, and both get left to fend for themselves. (I almost gave up on math when I was in early elementary school, thinking that I was no good at it, only to realize years later that I had in fact been doing high school and college-level work that was mistaken by my inadequate means of explanation of it, for being poor work, as I had difficulty understanding/following verbal directions and often worked on deriving my own equations instead of doing the word problems about apples and oranges, or trains going opposite ways).

In any case, I do not think it fair to consider a special education teacher to be not highly-qualified because they are not certified to teach what they don't even teach. They should instead judge such on the criteria of how they help their students, in their demeanor. All too often people go into the profession when they never should have, and they get easily frustrated with the kids they're supposed to be helping, and blame us when we don't understand, or refuse to believe that the difficulty lies in how information is being communicated by them and/or perceived by the student, and instead blame the student for being "manipulative". If there were more safeguards to ensure that teachers acting thus would receive reprimands for such actions, then I am sure that everybody would be learning thing much more useful than "standards-taught curriculum".

Special ed teachers need to certified teachers with some extra courses and experience.  They need to know what their kids need to learn and how to teach it to them.  

They are not just supposed to teach life skills and nothing else.  Is that all we are expected to know:  how to shop, got to the toilet, make a sandwich?  It used to be that people growing up in institutions didn't learn any life skills to be able to live on their own since they learned to live within an institution.  The prejudice remains that people with disabilities are useless and can never live independently.

What a horrible cruel stereotype!  Literature!  Of all the things to deny somebody, literature!  Does she really think that any child with a diagnosis is incapable of enjoying a good story?  What is her problem anyway?