Blog #8 - Exceptionality

Due to the fact that many educators have not exposed themselves to other cultures and have a complete misunderstanding of the African American culture, placing children in special education has become a place of behavior issues versus mental/learning disabilities. So many children of color are viewed as SPED due to the fact that they do not learn as the mainstream does. Hence their needs are not being met and become bored in the classroom. Through this boredom they either become disruptive or despondent and unfortunately too many educators view this as an issue with the child and not themselves. If we were to take a good hard look at a number of students who are mislabeled as SPED we would see that many of them should be GT. Their thinking is abstract and far beyond the norm of a mainstream student their age. Due to lack of patience and foresight educators immediately begin to fill out the paperwork to have them tested for special education versus gifted and talented. One of the things that my mentor told me when I began my career was 'There is a very thin line between genius and insanity, as well as, intellect and idiocy; it is up to us to delve into our students to see what process they go through to get to an answer rather than observing if they can mimic what we give them." As I have spent several years as an educator I have discovered how true the statement is . . . when students say certain things a lot of the time teachers get impatient with their statements because on the surface they appear to be nonsense. But if we would just take a moment and listen to the logic, not always mainstream, their comments and statements are quite profound.

As I think of those students who are forced to work in general education classes that should truly be in self contained classes I shake my head at the disservice we give these children. I do believe that they are entitled to an equal education, but how equal is it when they are in a classroom with 18 other students and no inclusion teacher? Especially when their testing is modified and they don’t count against a school ranking score. I know this sounds very pessimistic and negative, but when I see children being thrown to the wolves without the skills needed to survive it angers me. Or let’s look at it from another point of view . . . how about the same students who are being disservice because too many students are in their self contained class who are mislabeled and are behavior issues due to boredom. It is time for our school districts and universities to start giving aspiring teachers a real world view of what the classroom is really like and train them to go back to the drawing board instead of documenting enough paper work to SST a student away because you don’t want to ‘deal’ with them any longer.

If educators don’t stand up for their profession and students, with the help of parents, to make schools more equitable I often wonder who would. Education has never been a ‘cash cow’ therefore it gets put on the back burner when it comes to equality in the classroom. Money is such a powerful force in this country it is a shame that it comes before education. Truth is we tell our children every day that their education is based on their parent’s income. If you just look at the difference between Title 1 school's versus schools in upper middle class neighborhoods. Then you are left with the endless debate of who is responsible of making sure ALL children get an equal education. So many people look at teachers . . .but teachers have their own families to support and take care of, if the continued to spend hundreds of dollars to keep their classrooms competitive, especially on the salary they are paid, who takes care of their children? This is why many teachers, in my opinion, are compelled to take legal action against school districts when students and their families get the short end of the stick. It is going to take parents, teachers, administrators, and political leaders getting on the same page to fully make education fair and just for all students.