special education – Words from the Long Run

New Year, New Reforms

February 4, 2020 by Kimberly Frey, posted in Education, Uncategorized

Hello, and Happy New Year! The Roaring 20’s is one of my favorite time periods in history, and I look forward to what this new decade has in store for us. It’s been awhile since my last post, but now that the hustle and bustle of the holiday season is over, I’m ready to get back to work and am focused on my goals for the year.

Interestingly enough though, this post is NOT about my 2020 goal agenda. I was actually inspired to write this post because of events that unfolded during our mid-year standardized testing that occurred upon our return from winter break.

I have been teaching for almost 20 years, and I have spent the majority of this time teaching special education. Even during the years I taught high school, although I wasn’t specifically teaching special education classes, as a dual-licensed faculty member of the English department, if you were a student with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that qualified you for special education services, I was your English teacher. So as a teacher who has had to administer standardized tests to students with special needs every year, I am intimately aware of the fact that the overabundance of standardized testing, and the subsequent reliance on their results, has wreaked damage to a population of students who already have a plethora of obstacles hindering their educational success.

Just to be clear, standardized testing is not new. Ever since Alfred Binet developed an intelligence test in 1905, there has been standardized testing designed to determine if you are smart enough, performing to certain measures, and/or the right fit for the job (or school). However, when then-President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, the use of standardized testing proliferated, and is now present across all grade levels, even amongst our youngest students in preschool and kindergarten and our most fragile populations of students with special needs.

Going back to our school’s recent testing window, our district was conducting Middle-of-the-Year NWEA MAP testing. Within my district, this same test is given at the end of the year as well. If you are in certain “benchmark” grades and you don’t pass the test, it is mandatory for you to be retained.

The MAP test in and of itself is not the worst test out there. It is an adaptive test. It is designed to either increase or decrease the rigor depending on the student’s performance. However, it also purposefully gives students questions on topics they haven’t been taught yet (supposedly to determine the student’s readiness for those topics). It is an untimed test, and students are allowed to take a break, pause the test, or even suspend it until a later time. All of this sounds great in theory. Until you have a student in the third grade on the Autism Spectrum who has extreme testing anxiety or a fifth grade student who has been diagnosed with significant emotional disabilities and is currently living with his aunt as his foster parent due to the emotional trauma he suffered when living with his mother. Both of these students are below-grade level. Their teachers already know that. Their cognitive and academic testing that was completed in order for them to qualify for special education services has proven that. The progress monitoring that is completed all throughout the year to determine whether or not they are on-track to meet their IEP goals shows their progress and keeps all of their teachers accountable. But yet, these students, and thousands like them, are required to take a test that creates undue stress and negatively impacts their self-esteem. My third grade student with autism was so frozen with fear all he could do was sit and cry. My fifth grade student had a complete breakdown in the testing room and had to be removed altogether. Why are non-educators so intent on forcing kids who already know what they don’t know (and feel inferior to their peers because of it) to prove on a test what exactly they don’t know?

For the parents who are reading this blog, please know that this unhealthy pattern of over-testing and developmentally inappropriate testing will continue until you band together and demand change. Teachers will support you if you demand testing policy overhauls, because teachers know that all this testing isn’t in the best interest of any of our students, not just those with special needs. The testing craziness began in earnest with politicians who didn’t have any teaching experience of their own trying to hold teachers accountable. (Oh, the irony, I know.) It is time to tell our current, and future, politicians that the harm we are causing our children must be put to an end. Let’s put policies in place that ensure that no student has to walk out of a room feeling broken and defeated. Now that would truly ensure that no child is left behind.

And They Say We’re Just Being Greedy

October 22, 2019 by Kimberly Frey, posted in Chicago, Civic engagement, Education, politics, Uncategorized

Rain or shine…we are taking a stand (or seat!) for our kids.

The last time I posted, Chicago teachers had just approved a strike if deemed necessary to get a fair contract for teachers and students. This morning, I started this post from the picket line where teachers have been since Thursday taking a stand for equity in Chicago Public Schools.

For those who are wondering what is at stake or believe that teachers are just being “greedy,” let me share a day in my life….

I teach at a school on the southeast side of the city. We are a small neighborhood school with an enrollment of slightly more than 300 students in grades PK-8. Almost 100% of my students receive free or reduced lunch. I have students who live in foster care along with students who are being raised by somebody other than a biological parent for various reasons. As the case manager for my school, I am in charge of the entire special education department, which serves approximately 45 students across all grade levels. We have been short a special education teacher since the start of the school year, along with being down two classroom assistant positions. Sometimes we have substitutes for those positions, other times we don’t. Regardless of the staffing, I am still responsible for ensuring that my students receive the services listed in their Individual Education Plans (IEPs). There has been a shortage of special education teachers in CPS for quite some time, but there is nothing in the contract outlining a plan for how to address that. There is an even greater shortage of classroom assistants because the starting wage is too low for people to survive off of, even though a bachelor’s degree is required for the position. I spend my days trying to provide services to as many students as I can while at the same time juggling all the responsibilities of case management: scheduling all IEP meetings (plus attending them), writing IEPs, meeting with other special education teachers, collaborating with general education teachers, and more.

Meanwhile, my coworkers in the general education classrooms are putting forth their best efforts to teach their students, often without the support of the classroom assistants they should have. Furthermore, they are teaching groups of thirty plus students at a time. Be honest – how is a teacher supposed to provide quality, rigorous instruction to thirty-one 3rd graders, thirty-four 4th graders, or thirty-one 7th graders at a time….with no assistance? Because those are the real numbers for those groups of students at my school.

Furthermore, let’s hope that none of our 300-plus students have a nursing emergency, unless it happens on the one day a week the nurse is scheduled at my school. I have one student on my caseload with epilepsy and another student who has a shunt from her brain to her abdomen area. Both of them have a lengthy list of precautions and advisories that need to be followed. We have students with asthma and others with allergies. There recently was a school in my network where a student died from an asthma attack. Every day, teachers are being asked to wear the hat of a medical professional on top of their many other responsibilities.

As if that wasn’t enough of a load to carry, the majority of schools on the south side do not have a full-time social worker. My students are confronted by a whole world of problems that many of us know nothing about: gangs, gun violence, drug and alcohol abuse, absentee parents, abuse… the trauma that my students suffer is heart-breaking. Yet, our school (along with most of the schools on the south side) only has a social worker on site one day a week. To add insult to injury, because of overcrowded caseloads, the social worker only has time to see the students with IEPs who have social work listed as a service.

The day before the strike, I was sitting with one of my 6th grade students. He had asked what a strike was, so I explained the concept and also what exactly teachers were asking for. He didn’t know what a social worker was, so when I explained that it was someone who the kids would be able to talk to about their problems, his words really hit me. He said that he thought that would be a good thing because “there’s a lot of bad stuff that happens in our neighborhoods, Ms. Frey, and it’s hard for us to come in here and focus on learning.” Out of the mouths of babes….

That is what I am fighting for. Please support us in our fight to get our students the services they need to be successful. If we are truly committed to decreasing violence in this city, then we must be committed to providing the services our kids need in order to get the education they deserve.

The Beginning of the End…and the End of the Beginning

June 12, 2019June 22, 2019 by Kimberly Frey, posted in Education, Parenting, Uncategorized

Although it seems as if school has ended for everyone, the district where I teach still has another week to go. The last day for students is next Thursday, the 20th. For teachers? Well, we have not only Friday the 21st to go, but also Monday the 24th. However, it is close enough to the end of this year to finally feel it is the right time for reflection.

This year was one of major changes for me professionally. It was my first year in a new role and with a new district. I had to learn all new systems – and am still learning them. I had to get to know new administrators and teaching staff, and also learn how I fit into this organization. It was my first time not having my own classroom or a home room of my own students, but instead being a part of multiple classrooms and working with a variety of students in all grade levels. It was a year where I often felt I didn’t quite fit in, even though I was serving in exactly the role I wanted for myself. I was no longer a classroom teacher in the traditional sense, but I also was not technically an administrator. It has been a year of challenging myself in new ways and identifying new goals. On top of that, as I shared with readers in a previous blog, this past year was one of great loss and deep grief. Managing all of these obstacles has been hard, but I’ve made it. This is just the beginning of this chapter of my life, so I look forward to how the rest of the story will play out.

For all my fellow educators, I hope you have time this summer to pursue the things that are important to you. Parents, take the time to make memories with your children. Students, be open to explore new places and ideas because you are only young once. Congratulations to everyone for closing out another school year, but remember that summer is just the start of yet another adventure. Let’s go write the next chapter of our lives.

Spring Fever

May 22, 2019May 22, 2019 by Kimberly Frey, posted in Education, Uncategorized

It’s May. Mid-May to be exact. While spring is a time of freshness and excitement as we leave behind the bitterness of winter, for teachers it is probably the hardest time of the year. For teachers, spring means students who are so close to summer vacation they struggle even more than usual to pay attention in class. Spring means students getting a week off from school and returning to class saying they don’t remember anything from the week prior. Spring means lots of rainy days where kids can’t go outside for recess. And spring means end-of-the-year testing – which will often determine whether or not students are promoted to the next grade and is also a large factor of a teacher’s performance evaluation.

Generally speaking, teachers are fond of assessments. We understand that in order to determine what our students learn, there must be an assessment given. We know that analyzing student assessments will guide our future instruction to make it more meaningful for our kids. We firmly believe that educators need to be held accountable for the education they are providing. No truly good teacher wants a bad teacher tarnishing the profession and creating an increased workload for his or her co-workers. However, the increased amount of standardized testing, the pressures it places on our students, and the degree of importance it now has been given to both students and educators is overwhelming. Children as young as eight and nine discuss being scared about testing because they’re afraid they’re going to fail. Teachers lose over a month of instructional time a year due to students taking standardized tests. Because these tests are now used as promotion criteria for many students, they usually take place about a month ahead of the last day of school. So teachers lose even more valuable instructional time because once these tests are completed, students simply check-out mentally seeing as they have already taken “the test.” And teachers who work with some of the most challenging populations are penalized on their evaluations because their students did not perform well due to a myriad of factors that were out of the teacher’s control.

Teacher Appreciation Week was already held at the beginning of May, but if you didn’t get a chance to thank a teacher, it’s never too late. As the school year is winding down, take time to acknowledge the growth your child has shown over the course of the school year and to appreciate your child(ren)’s teacher(s) for the part they played in it. If you don’t have school-aged children, send some encouragement to your friends who are teachers or maybe even drop off a surprise at your local neighborhood school. It will only take a few minutes of your time, but will mean a whole lot more than you know.

The New School

August 13, 2013 by Kimberly Frey, posted in Education, Uncategorized

Well, it has been a week plus a day since I started in my new classroom. Talk about hitting the ground running! Since I am teaching at a school that has both residential and day school students, we have spent the week getting to know each other and adjusting to the changes that naturally must occur whenever there is a personnel change. At the same time, I have been navigating the ins and outs of a new school system. However, I am loving every minute of it. I am surrounded by supportive people who maintain a positive outlook each day. I feel I have returned back to my roots and am excited to see what the future holds. Right now, I have been focusing on getting to know my students and setting up my classroom. (Plus spending some time stressing about having to teach math and science again.) After Labor Day, all the fun and games will be set aside and the real business of learning will begin. While the beginning of a new year is always exciting and full of promise, I can honestly say that this is the most excited I’ve been about a new school year in a long time. Let the adventure begin!

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