Teach Effectively!

Over on Mentor Matters, Mrs. Ris provided an excellent example of how the continuum of services has been thinned to the point that it cannot accommodate children. She has been documenting the situation with siblings who have emotional and behavioral problems—one who has been identified and the other who soon may be—and her school administrator’s efforts to meet these children’s needs…sorta.

In Mrs. Ris’ entry for 6 October, she provides editorial comments on the need for and absence of services in general education classrooms and elsewhere along the continuum of alternative placements.

The full continuum of services envisioned by the crafters of the original spec ed law is just not out there. Counties just say, “We don’t have that here, so the child has to receive services in a less than desired setting.” To my mind, this borders on the criminal. It’s definitely unethical.

Here! Here!

Link to Mrs. Ris’ entry on Mentor Matters. (Search for previous entries referring to her on this blog and over on EBDBlog.)

I’m late posting about this story, but it merits recounting. The Associated Press picked up a story reported 25 August 2005 by Karen Kane and Virginia Linn of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA, US) about a boy who died during administration of a controversial therapy for autism. It’s a sad one.

A 5-year-old autistic boy died Tuesday in a Butler County doctor’s office while undergoing an increasingly popular though controversial medical treatment touted by some as a cure for the lifelong neurological and developmental disorder.

Abubakar Tariq Nadama died while receiving chelation therapy, an intravenous injection of a synthetic amino acid that latches onto heavy metals and is then passed in the urine.

State police at Butler are investigating Nadama’s death, which occurred at about 10:50 a.m. Tuesday in the office of Dr. Roy Eugene Kerry in Portersville.

Authorities said Kerry’s office reported that the child was receiving an IV treatment for lead poisoning when he went into cardiac arrest.

There has not yet been a finding that the therapy caused the death.

The private group, GenerationRescue, that is touting chelation therapy as a cure (the group’s choice of word) for autism issued a statement reiterating its position. The group provides 31 links under the heading “Top Scientific Reports.” Most of them are not reports of studies, but testimony before Congress, Web sites, and public statements. A few are data-based articles in reputable journals, but they are exclusively about issues such as the incidence of autism, not the effects of chelation therapy. I didn’t spot any that showed behavioral changes following chelation therapy.

Here are links to addtional coverage:

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette original and follow-up stories;
• MSNBC story (AP);
• Advokids blog entry;
• BloggingBaby’s entry;
• The GenerationRescue statement,

A novice teacher with a new blog and who lives in California described concerns about the quality of instruction she received in a class about special education provided by California’s Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) Program. Although much of what the person, who identifies herself as LingLing Zilla and bogs at “Blog of an Uncertain Teacher,” wrote regarding the BTSA covers other issues, a couple of paragraphs are about maleducation at the teacher preparation level.She described a person who presented a 1-day seminar on special education for the beginning teachers.

It turned out, she really didn’t have much substance to teach us, novice teachers. Her focus was gifted students plus a bit on differentiated instructions, with focus on, again, gifted students. Man, I don’t remember seeing a lot of gifted students in my classroom when I was still teaching. I think I got, maybe, two? She did not mention much (if at all) teaching strategies for kids with learning disabilities or other problems. Nor did she mention the procedures that a teacher SHOULD know if you suspect a student might be having LD or ADD or dyslexia. 504 plan? IEP? She didn’t mention any of those BASIC stuff in her SpEd seminar.

There is more to Ms. Zilla’s observations, of course. She goes on to compare the BTSA course to what she had learned in an earlier course she took, apparently during her undergraduate teacher education program. It is instructive.

Link to Ms. Zilla’s post. Link to a description of California’s BTSA program.