Teaching kids with PDD

Sheesh. What happened to differentiation and offering choices? Of course learning to work in a group is important, but if that is a known area of concern, his grade shouldn't be riding on it.

Talk to the sp ed teacher. Tell her you want to amend the IEP to add (on the accomodations & modifications page) "Provide an individual alternative to graded group assignments." Then if the teacher still refuses, you can take her to due process.

My guess is that the teacher thinks he's capable of doing partner work, and nothing in his IEP mandates that he work without other kids. Lots of kids dislike group work for various reasons-social, emotional, psychological, academic, special needs-they still have to do it though. Could you or the teacher offer an incentive to go outside his comfort zone and do partner work, or let him do it with a less threatening classmate? Or structure the partner work so they can work parallelly and not cooperatively?

It seems frustrating from your perspective! But the teacher might see it as essential for classroom harmony that hard headed teacher win this round versus hard headed kid

whoa! sounds like the other kid was the problem in this case. hopefully the zero was an idle threat and he won't be punished for another kids misdeeds.

yay chess club! i can give some advice if you like. you actually dont have to know chess to run the club

Sorry if I reacted in an overly combative way. I feel strongly that as long as kids are learning, they do not all have to do the same thing or do it in the same way. (I assumed you'd already tried talking to the teacher, trying to negotiate a compromise, etc, and that she wasn't willing to work with you.) When a student and the parent are in agreement that another type of assignment will better enable him to show what he has learned, why can't that be allowed? Making a kid so stressed he shuts down is teaching him only one thing: that school isn't meeting his needs. It sounds like you are working toward a solution, but seriously, you might want to bring it up at his next IEP. You could put in a statement that an alternative assignment can be given AS NEEDED (because you don't want anyone to automatically exclude him from group stuff, either!) just in case it becomes a problem in the future.

What Ruth said. No way should a kid be penalized for behaving in a way that is totally to be expected, given the identified condition. And no way should he be penalized for getting frustrated and withdrawing when the other kid was refusing to let him participate.

I have definitely taken the hard-nosed route with kids in that situation: This is your partner. You work together, or you sit and watch how other kids work together. But I never did it for a grade, and I never did it unless I could be actively engaged in helping the two kids negotiate the differences. Kids like that don't learn social skills on their own. They need a grown-up there with them, modeling better solutions.

On a related note... I have my new student, who is clearly on the spectrum but hasn't been officially identified yet. Then I have my mainstreamed student, whose main disability is autism. Really interesting how they have started working together voluntarily on a regular basis. They seem to relate pretty well together. The quieter boy gets left out of stuff otherwise, but the new boy is too pushy to allow that. And neither of them minds that the other is obsessive about certain things. The only time they have problems is when new boy gets into quiet boy's physical space. New boy doesn't like to be touched, either, but so far he doesn't get that other people might feel the same way sometimes.

Actually, I do a LOT of partner and group work, because it's a really important strategy for kids who aren't native speakers of English. But I'm always very careful to set up partnerships that will work, and if I have concerns, I hover near the ones who need me. So I think the teacher made a big mistake and set up your kid for failure. Which means he should have a chance to make up the zero.

Also: I hope the girl who treated him badly was also threatened with a zero for the same decision not to work with her partner?

I'd set up a consult with the school psychologist or social worker and have them observe the class. Sometimes another set of eyes can pick up what the teacher is missing in the dynamic. Insist on it if need be.

My Special Ed PTA has a parent support group. We bounce this stuff off of each other. It works well, because parents of older kids know the teachers. You may want to look into that idea. I don't know where we'd be without that insight.

Good luck.

Jumping in to say it's not the class, or even the students, it's the teacher.
You need a different teacher.

Is this easy for me to say? Nope. I'm a retired, middle school science teacher with 35+ years of experience. For most of my career I was the 'go-to' teacher who worked with retarded, autistic, CP, blind, deaf and etc. children. In other words, I was the one with the most patience and insight to the issues these kids present. I worked with other teachers in the science dept who had a very difficult time dealing with any children who are far off the mainstream. It sounds like that's what you have.

Don't be afraid to be pushy or assertive. If nothing is done about this situation, talk to the administration and bring a child advocate along with you, if you must. The first and most important thing any teacher must attempt to do is treat every child with dignity and respect, then make sure they are in a safe environment that will help them learn. Children are not to be fit into little square pegs - lots of them are round.

As it turned out, I became (at age forty) the parent of an autistic-retarded child and I fought for him every step of the way. (He is now 20 and still in school until age 22.) I didn't really have to fight though, the school system he is in is brilliant - to use a British term for 'great.' Anything we asked for, we got.

Science is often the greatest class for any child - full of activities and experiments - but when you get a rigid teacher... (Come on, a zero for not working in a group? What the heck is that about? Even the most inflexible teachers I knew would never, ever do that! How is that a reasonable recourse? I'm pulling my hair out over it.)

When you get such a rigid and unreasonable teacher it's time for Mom to go into action and make no apologies for doing what is reasonable, correct and legal under the law.

I taught in MA btw, and the educational laws re. IEPs and their many requirements are very, very strict.

I do think maybe you should stop helicoptering so much.

Unless his IEP says "Cannot work in groups," it's something he needs to learn to do. And yes, sometimes you have to make adjustments to a non-ideal learning environment and non-ideal partners. It would be nice if we could all have personally-tailored instruction that accomodates our unique needs, but depending on the severity of his PDD, he's also going to need to learn to push through his "hard-headedness" rather than expect that he can shut down and withdraw and force everyone else to adapt to him.

Getting a zero is not the end of the world, if it's a learning experience.

sissybaby said:

But something about the dynamics of the science class is producing some behaviors or anxieties or something that is sending up some red flags for me.

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Aha - science class.

Let me chime in with some experience from the student's side of things. When I was in school, I was like your son, and without knowing anymore than a few basic facts and the fact that this is science class, I'd venture a guess that he's not being "controlling."

It's not uncommon with lab work for the "approved" method to make no sense to someone who is cognitively diverse. Either the steps are inefficient or the methodology is unnecessarily dense or the apparatus (if any are present) is configured in a ridiculous manner.

I used to drive my teachers crazy with this. I COULD NOT do things the way they were stated in the book. My set-ups were "wrong," my methodology "missing" parts or steps. Only... they weren't. I did things (equations, preparatory steps, etc.) in my head and arranged the apparatus the way they made sense to me. For example: I can't stand things that end or group into even numbers, and I can only comfortably sit on one, specific side of a table. Try explaining that to someone who doesn't understand it. It sound nuts, made-up, or even controlling, but it's not. And it works. I could get the right answers doing things my way, but could not work with a partner because the partner didn't understand my methods anymore than I understood the book's.

Peer teaching sessions were worse because while I can do things, I CANNOT explain how I do them - especially higher math and science. In school, I'd be lost on the week's lesson for about 3 days on average until I'd internalized enough information to refit it to a method I could use and understand.

It's an imperfect analogy, but think of it like having 3-dimensional dyslexia. Where a visual dyslexic may see letters jumbled or an audio dyslexic might hear sounds jumbled, someone on the spectrum can look at the same set-up that makes perfect sense to the other 21 kids in the room, but see it as a horrific mish-mash that can't possibly work. And with peer groups or peer teaching, you end up with the equivalent of two people who don't speak the same language trying to work together without a translator.

sissybaby said:

Of course, when I brought this up to the spec. ed. teacher, she made the comment that his teacher didn't know the details of his IEP. WHAT? How can she meet his needs if she doesn't know what his needs are? I thought the law provided for his teachers and the people that work directly with him to know the details of his IEP, but I guess I'm not as informed as I need to be.

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Sadly, it's not uncommon at all. There's a lot of resentment for IEP with some teachers. Learning the IEP of multiple students, and modifying their work accordingly, takes time. Most teachers are overworked as it is, and it's easier to consider "problems" in class as coming from choices the student has made rather than from issues they can't control. Also sadly, many parents don't keep up with the IEP and so don't intervene.

Have you gone to the district's superintendent and to him/her that not following the IEP is a violation of the law? Those zeroes would likely disappear from your kidlet's record pretty quick.

Sometimes kids have to face the consequences of their actions. If he leaves the material twice, maybe he needs to learn from that. However, only if it's his fault and not the fault of someone who is supposed to be checking that he has everything he needs.

I must say, I also live in a great school district and I know the law. NYS requires it be handed to us before every CSE meeting. Most of my daughter's teachers post review sheets and homework on their e-boards. (My how times have changed.) Last year's teachers didn't always, but I checked the e-board of every teacher on the grade level in the district until I found study materials.

Now to law, if you are in the United States, all of his teachers must have access to his IEP. This is part of IDEA. However, having access to it and looking at it are not the same. I know parents who e-mail every teacher before the start of school and give a brief description of the needs of their children, pointing to the IEP or 504 for further info. This world contains two types of teachers, Special Ed friendly and not.

You might try approaching the teacher again. I'd go with something like, my son needs a team of supporters to help him succeed in school. I value you as part of that team. Is there anything you feel we could do differently at home to better prepare him for group work in your classroom? Do you have any other questions or concerns about his behavior in your class or in general? You can also try presenting resources.

I come at this from the teacher and parent perspectives. Good luck with all of it.