Feb 13, 2018 02:04 AM
https://psmag.com/education/america-keep...c-children
EXCERPT: . . . The violence that disabled children experience in American public schools should be a national scandal. It's certainly gotten enough coverage. In 2014, ProPublica published "Violent and Legal," finding over 267,000 incidents of violent restraint in 2012. In 2015, the Center for Investigative Reporting offered a state-by-state analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline, showing that black, Latinx, and disabled children—especially those who were non-white and disabled—were far more likely to be arrested and charged than other children. And, just last May, Education Week published a study finding that at least 70,000 students covered by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) had been restrained or secluded in public schools in 2013–14. [...]
And yet, despite the media coverage, we have yet to see any coherent national response. Based on our best available information, the rates of violence at the hands of school officials and criminalization of disabled children, especially those who are multiply marginalized by factors such as race or poverty, continue unchecked. [...]
There's a saying in the autistic community: If you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. The goal is to avoid assuming that knowledge of one person and their needs grants the ability to generalize. Still, there are best practices that both respect individuality and create better environments where neurodiverse children can learn and thrive. [...]
To better understand meltdowns, specifically those related to autism, I called up Lydia Brown and, separately, Finn Gardiner. [...] "When I was in fifth and sixth grade, something would happen in class that would cause a meltdown," Gardiner says. "I was never violent; I was usually verbal." He tells me that, sometimes, he was bullied or deliberately provoked, but often a teacher or some kind of classmate behavior would unpredictably just set him off, and he'd lack the words to explain it. Then he'd be punished. [...]
Brown explains that meltdowns can be very scary, and that force or threats will never help. "When somebody is in a meltdown," Brown says, "that person is unable to process anything else. Every tiny stimulus can be painful and overwhelming. Even if [you] wanted to listen to what somebody said, to follow directions, you probably can't. Everything is happening too fast, too much, all at once. The important thing is not to punish somebody for something that is literally out of their control."
Obviously, the most important step is to identify triggers and remove them as much as possible, or to create the conditions for children to quickly move to a safer context. "If one of the precursors to a meltdown is transition," Brown says by way of example, "then it's your responsibility for the adult to prepare the kid better. To help the kids to work step by step, to practice." Brown acknowledges that it might take years.
[...] schools do punish people when they are panicking, and Sam Crane, an attorney and the director of public policy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, is afraid she knows why. Behavior intervention plans, she explains, are part of disability-rights education legislation. Once you have a plan, you have all kinds of added rights as a member of a protected class of American citizen. If you charge someone with a crime, though, schools can skip right past disability law. "Under the IDEA," Crane writes me, "[a] student would be entitled to a manifestation determination, to decide whether his behavior was a manifestation of a disability. There's no such requirement when referring a kid to law enforcement." Crane believes that, around the country, schools are pushing teachers and other staff to press charges.
Crane warns me, though, that behavior intervention plans can be problematic too. They are too often "terrible and coercive," she tells me via email, placing the blame for difficult incidents squarely on the shoulders of the kids, rather than assessing the environment. [...]
MORE: https://psmag.com/education/america-keep...c-children
EXCERPT: . . . The violence that disabled children experience in American public schools should be a national scandal. It's certainly gotten enough coverage. In 2014, ProPublica published "Violent and Legal," finding over 267,000 incidents of violent restraint in 2012. In 2015, the Center for Investigative Reporting offered a state-by-state analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline, showing that black, Latinx, and disabled children—especially those who were non-white and disabled—were far more likely to be arrested and charged than other children. And, just last May, Education Week published a study finding that at least 70,000 students covered by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) had been restrained or secluded in public schools in 2013–14. [...]
And yet, despite the media coverage, we have yet to see any coherent national response. Based on our best available information, the rates of violence at the hands of school officials and criminalization of disabled children, especially those who are multiply marginalized by factors such as race or poverty, continue unchecked. [...]
There's a saying in the autistic community: If you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. The goal is to avoid assuming that knowledge of one person and their needs grants the ability to generalize. Still, there are best practices that both respect individuality and create better environments where neurodiverse children can learn and thrive. [...]
To better understand meltdowns, specifically those related to autism, I called up Lydia Brown and, separately, Finn Gardiner. [...] "When I was in fifth and sixth grade, something would happen in class that would cause a meltdown," Gardiner says. "I was never violent; I was usually verbal." He tells me that, sometimes, he was bullied or deliberately provoked, but often a teacher or some kind of classmate behavior would unpredictably just set him off, and he'd lack the words to explain it. Then he'd be punished. [...]
Brown explains that meltdowns can be very scary, and that force or threats will never help. "When somebody is in a meltdown," Brown says, "that person is unable to process anything else. Every tiny stimulus can be painful and overwhelming. Even if [you] wanted to listen to what somebody said, to follow directions, you probably can't. Everything is happening too fast, too much, all at once. The important thing is not to punish somebody for something that is literally out of their control."
Obviously, the most important step is to identify triggers and remove them as much as possible, or to create the conditions for children to quickly move to a safer context. "If one of the precursors to a meltdown is transition," Brown says by way of example, "then it's your responsibility for the adult to prepare the kid better. To help the kids to work step by step, to practice." Brown acknowledges that it might take years.
[...] schools do punish people when they are panicking, and Sam Crane, an attorney and the director of public policy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, is afraid she knows why. Behavior intervention plans, she explains, are part of disability-rights education legislation. Once you have a plan, you have all kinds of added rights as a member of a protected class of American citizen. If you charge someone with a crime, though, schools can skip right past disability law. "Under the IDEA," Crane writes me, "[a] student would be entitled to a manifestation determination, to decide whether his behavior was a manifestation of a disability. There's no such requirement when referring a kid to law enforcement." Crane believes that, around the country, schools are pushing teachers and other staff to press charges.
Crane warns me, though, that behavior intervention plans can be problematic too. They are too often "terrible and coercive," she tells me via email, placing the blame for difficult incidents squarely on the shoulders of the kids, rather than assessing the environment. [...]
MORE: https://psmag.com/education/america-keep...c-children
