Guest Post: “The Wisdom of an American Teacher”

Here’s a Guest Post by an anonymous American Teacher who has posted here before. Please bear in mind, I do not endorse these opinions. I am presenting them to stimulate discussion only.

In the 1970s, intense pressure was brought to bear on public schools to include all students in the regular classroom.  Mainstreaming changed everything. Today, American schools favor what is called accessibility and inclusion.  The current order of things is taken for granted.  We are living in the unfortunate, extended afterlife of a dystopian experiment that has deskilled the American classroom.  While well-intentioned, mainstreaming students lowered standards for everyone.  It has been a change on a tremendous scale.  Education is no longer special when these students are put in the regular classroom.  It is time to abandon this project.

What is a special education student?  It has really come to be an indeterminate term.  They are a heterogeneous bunch.  We talk about them as though they are one entity, but they come in so many flavors:  the dull, the disruptive, and the dumb.  What no one wants to acknowledge about them is their abnormality.  Perhaps this point is so obvious as to be banal, but genuinely special ed students are ghastly.  Sometimes their ghastliness lies in their work; other times, it lies in their personalities.

A very basic yet simple question needs to be asked:  what is so special about special education students?  The answer: Nothing.  Nothing special is either visible or hidden in these students.  They are abnormal, irregular misfits.  Only the special can be called special.  We have become careless about this word, making it interchangeable with the abnormal. We have turned this word into just another well-meaning attempt at democratization.  Furthermore, we no longer interrogate the criteria by which we call someone special.  When even the ghastly are special, we have become dishonest.

I absolutely know that these students are not special.  I learn firsthand about these students every year in the regular classroom.  My heart races with distress in late August when I look at my roster and see all the abnormal students shoved in my room.  The difficulties with putting them there should be obvious.  With their outbursts and temper tantrums, their violations of social norms, they spark crises.  Sometimes it is hard to believe that these monsters are the creation of a beautiful God.  They are not able to conform socially.  They cast a shadow on the ability of everyone else to learn.  Their IQs tilt to the below average and they find it challenging to communicate and interact with others.  They need constant repetition; you can never give directions to them too many times.  I feel just a little bit glum when I look at their IEPs (individualized education plans) that lists all the ways the teacher must go out of his way to accommodate them.  When nearly half of a class gets extended time, preferential seating and their own study guides, the burden is not bearable.

Because mainstreaming is taken as a given, the misfits, instead of congregated in one place, are now dispersed throughout the school.  They feed into the classroom at unacceptably high rates.  Their numbers have way passed educationally possible levels, to the point where the classroom has become incoherent. I have had classes where forty percent of the students have been labeled special ed.  Sometimes I linger in the hall after the bell has rung, so much do I dread going in and dealing with the misfits.

Yet the school administration takes an unprecedented interest in these students, devoting faculty meetings and workshops to their needs.  State legislators also take a keen interest in them.  The normal student or the gifted student is no longer the driving force of the school.  He or she has become a distraction.

To be against mainstreaming is to go against the status quo; however, all of us have a duty not to look away from the uncomfortable: the abnormal have no place in a normal class.  Mainstreaming causes harm.

Putting these different kinds of misfits in the regular classroom has been an awful mistake.  The most important lesson to be drawn is that abnormal have gained more from all of this at the expense of the normal.  The casualty of mainstreaming is the normal student who now has to engage with the abnormal. Their right to a normal education has been sucked away from them.  They have been abandoned by the schools that they attend. Mixing the abnormal with the normal has proven destructive to the latter’s learning. We act as if there is very little we can do about it, yet there is a lot we can do to save the normal.

As mainstreaming has tapped into a huge parental population thirsting for services, parents have seized the government’s purse, putting their greedy hands in an expensive grab bag of accommodations.  Their kids get social workers, an IEP, a legal document which must be followed to the letter, a support class taught by a special ed teacher and a paraprofessional, and at least one meeting with administrators, social workers, speech therapists, and teachers a year.  It is easy to understand the allure of having your child labeled ‘special.’  When a child is labeled ‘special’, their services are endless.  When I first began teaching, many years ago, a severely handicapped boy was a student in my class.  Wheelchair bound, his senses, cognition, and obviously, motor-skills were severely impaired.  It was as though his mind was not plugged into his body.  Sometimes his arms jerked about.  He could not speak, read or write, yet he was taking algebra and biology.  He had his own bus bring him to school; his own aid do everything for him, from getting out his materials to taking him to the bathroom.  His parents, who lived in a home that at the time was valued at $700,000, sued the state for a $10,000 computer so that he could communicate.  The student was so cognitively impaired that the computer was useless.

People who cannot learn biology or algebra should not be in a biology or algebra class.  More important, they should not be allowed singlehandedly to derail a class with their flailing and moans.

Another year, I had a student with Turrets Syndrome in my class.  Not a day went by when he did not call out, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”  I ask you, is this desirable?  (I don’t know why these people cannot call out “I love you”, but that is another topic.)  His antics tore up the classroom.  The normal, talented students in my class were sabotaged by him.

Mainstreaming has achieved nothing except to remake the classroom, subjecting the class to the rule of the abnormal.  The normal can no more make normal progress.  The constant, uninterrupted disturbance of my classes, of teaching and learning, has to end.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this.  We can say no to this exasperating project and put the abnormal back in their own rooms where they belong.  When states across this country find themselves in financial straits, it is incumbent upon legislators to say no to the special education lobby and cut mandates that are unworkable.  If we stopped funding this waste with our taxpayer dollars, it would collapse.  The highest priority of a school should be education, not inclusion.  We should grant the gifted and talented the same seriousness we do the misfits, but their programs are the first to be cut.

It is to be expected that some will complain that removing the abnormal from the regular classroom is akin to a Nazi killing program.  To be clear, no one is arguing that the abnormal are unworthy of life.  They are just unworthy of life in a regular classroom.  We are not trying to determine who will live and who will die.  We are trying to create a high-functioning classroom.  After all, the misfits could be working twelve hours a day, six days a week for two dollars an hours at a factory in Chengdu.  They are not.

It is time to move past mainstreaming.  We don’t have to shove abnormal students out of sight while keeping them out of a normal classroom.  Abnormal students have no place in the regular classroom.  They can be educated to the best of their abilities in their own rooms.  A regular classroom cannot be maintained with irregular people in it. An alternative to mainstreaming has to be developed and that can only mean a separate classroom in some other wing of the building where abnormal people cannot infect the normal with their abnormalities.

91 Comments.

  • American Teacher
    May 21, 2018 7:59 PM

    @AT

    My heart aches for you, American Teacher

    • Oh, woe is me – I’m a rich white man in a society run by rich white men. Has anyone ever endured such terrible suffering?

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 2:42 PM

        @CH

        The advancement of some always comes at the expense of others, but it should never come at the expense of a healthy white male.

      • EvilWizardGlick
        May 22, 2018 3:28 PM

        American Teacher

        Almost everyone can trace their lineage back to Africa. Seems a couple of recent fossil remains can not be traced there.
        That makes us all Black at heart.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 4:58 PM

        @EWG

        “trace their lineage to Africa”

        Is this a theory or has it been scientifically proven?

      • > “trace their lineage to Africa” .. Is this a theory or has it been scientifically proven?

        AYFKM????? How the hell did you manage to get a teaching assignment? Does the sun orbit the earth in your reality? Are diseases caused by evil spirits? Did Noah really put 3,000 different species of snakes on the ark? Are you going to teach your kids that rain dances can fix global warming? … oh,wait – you don’t believe in global warming, either, do you?

        You are far too ignorant to be allowed out of your cage without a keeper. Spreading your superstitious nonsense to innocent children is right out. The best that can be said is that your monumental incompetence will ensure that the south never rises again.

        Moron.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 10:33 PM

        @CH

        The idea that Cheddarman was black was proven a hoax, too.

        I believe that humans are destroying the planet, especially the carnivorous ones.

        I’m not special ed, pal.

      • American Teacher
        May 27, 2018 6:42 PM

        @CH

        The human migration myth out of Africa is just that, a myth.

        Homework for you: read Bryan Sykes’ The Genetic Origins of Britain and Ireland.

  • EvilWizardGlick
    May 22, 2018 9:11 AM

    Tavis Smiley had a Black PBS panel talk show in the early 90’s.
    One of the guests stated that US teachers being mostly female reported issues with males students. That in Europe it was the opposite with male teachers reporting problems with female students.
    Maybe women can not teach rambunctions male children, and men have it hard comprehending wiley female students.

    There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can’t compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don’t give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you – yer kid is NOT autistic. He’s just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.
    Denis Leary

  • Maybe this is an extension of “every kid should go to college” meritrocratic ideology. It sounds like when we say we need higher standards that leads to unattainable goals for some and what happens to those kids. Hopefully, they can go to community college if they can’t make it to a 4 year school.
    I guess if someone has a “special” kid why wouldn’t you want more services? I can understand after the warehousing of the disabled, there is a reaction against that and toward inclusion. But it sounds like the teachers are not equipped to teach the various kinds of disabled kids. This also reminds me about the closing of mental hospitals after those abuses and the idea was to expand community mental health centers, which never happened, then many of the mentally ill were thrown out to the streets, and when they have a mental health crisis more likely than not, they are put in jail and that is ‘treatment”. Which goes to show, this country has been in a state of denial about our crumbling infrastructure and there is paralysis on how to do something.

    • EvilWizardGlick
      May 22, 2018 3:43 PM

      American Protestant Ethics.
      All you need to know.
      My mentally challenged cousin never went to college. He had a factory job and was a volunteer fireman. He was schooled in the “bad old days”.
      On the GF’s side she has a cousins kid wheel chair bound and a plethora of other issues.She went to college, got a degree and picked whatever job she wanted.
      My family works in facilities for the disabled of various degrees.
      Sympathetic to those who want to learn, and piss on the other ignorant fucks.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 4:54 PM

        @EWG

        I thought about you as I wrote this, remembering that you shared your story about your cousin. It made me pause and consider toning the piece down. I’m sorry if I said anything hurtful.

        I think everyone should get to make the most of their lives. It doesn’t have to be a chemistry class.

      • > I think everyone should get to make the most of their lives …

        … providing they’re white, male,xtians. Women, gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, ‘special’ students, and trans people need not apply.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 5:22 PM

        @CH

        Please, not the trannies.

        Wanting to be a man, if you’re a woman, is not normal. It’s sick.

        Wanting to be a woman, if you’re a man, is sick, also.

        Wanting these things does not make them so. It just makes you sick

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 5:25 PM

        @CH

        I’m worried about you.

        Hating your whiteness doesn’t do anyone any good. Your complexion is beautiful. Your European genome is beautiful, too.

      • No, teach, fearing people who are different than you -simply because they are different than you- is sick.

        You said it yourself: you feel ill when you see gay couples. That’s not their fault, it’s entirely your fault. If you could just outgrow your irrational fears you would be happier and you would cause less harm to civilized society.

        re: “Hating your whiteness doesn’t do anyone any good. ”

        I still have no idea WTF you’re talking about.

        If I said I like chocolate, would you assume that meant I hate vanilla? That would make just as much sense. (“none whatsoever”)

        The problem is that you see this big dividing line between “your people” and “other people” … I just see “people” (you know, like Jesus did?)

        If anything, “my people” are “people who play nice with others” – which quite obviously excludes “your people” regardless of color or any other irrelevancies.

        Oh, btw, yo’ mamma says she likes her vanilla with a whole lot of chocolate on top. I’m sure I have no idea what she’s talking about …

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 10:29 PM

        @CH

        I do have one fear: the American left and its twisted ideas.

        Feeling ill when I see two men make out doesn’t mean that I am sick; in fact, it makes me normal to be disgusted at such perversion.

        I work for the betterment of the civilized world. If you want to live in Sodom and Gomorah, pack your bags and leave.

        CH, l want to help you.

        Don’t deny it, you were in that SoSorry March; you know that movement, where whites dress up as slaves and run around saying SoSorry to POC.

        You have a people and we’re wonderful. Come join us.

        You don’t just see people. You see Jews, muslims, Mexicans, etc. You are obsessed with identity politics.

        Jesus saw Samaritans (as you pointed out), Jews, Roman’s. He did not see muslims and Mexicans.

        Don’t you talk about my mother. EVER.

      • > Don’t you talk about my mother. EVER.

        So … you expect people to treat you with more respect than you do them. Funny, that’s not how I read the golden rule. “… as ye sow, so shall ye reap” ? Does that sound familiar? It’s *your* bible, you read it.

        BTW, yo’ mamma says ‘Hi”

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 10:39 PM

        @CH

        The field of honor, Sir! Dawn!

      • Ok, okay, I apologize. Yo’ mamma didn’t say ‘hi’. It was more like “mfff MMMfffl mumph muggl gulp.”

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 11:00 PM

        @Ch

        I doubt it. Mama was married to a real man.

      • > Mama was married to a real man.

        uh … yeah … about that … let’s just say you’re not necessarily related to the man she married … m’kay?

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 11:28 PM

        @CH

        With all due respect for your fine intellect, you have made little inroad into my argument.

        Other commenters, Evil Wizard and No, at least comment on my argument.

        You lapse into identity politics and insults.

        Sad, very sad.

      • … and although he did pay on time, he never bothered to remove his hat.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 11:38 PM

        @CH

        Night, pal. Say hi to my buddy derlehrer for me.

    • American Teacher
      May 22, 2018 4:51 PM

      @No

      “Unattainable goals” –I think you’re right about that.

      Special has become indefinable. Whereas there used to be a stigma attached to it, today parents want their kids labeled special so they get services, particularly extended time. Extended time has turned deadlines into a fiction.

  • ye-e-e-sss, the government should decide who can and cannot be educated. Maybe they should make undesirables wear patches on their clothing or something.

    If such a Big Spending / Big Government program were implemented, one can only hope they would do a better job than they do at deciding who can and cannot be educators.

    • American Teacher
      May 22, 2018 2:36 PM

      @CH

      Maybe leave them on the far side of the mountain at birth.

    • EvilWizardGlick
      May 22, 2018 3:37 PM

      CrazyH

      I agree the government should decide.
      If kids don’t want to learn make them sweep streets. If they want to help them.
      Kids and parents are assholes.
      Why should I pay taxes to have some kid who doesn’t give a shit about learning take money from one that does.
      Put the little bastards to work sorting coal. Or picking up litter along the highway.

      • > Why should I pay taxes to have some kid who doesn’t give a shit about learning take money from one that does.

        I’ll make you a deal, wiz – you tell me why we-duh-pipplz should allow YOU to live off the fat of OUR land, and I’ll be happy to answer your question.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 4:44 PM

        @EWG

        Sweeping a street may make someone realize that reading a book is a luxury.

        Parents, more so than not, are raising conscienceless kids

        I don’t blame you for not wanting to fund a corrupt system.

        The Puritans wanted free schools for everyone. Maybe if those whose kids attended the schools had to pay a bit more, their kids would be more attentive and conscientious.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 4:46 PM

        @Ch

        Of course, I don’t know EvilWizardGlick personally, but perhaps he has paid his dues.

        He can live off the fat of my land so long as it’s vegan

  • http://www.tourette.org/resource/understanding-coprolalia/

    people with Tourette’s can learn to modify their outbursts away from obscene words.

    • American Teacher
      May 22, 2018 2:38 PM

      @No

      I am not a special education teacher.

      Is it my job to help someone modify this syndrome?

    • EvilWizardGlick
      May 22, 2018 3:33 PM

      No on
      As with every study, not everyone has the ability to do that.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 4:37 PM

        @EWG

        Special education teachers want to work with their targeted population.

        One woman seems to have infinite amounts of patience and kindness. She is also meticulous and appears to be the last to leave the building.

        Not everyone is like that, particularly when you get to the high school level and teachers are interested in a field.

      • EvilWizardGlick
        May 23, 2018 7:14 AM

        American Teacher
        Sorry, posted on Xanax yesterday.
        I meant not everyone with x disease is capable of controlling the issue.

      • American Teacher
        May 23, 2018 10:52 AM

        @EvilWizard

        This is true.

  • drooling zombies everywhere
    May 22, 2018 5:41 PM

    Ted, what are you DOING?

    This is not the first time you have gone after Special Ed kids. I can’t find the cartoon but you know the one I mean. It was during the second Bush era and it lost you most of your newspaper contracts at the time.

    Is this what you want to be known for now? Are you turning neocon like Christopher Hitchens?

    • uh, dude – before you go off on a rant like that, you might want to check the byline first.

      • American Teacher
        May 22, 2018 10:11 PM

        @CH

        Thank you, CH

        I take complete credit for my work and stand by everything I said.

    • American Teacher
      May 22, 2018 10:10 PM

      @drool

      Mr Rall is going after no one. This is the work of American Teacher.

      No one wants to admit the weakness of mainstreaming. Addition has too much subtraction.

      Our country is becoming retarded. (I mean that in a clinical sense.) Is that what you want, zombie?

  • American Teacher
    May 22, 2018 10:55 PM

    The “special” (how I despise that term) enjoy many privileges the normal do not have.

    Where’s Henri?

  • We are living in the unfortunate, extended afterlife of a dystopian experiment that has deskilled the American classroom.

    Nothing new here, «American Teacher», lard-arsed coaches like yourself were allowed to teach – or more accurately, to stand before a classroom of students – six decades (and I suspect, much longer, check out Ecclesiastes 1:9) ago as well….

    Henri

    • American Teacher
      May 23, 2018 5:59 AM

      @Henri,

      I have just made an important argument and would welcome feedback.

      Your continued fixation with my derriere makes me nervous. I might have to report this to Ted.

      • I sincerely doubt, based upon what you’ve posted to these threads, that you’ve ever «made an important argument in your life», «American Teacher» – you seem to lack the wherewithal. As to your derriere, it does seem to be your most prominent characteristic and thus something to which reference can legitimately be made, but if complaining to Ted would comfort you, please do so ; no doubt you will receive great sympathy from that quarter….

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 23, 2018 12:23 PM

        @Henri

        No feedback, no substance, very sad

      • «No feedback, no substance, very sad» No substance – but a great deal of avoirdupois – on your part, «American Teacher», thus nothing on which to «feed back». But perhaps we can agree on the «sad»….

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 23, 2018 12:55 PM

        Henri

        I had to CH to the field of honor yesterday. I seem to remember doing that with you as well.

        I am not to be provoked

      • «I am not to be provoked» I fear, my dear «American Teacher», a lard arse like yourself only allows her/himself to be «provoked» while cowering behind a keyboard and a pseudonym. Quelle farce !….

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 23, 2018 2:05 PM

        @Henri

        I thought it was interesting when I wrote of the financial burden of special education. States are not reimbursing towns for educating the misfits and so towns must go it alone.

        On a more cheery note, I see that the Swedish Democrats are coming to power. Cheers to Jimmie Akesson

  • To AT:

    Re you quote: “Parents, more so than not, are raising conscienceless kids.”

    I’d suggest kids raised by conscienceless adults have poor chances of developing consciences. The VAST majority of US adults, parents and not, are conscienceless and were made that way “being proud and unashamed” of financing their country’s perpetually causing misery, mayhem and murder across the globe.

    • American Teacher
      May 23, 2018 6:05 AM

      @Falco

      I am not sure that the ordinary American thinks of it in those terms.

      In 1979, the educator John Goodlad wrote in “A Place Called School” of the breakdown between home, school, and church.

      Whatever one thinks of organized religion, one cannot deny its role in instilling a conscience in people.

      Students are only nominally brought up with a religion.

      Student: “I think about what I want to do and then I do it.”

    • EvilWizardGlick
      May 24, 2018 8:03 AM

      falco
      There was a study that showed if children watched their parents run red lights those children would grow to to even worse abuses of the law.
      The fucking boomers were the first generation who CHOSE not to “grow the fuck up”.
      The want to be a child’s friend instead of a parent.
      They are NOT role models.
      I knew a poor working family. Both mom and dad held down a couple of jobs. This was 70’s on.
      They always had time for their kids. They supported them and taught right from wrong.
      Good decent people.
      That kind are few and far between these days.

      • American Teacher
        May 24, 2018 2:12 PM

        @EvilWizard

        Agreed 100%.

        And the good, decent people are eaten by maggots.

        I see it wi th the few nice students that I have.

  • A few observations:
    1. While annoying and trolly, AT seems to be correct about parental greed in grabbing every last bit of money / services available for their kids. I’ve seen it in my town, which has excellent schools.

    2. I graduated HS nearly 40 years ago. We referred to these kids as “SPEDs” back then. The term was the same in those days as he notes. Nobody thought being “special” in this way was desirable. My sons also are aware of that term and do not think it’s some sort of awesome way to refer to people.

    3. When you’ve got 40% (really?) of your students who are classified as special education, it’s clear that mainstreaming has taken away the stigma of putting your child into that classification and having them taken out of the main student population for their daily routine. Since the stigma has lifted, many parents will take the easy way out and try to use the system to deal with their kids rather than engage themselves. My thinking is that there were probably always the same percentages, but they did a better job of trying to assimilate in the past.

    • American Teacher
      May 23, 2018 10:50 AM

      @Chris

      Thank you.

      I have seen IEPs where a paraprofessional is sent to the student’s home to get the student up and make sure he gets to school.

      To be “special” today is a badge of honor. I frequently overhear parents proclaiming that they “have a special needs child. No stigma.

      And special needs can be anything, from these social anxiety disorders to wheelchair bound.

      Yes, I have had up to 40%. Parents want the overtime.

      • American Teacher
        May 23, 2018 10:56 AM

        @Chris

        I am sure that your town’s education budget is online.

        Check it out and see where your money goes, from transport to social workers.

    • EvilWizardGlick
      May 24, 2018 7:57 AM

      Chris S

      Different take.
      Most parents are disinterested until their kids fuck up.
      Most of their kids are dumb as a box of rocks.
      Those parents use the damaged/special/add/adhd/whatever the fuck excuse I need to lie to myself about how dumb my kid is.
      They syphon off necessary funds from the kids who are intelligent and hard working.
      I say many of those parents and students should be beaten with a stick until they admit the truth.
      Then put their kids to work cleaning litter from the highways and cleaning homeless people shit off the street.
      Why punish the good by enabling the bad?
      My area had so many kids get free school food that everyone including the people with money now get fed for free. We have radio ads about kids trading sex for food.
      All their parents have phones and flat screens. But don’t know how to cook a goddamned meal.

      • American Teacher
        May 24, 2018 8:01 PM

        @EvilWizard

        And when their kids ‘duck up’, parents blame everyone else

      • EvilWizardGlick
        May 25, 2018 8:58 AM

        “And when their kids ‘duck up’, parents blame everyone else”

        I just watched the stereotypical take on some tv show. Disinterested parents blaming the teacher for not doing enough to make their kid pass.

        Then again I watched a Greg Davies special, Magnificent Beast, where he talked about knowing when it was time to quit teaching.
        He was a Drama teacher for 13 years. He said at one point his kids were doing their plays and he and the English teacher were throwing blu tack at the kids being rude and yelling at them to get off the stage.

      • American Teacher
        May 25, 2018 2:04 PM

        @EvilWizardGlick

        A teacher can never do enough to help a student succeed.

        Countless times, when recounting a situation, an administrator has turned to me and said, “What could you have done?”

        My answer today is “Nothing. Now it is up to the student”

  • Rall, why the fuck are you friends with this misanthropic, ableist shithead?

    • American Teacher
      May 26, 2018 12:23 PM

      @Steve B

      Mind your business

      And watch who you call shithead.

    • «Rall, why the fuck are you friends with this misanthropic, ableist shithead?» A good question, Steve B. ; I can’t but wonder if our collective leg (or some other part of our anatomy) is not being pulled. But to what end ?…

      Henri

  • god these articles are dumb. I’ve read a few now and have finally decided to comment. my guess is that this person isn’t even a teacher. if he is then he’s vastly exaggerating the situation in high schools. I teach in a title 1 high school. There are plenty of SPED kids, from the severely mentally and physically disabled or emotionally disturbed, to kids who simply have a few quirks. They don’t consider Honors and AP classes as SPED, but in effect they are too. They serve the needs of kids whom wouldn’t be engaged in normal classrooms because they weren’t challenging enough. Severally mentally disabled kids are not put in normal core classes in any school I’ve ever been in either. There is an intensive needs and life skills wing for them. He’s flat out lying about that. SPED or not, there is also plenty of tiering in mainstream education. Take Physics for instance. Kids can take Physics, AP Physics, or Physical Science. Normal, high, low. Every core subject has similar classes to that. A lot of the nominally SPED kids this guy whines about end up in the low classes, so if you teach those classes, you’ll get a higher percentage of those students, and yes, those are challenging classes to teach because as this guy is insisting needs to be done, THEY’RE ALL IN ONE CLASS TOGETHER! So if you are teaching one of those classes, suck it up, act like a professional, and do your best to figure out how to teach them to their level of ability. They aren’t robbing the best students of an education though, because they aren’t in the same classes. The only caveat that I might put, is in the 9th grade, when some of the kids haven’t been correctly tracked coming in. By 10th grade that’s usually corrected by their own performance, and yes some SPED kids do just fine in normal or high level classes, while a lot of kids whom aren’t SPED don’t. It is true that one or two kids can hijack a classroom with their behavior, but they’re as likely to be SPED as they are to just be a brat. Learn to tighten up your classroom management skills. This guy sounds like that teacher who drones on at the front of the room for an hour and then gets pissed when teenagers are more interested in ogling each other than listening to him drone on. If the author actually is a teacher, and I am not 100% convinced he is, then he needs to find another profession.

    • American Teacher
      June 14, 2018 3:11 PM

      @Akryan,

      I’m dumb? You can’t even bother to capitalize correctly in your first sentence, never mind use paragraphs.

      How did you get your license?

      Since you teach and you’ve heard of mainstreaming, you know that the school administration want to get as many kids as possible in regular classes so the numbers look good. You also know that parents routinely override administrative and teacher counsel. Armed with lawyers, they always get their way.

      The kids in the low classes have little to no ability and what they have, they do not try to use. I am not going to pull my hair out over them.

      Since you have read my articles, you know what I think of classroom management. It is trick, designed to lay student misbehavior on the backs of teachers.

      You also know that I talk as little as possible at students or to them. I give lots of group work work.

      The question really is: Who Are You?

      • American Teacher
        June 15, 2018 11:40 AM

        @Akryan,

        If YOU are a real teacher, then you know that the real problems in schools is management, management that is afraid of parents, coddles kids, and won’t back up teachers.

    • «If the author actually is a teacher, and I am not 100% convinced he is, then he needs to find another profession.» Akyran, the poster to whom you refer is a Walter Mitty figure, but alas with a limited imagination and utterly without Mr Mitty’s charm. Best ignored….

      Henri

  • EspressoFiend
    May 28, 2018 10:16 PM

    Speaking of ” the dull, the disruptive, and the dumb” I find you are at least two of the three. You had a Tourette’s student for a whole school year and never learned to spell his condition? That lack of curiosity tells me all I need to know about your “teaching.”

    • American Teacher
      May 29, 2018 1:36 AM

      Finding a spelling error two-thirds of the way through the piece makes you petty.

      For the record, I am not in the least curious about the T syndrome, Asperger’s, ADHD, social anxiety disorder, and any other ailment you might mention.

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 1:53 AM

        @EspressoFiend

        I look at these ailments with skepticism and scorn.

      • «Finding a spelling error two-thirds of the way through the piece makes you petty.» Whereas finding the same error one third of the way through the piece would have been brilliant ? The point is, my dear lard-arsed and lard-brained «American Teacher» that, just as you yourself admit with that false pride which is so characteristic of you and your ilk, «[you are] not in the least curious about the T syndrome, Asperger’s, ADHD, social anxiety disorder, and any other ailment you might mention». You may very well live in the United States as your pseudonym poroclaims, but a «teacher», as EspressoFiend notes above, you are not….

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 2:13 AM

        @Henri and (EspressoFiend)

        I am interested in elegance, grace, beauty, and charm.

        Unfortunately, I won’t see much of those things today.

      • «I am interested in elegance, grace, beauty, and charm.» Don’t look in a mirror….

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 2:29 AM

        @Henri

        I’m not, at least not right now.

        I’m warming up my voice, listening to my beautiful baritone.

      • «I’m warming up my voice, listening to my beautiful baritone.» Are your aging ears still able to detect that pathetic squeak, «American Teacher» ?… 😉

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 4:32 AM

        I have been told by people who have heard him perform that I sound just like Jussi Bjorling.

      • «I’m warming up my voice, listening to my beautiful baritone.

        ….I have been told by people who have heard him perform that I sound just like Jussi Bjorling.»

        That lard-brain of yours makes itself evident once again, «American Teacher», hr Björling was a tenor…. 😉

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 5:47 AM

        @Henri

        Tenor, baritone, the point is were I not leading the team to victory, I would surely be singing Mozart arias in Milan.

        And now my own day of torture begins. Whoever thought of mainstreaming should be in the ninth circle of hell.

      • «Tenor, baritone, the point is were I not leading the team to victory, I would surely be singing Mozart arias in Milan.» The point, my dear lard-arsed and lard-brained fabulating «American Teacher» is that, hardly surprisingly, you don’t have a clue…. 😉

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 5:59 AM

        @Henri

        I almost broke into song just now.

        I know that you’d love to hear me, just as you want to see me.

        I also know that you’ll call that projection.

        What do you call having to spend the day around dimwits?

      • «I know that you’d love to hear me, just as you want to see me.» I know that you need to believe that, but for my part, I willingly abstain…. 😉

        «What do you call having to spend the day around dimwits?» Perhaps you should rather ask those forced to associate with you, «American Teacher» and thus have practical experience of teh matter ?…

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 6:32 AM

        @Henri

        Those who spend their time around yours truly, whether dimwits or not, generally call themselves fans.

        Note, you don’t willingly abstain from correspondence.

      • «Those who spend their time around yours truly, whether dimwits or not, generally call themselves fans.»Thus, if indeed there were any such, proving themselves to be dimwits….

        You seem to fail to understand, my lard-arsed and lard-brained friend, that if you post to me, I shall respond, If that distresses you, then get someone to explain the obvious alternative to you….

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 11:13 AM

        You post to me, you buffoon. And not once do you or perhaps can you respond to my argument.

      • «You post to me, you buffoon. And not once do you or perhaps can you respond to my argument.» My dear «American Teacher», you seem, lard-brain that you are, unable to understand that posting is a two-way street : you post to me and I respond to you, after which you respond to me, and so it goes. As for arguments, whyever should I – or, for that matter, anyone else – take seriously the specific remarks of a fatuous fraud who claims to «press» more than her/his (considerable) weight, but who can’t even distinguish between a press and a bench press, or who informs us that listeners compare her/his lovely baritone voice to that of the late tenor Jussi Björling and that, were s/he not such a successful «coach», s/he would be singing the lead at Teatro alla Scala ?…

        Pathetic….

        Henri

      • American Teacher
        May 29, 2018 11:28 AM

        @Henri

        Do you support mainstreaming? How has it worked out in Sweden?

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