“I don’t know. I’m not really his teacher.”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Well, he thinks you are.”
“Oh, that’s so nice!” I wanted to punch her. She felt no sense of duty to Thorin who was a student in her classroom.
Mrs. Dean was also increasingly becoming a bigger obstacle to Thorin’s education. She had been doing assessments with Thorin but admitted she didn’t understand him when he talked. Still, she wanted to present her findings at the year-end IEP meeting.
Thorin shared with me at breakfast one morning, “No more Mrs. Dean.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Please.”
Ms. Shay, from the district office, seemed sympathetic to our concerns about Thorin’s education. I asked if she would attend a staff meeting. She was happy to attend and also said she would push Mrs. Dean to give concrete reporting on what she was doing with Thorin.
Before the meeting, Mrs. Dean offered to meet with Thorin and me. Both Mrs. Holt and the occupational therapist sat in with us, so they could update me before the meeting as well.
Mrs. Dean said to Thorin, “Want to show off for your mom?”
“Okay.”
“Alright, what have we learned? Let’s do it together.”
In unison she and Thorin said, “4, 3, 2, 1! Blast off!”
“Thorin, you forgot to jump out of your seat on blast off! Let’s do it again!”
“No, please don’t,” I said. Seeing it once was disturbing enough.
“We have to! He didn’t get out of his seat.”
They did the routine one more time. Mrs. Holt and the occupational therapist looked sad.
“Mrs. Dean, Thorin counts to fifty at home.”
“Um, not here.”
I bet not here. Mrs. Dean had the bar set too low. Thorin went back to his classroom.
Ms. Shay was true to her word. She pressed Mrs. Dean for details on Thorin’s progress. In official mode, Mrs. Dean referred to Thorin as a cognitive profile. The fourth time she did it, I interrupted.
“Mrs. Dean, he has a name.” Then I turned to Ms. Shay and said, “Make her stop.”
Ward put his hand on my back.
“Mrs. Dean, I want you talk about some of Thorin’s specific gains, please,” Ms. Shay requested.
“He can hold a book right-side up and he knows words go from left to right.”
I knew Thorin was reading pre-literacy books at home, and Ms. Alice was working with him on reading as well.
“He knew those things before he got to kindergarten,” Ward said.
Ward and I refuted the remainder of her reporting as well below his capacity. Ms. Shay suggested adjourning with the suggestion that a formal end-of-the-year IEP be held with the expectation that Thorin’s skill levels would be increased. Also given school was ending soon, a proper and supportive summer session needed to be determined. Everyone left the room except for Mrs. Holt, the occupational therapist, and me. I put my head on the table and started sobbing. They sat quietly with me. When I lifted my head, I saw both of them had tears in their eyes.
“Does she hate him?” I asked referring to Mrs. Dean
They told me there had been so many complaints about her regarding the children she worked with that the district had moved her caseload to other case managers. Mrs. Dean had fought to keep Thorin, and they had agreed.
I emailed Ms. Shay requesting Thorin have a new case manager. She wrote back quickly agreeing to the change.
Thorin’s new case manager was Jay Trask. He was retiring in a month after a thirty-year career and had been moved from a high school to Thorin’s school that week—that couldn’t be a good sign. It made me wonder what Mr. Trask had done at the high school since they were transferring him to an elementary school to be a case manager for students who had disabilities. I had also heard Mrs. Mallory, Thorin and David’s former case manager, was also retiring. Maybe there wasn’t a rubber room in the school district, but Superintendent Samuel’s words came back to me: “I can’t do anything until they retire.”
I also hoped the district moved Mr. Trask to say they had a warm body handling case services for children with disabilities at the school rather than he was menace to children. That’s how all the districts tactics had affected my expectations for Thorin: “Gee, I hope he’s just a do-nothing and not a dangerous pervert.”
When I went to see Mr. Trask, he told me in a confused and sad sort of way, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Oh! That has to be hard.”
“It is. The kids I met are nice, and they hang out in my office. Thorin could do that, too.”
“Well, let me think about that. Do you want me to take the lead on ideas regarding Thorin?”
“Yes! Thank you!”
“No prob.”
I went to see the principal and reported, “Mr. Trask says he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“He does know.”
“But he said he doesn’t.”
“He’s wrong.”
I ordered a book prior to the end-of-the-year IEP meeting titled The Paraprofessional’s Handbook for Effective Support in Inclusive Classrooms. The book is written by a paraprofessional, which is another term for an Ed Tech, and is considered a resource for best practices. I learned implementation of inclusion is often facilitated by the paraprofessional or Ed Tech, and that person modifies the curriculum given to them by the teacher.
I wanted Ward and me to be better prepared to discuss what we wanted for Thorin. The school said they were inclusive, but the reality was that they had no guiding philosophy, no living document. They had no clue other than sticking a child with a disability into a regular classroom and calling it good. We had learned too late that for inclusion advocates like Trisha, Thorin was cannon fodder to lob at the school. She was trying to force change through IEPs—too bad if Thorin was the collateral damage. Ward and I had relieved her of her duty. We wanted a working document; a plan