The Ugly Duckling

Work this week has been more than frustrating. I am pushed in the back of everyone at the middle school. I feel like the poor little ugly duckling in the back of the line. The teachers get mad when I ask them to fill out a simple (I mean super simple) checklist about a child’s progress and abilities in the classroom. The forms are not specific, require yes/no responses, and, if they are generous enough, writing a short comment about the student’s performance in the classroom. It’s nothing they really have to think about or take more than two minutes of their time to do. I get teachers telling me, “You are really working me over” and huffing and puffing when I hand them a consultation or teacher input form. I realize the teachers are busy, but I have to get my work (documentation) completed too. It’s entirely frustrating. Nobody wants to accommodate me for any reason at all. I get bottom priority for using the internet in my own classroom. I have to share a classroom with an ESE teacher, and we only have one internet port where we can use the online IEP program; therefore, we have to “take turns” working on reports. She is there 5 days a week, and I know she is not seeing kids in the classrooms like she is supposed to be because she spends all of her time at her desk –on the phone. Why can’t she get her work done while I’m not here? I am there two days a week, and when I’m there I can’t even work on my reports because she demands to use Encore herself. She will unplug my cable and plug herself into the port if I leave my computer for a second (e.g. to get something from the printer 2 buildings away) which has, on numerous occasions, caused me to lose data that I’d spent time working on prior. She is a bully! She talks on the phone during my sessions (loudly and disrespectfully) or makes as much noise as possible as best she knows how. She even gets upset when I have a therapy session (note: this is a speech therapy classroom too) when she has a phone conference scheduled. I am not going to tell my kids to go back to class so she can have her meetings every day. There are conference rooms for that. We share a phone too, which can never stay on my desk unless I am using it at that exact moment. Oh, and she uses all of my hand sanitizer when I’m not there (that I purchased with my own money). Okay, now I am nitpicking, I know. Ugh –bully! Some people are so selfish. People here do not work as a team. Did I mention that I am frustrated?

Lets see what else I can bitch about here…..

I also have an ethical concern regarding the services for which the schools here in Duval County are billing Medicaid. There is a new thing on the IEP where we ask parents to authorize that the schools share information about their child’s services to the agency that allows our school to bill Medicaid for services. In many schools, SLPs do the billing sheets themselves to provide documentation for each session being billed for (a.k.a. PROOF that that kid received therapy that day). I don’t do billing. I keep daily logs and attendance records for each kid I see, but nobody in the county sees those records but me. How do they know if a particular child received 60 minutes of therapy each week? There have been MANY instances when I was not able to pull my kids because of MRT & RtI meetings, school-wide testing, changes in resource schedules, absences and many other reasons. I am going to have to ask someone higher up about this issue because the people I have asked seem to be of no help. All the district wants is more money, more money, and more money. They don’t want to discharge students because they want money for the services. TERRIBLE!!!!! UNETHICAL!!!!!! I think that because they are such a huge county, they think they can get away with anything. I don’t agree with this. I am discharging students left and right (for instance, a kid who speaks Spanish and rolls his /r/ and /l/ sounds –duh, dialectical! Or little African American kids who say “skreet” for street –also dialectical). I can’t justify keeping them in therapy just for money. Nope not gonna happen with me.

Also, the discipline system in the elementary school is lacking tremendously. They discourage writing referrals (it’s pretty much a NO-NO) at Brentwood. I’m assuming this is because it makes the school look bad to have so many referrals when they are a turn-around school already being monitored closely. Hello! –wouldn’t misbehaving, distracting, violent, disobedient kids who are consequently failing in the classrooms because they have no discipline and don’t know how to sit still or listen to a teacher, let alone keep from distracting other students, make the school look bad? We had a first grader verbally threaten to shoot and kill another child and his family while pointing his finger and “pulling the trigger” in the boy’s face. Consequences: yep, you guessed it, none. The teacher expressed concerns and reported it but was told not to write a referral for the child. We also have kids making sexual advances toward other students (yes, in elementary school), and even though parents come in and complain, practically nothing is being done about it. It is a dangerous area of town, filled with violence, and these kids are continuing the cycle. Sad. Very sad.

I am so ready for a break after this week. Bring on Christmas!!!!