We Make The Road By Walking, Part 1
(*With apologies to Brian McLaren for blatantly stealing his book title. Apparently that's my thing now: stealing book titles for my blog posts.)
For those of you who know me well, you know the sentence I'm about to type is probably the least likely sentence to be typed, ever, in the history of typing:
I am homeschooling Alex this year.
I know. No one is more surprised than me.
If you read my last post, you know that Alex can now express his inner thoughts to us by typing on a keyboard in a therapeutic setting. You also know he is fully aware of everything going on around him, because he's been paying attention his whole life. It turns out he has strong feelings about things that we previously didn't understand, especially about school.
I said the following in my last post: "Recently we have had some amazing heartfelt conversations where we've learned how Alex truly feels about a lot of things in his life. I will share some of those insights soon, because they're important for people to hear, and because they are going to lead to some big changes for our family."
Finding out how he feels about his high school experience was the Big Kahuna of insights, let me tell you.
A little background: Alex has been in a self-contained special education classroom since preschool. For those of you who don't know what a "self-contained" classroom means, it's a class for students with disabilities. No typically-developing peers, no access to the general curriculum. In Arlington County, there are two main categories of self-contained classrooms: Life Skills, which is for non-autistic students with an intellectual disability, and MIPA, which is for autistic students who are not on track to get a regular diploma (more on that in Part 2. MIPA stands for Multi Intervention Program (for students with) Autism. What can I say, it's a clunky acronym.)
The other thing that is important to understand is that the MIPA program is an Office of Special Education (OSE) program in the Arlington Public School (APS) system. It has nothing to do with the school where the program is housed. Teacher support and student inclusion is in the hands of the individual schools' administrators.
For elementary school, we were lucky because there was a strong MIPA program at our neighborhood school. Alex had an amazing experience at Taylor Elementary. At Kindergarten Information Night, the principal came up to us and made a point to say that the MIPA students were 100% Taylor students, and that they were included in every activity possible, from assemblies to talents shows to spelling bees. Alex had the same teacher for K-5, and we loved her. We even got her nominated for Teacher of the Year (she won, of course :)) She worked with us through every behavior challenge, she knew her students were smart, and she found creative ways for him to interact with the other students in the school. This inclusion gave Alex a chance to develop real friendships. The amazing Jack and Johnston (mentioned in my last post) are from his Taylor days. He still has a weekly date with one of the aides from his 4th-grade class, just because she adores Alex. Like I said, we were lucky.
Middle school was a rude awakening. He wasn't able to go to our neighborhood middle school (meaning the bus picked him up at 6:30am for a 50-minute ride), and there was zero effort to integrate the MIPA students with the general population. We took solace in the fact that he didn't seem to mind: he liked his classmates, he seemed happy to go to school each day, and we really loved his teacher. She knew her students were bright, and she treated them accordingly.
High school felt like we fell off a cliff. Again, he wasn't able to go to his neighborhood school, so he had another 50-minute bus ride to school. Again, there was zero effort toward integration. I can cite a very long list of reasons we felt Alex was overtly excluded from Wakefield High School, but this post is already too long. Here's just one telling example: I dropped Alex off late to school at the same time every week because of his therapy schedule. I would walk him through the school to his classroom through a sea of students because our arrival was timed between two class periods. Never once, not once, did a single student ever say hello to Alex. Heck, not a single student even made eye contact with him. He may as well have been invisible. It was painful for me every time, but I told myself that Alex didn't care. I was wrong. He does care. Deeply.
It was very clear from Day 1 that the APS Office of Special Education was essentially renting space to house the MIPA program at Wakefield. It has never, ever remotely felt like Alex was a Wakefield student. He was a MIPA student whose classroom happened to be at Wakefield.
But again, he had a good teacher. His teacher openly shared his frustration about the lack of support from the administration. He told us he felt like an island unto himself at school. The administration only seemed to care about the MIPA students when something happened that affected the "real" Wakefield students. Otherwise, they were ignored. We felt like our son was a student of the Office of Special Education and not a Wakefield student, and his teacher felt like an employee of the Office Of Special Education and not a Wakefield teacher. Good times.
By now I'm sure you're thinking, "Alex is going into 12th grade, right? If it was that bad, why did you let him go there for 3 years?"
Good question.
We knew the MIPA class wasn't a priority at Wakefield, and we were constantly worried his teacher would burn out and quit. We explored our other options in Arlington County, more than once. But we stayed because there really wasn't another option, and we really liked his teacher. He talked to the kids like the high-school students they are, and he saw them as far more capable than the administration of the OSE or Wakefield did.
In fact, he took it upon himself to adapt high-school level curricula because he knew his students could handle it. This is not sustainable for any teacher, especially considering that he'd have to renew it every year for his repeat students. When he asked the administration for support with this Herculian task, he was denied. He asked if, at the very least, a gen-ed math teacher could help him with the source material so he could adapt it for his MIPA students. He was told no. (Insert Angry Emoji here)
As a parent, I don't know how else to interpret this lack of support from Wakefield other than this: "The MIPA students aren't our problem, and we can't divert resources from the real Wakefield students to help you with your pet project."
This is already way too long. If you're still reading, thank you for hanging in there with me. I plan to write a Part 2 to share in more detail what I think is wrong with the entire system at large. Denying these students access to the general curriculum and segregating them from the general population didn't start in high school. Our high school experience was somewhat inevitable based on the road we've been walking. But I do believe change is coming. The entire way we see (and educate) autistic students needs to drastically change.
Anyway, back to Alex. As I said in my last post, we've had an explosion of independent thought from Alex recently. About six weeks ago I asked him about school, and he said that he's miserable there. He said, "they treat us like prisoners. Retarded prisoners." He wants to have the typical high school experience, and instead he's completely cut off from all of it. He said he likes his teacher, but that's not enough because he's not trained to help Alex communicate. He asked me to tell the administrators: "We are not the brainless babies you think we are. I'm intelligent and yearning for education and thirsty for knowledge. The teachers and students alike need support not neglect and red tape."
Well said, kiddo. I couldn't have said it better myself.
It speaks volumes about Alex's character that he is not bitter or angry, not at the school nor at us. He understands that we didn't know what we didn't know. Even after I told him that I wouldn't send him back there, and that I was serious when I said I'd homeschool him, he said, "I am worried I will drive you nuts. It's okay if you want to send me back. I am used to it." I cannot explain how devastating it was when the truth of this statement fully hit me.
Which brings me back to the least likely sentence to be typed, ever, in the history of typing: I am homeschooling Alex this year. There really is no other option here.
So, tomorrow is the first day of 12th grade! Alex wants to take the traditional first-day picture, and we've mapped out his weekly schedule. He's chosen the subjects he wants to study, and I've researched and ordered a whole lot of curricula. I'm a little bit nervous, but mostly I'm excited to see where this leads. And I'm over-the-moon excited for Alex. On the one hand, we feel like we've wasted on much time. He's already 17. On the other hand, we've got all the time in the world to do right by him. He's only 17. We will figure it out as we go. It's hard to see a clear path right now, but we'll make the road by walking.
