In my defence I don’t really know how to blog, but here it
goes…
I found this interesting little tidbit of news and it piqued
my interest as opposed to doing my actual assignment.
This woman took her son out of school because he was not
getting the support he needed in the classroom. She does not want to return him
to school until it is resolved. It all stems from the fact that the child’s
educational assistant works with 4 children this year instead of the previous
two.
31 educational assistants got cut this year because that was
the projected need. My question is where the heck did all the students that
need these educational assistants go over the course of 2 months? How did the Nanaimo
I have got to give props to the mom for not wanting her son
in the school, but at the same time is no school better than school with little
support?
If I was the teacher in that class and knew the situation I
think that I would be so frustrated because you see a child who has made so
much progress with an aid in the past and now with no aid the child is quickly
becoming more and more agitated.
I don’t know what I would do in that situation, on one hand
I would want to help the student to deal with what is going on, but I know that
I can’t do that in a classroom of 30 or more kids.
With cuts to schools of support staff where does that leave
us teachers? Are we responsible for picking up the slack and working the job of
2 or even 3 people?
I know we all want to see every student succeed, but what
can we do without short changing some students somewhere?
Personally it is very overwhelming thought. I would never
want to see a student being pulled out of my class due to the fact that he
cannot succeed. I would want to do everything in my power to help him, but what
would that look like? What are the limitations I am subjected to?
After being an aid myself, I know how much of an impact that
the one on one with a student can have especially a student with autism if you
take away that routine that comfort all heck can break loose.
Since each student is allocated a certain amount of funding
depending on needs why hasn’t the district gotten enough funding from the
government to meet the needs of all the students in the district that need
assistance? Has all that money been allocated somewhere else?
I don’t know much about politics or government so I am not
sure how it all works, but something seems amiss here. Thoughts?
P.S. Trying to post was so frustrating, it would not let my copy, or post when I had re-typed it out, so I hope this works.
Hey Lisa,
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting and really scary! I wonder if Helen would be able to shed some light on this issue for us. She did give us a dollar amount alloted to each special needs student in BC, did she not? So in this case, where the heck did that money go? I too would like to know where the Nanaimo school board came up with their numbers before making those cut-backs. I really can't decide how I feel about that mom pulling her son out of school. But I can't help but imagine how I would feel if this kid was one of my students- an individual whose behaviour makes it difficult to do my job if he doesn't have the support he needs and who in turn would return home frustrated about having to go to school. How frustrating would that be for everyone invloved?!
This video, among many of our class discussions, is extremely frustrating. The more we talk about the relationship between the teachers and the BC government, the less I want to stay in this province to teach. What seems so logical clearly isn’t. Like how you asked if the numbers of students dropped in two months. The numbers obviously haven’t dropped; they just don’t want to allocate funding to that. In our history class we have learned how Canada‘s education system rates among the highest in the world but from all of these issues we have been discussing, it doesn’t seem like education is ranked with much importance with the BC government.
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