*names changed to protect identity

Klose, Lair, Meitl, Ziegler, Dodson and Robbins all emphasize and celebrate the importance of special educators throughout the district. It takes “an incredibly special human being,” one with “patience and love and compassion” to be one, according to Dodson. As directors, Robbins and Ziegler prioritized the support and wellbeing of who they considered to be the most integral aspect of their departments, they said.

But individual buildings in the SMSD, Ziegler said, have their own rules and policies pertaining to classes associated with special education that vary. With the more specific policies and guidelines left to buildings, some students in classes at East involving special education feel a strong disconnect, feel undervalued and sense a lack of management.

In the fifth hour social skills class — where general education students serve as peer mentors to special education students in order to develop sociability — the lack of communication proves detrimental to productivity, according to two-year leadership student and senior Katie Garverick.

“They’ve tried to have a lot of teachers in there, but if one of them is gone, the other ones just don’t know what to do,” Garverick said. “It’s repetitive, and it’s not beneficial.”

The class doesn’t have the dedication that it did last year, according to leadership student and junior Charlotte Wayne.* Even though the teachers mean well, she said, there is “no curriculum” and no set goals that are discussed routinely — the students “show up to class, and then just do whatever.”

East fits all qualifications and has each required special education job staffed, according to East principal Dr. Scott Sherman. But despite the met requirements, students in the class see the with student-teacher ratio as problematic, given the class size of 46.

“This is one of the biggest classes they’ve had, this year,” leadership student and junior Sarah Lewis* said. “If you only have four teachers and that many students, it’s hard to get everyone on the same page and focused in on lessons.”

Potential problems also arise when attention is not brought to personal issues expressed by students. This is due to the high number of students the four teachers are assigned to handle, according to Lewis. She insists the issue is “obviously not their fault,” attributing it to what she sees as low requirements.

The cutoff is also felt by students seeking to join the program — such is the case for Wayne’s sister, Amanda.* Amanda was told after her interview that she’d secured a spot in the social skills class. She went home happy. The next day, she was told she couldn’t be in, anymore.

After conversations between Amanda’s mother and social skills teacher Emily MacNaughton, the family was told it was policy for “family members [not to be] in the class with other family members.” This was confusing to her — she assumed policy like that would be listed in the application or discussed in the interview, but it was not brought up by MacNaughton until the meeting, she said. MacNaughton declined to comment for this story.

Even more confusing to her was what the policy was preventing. Amanda was one of the only people that her cousin, Olive,* was comfortable around. Olive has down syndrome, and after experiences at Indian Hills Middle School in seventh grade that caused her to feel isolated and alienated, her family decided to homeschool her the next year.

Olive’s family recently enrolled her at East as a freshman, and she was accepted into the social skills class. The Wayne’s and Olive’s family felt confident that she could be integrated into the school system again. Now, their vision is clouded.

“[Olive]’s family had comfort in knowing that I’d at least be in one of her classes, and that it would at least help her feel comfortable in a completely new environment,” Amanda said. “Me not being in that class is creating a lot more anxiety and fear than there needs to be.”

Despite students' concerns with the class, many believe the class is taught with the best intentions — all current students in the class interviewed for this story attested to the pleasant demeanor and personal connections they build during the class period, as well as the importance of the class's goals.

"It's to really bring everyone together and show that we're all kind of the same," Lewis said. "You grow close to everyone, I mean, you grow close to some more than others. But we hang out after school, eat lunch with them every day, so it's just more of being together and not feeling separate — but still, like, learning how to be as typical as possible and how to fit in."

SMEHARBINGER.NET

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