kidinjail - Perry Laroque

It’s Not Their Fault

A little context first. My original teaching license from the University of Wisconsin was for teaching students with behavioral and emotional disabilities in grades K-12. At that time in Wisconsin, you could choose the emotional disabilities track, the learning disabilities track, or the intellectual disabilities track. I think they ended that shortly after I graduated because the reality was that special education practices were changing and this model worked better when special education teachers primarily worked in “self-contained” classrooms, instead of a “cross-categorical” approach. Indeed, my first job in California, although it was in a “self-contained” classroom, I worked with students with a multitude of disabilities and some likely with none at all. It wasn’t until my second teaching job in California where I worked solely with students with “severe” behavioral and emotional disabilities in a self-contained classroom where my license neatly fit my work, regardless of whether my work had actually changed. 

In a previous post, I admitted that I wasn’t the greatest teacher, not because I didn’t love my students and they didn’t love me, but because I couldn’t get over the feelings of contributing to the problem and came to despise the institution of special education. So naturally, because I loathed the field of special education so much, I decided to get my doctorate in it. When I first did my student teaching in Madison, WI, I was able to work with one of the major in-patient child and adolescent psychiatric units. I loved it. So when I returned to the land of cheese, beer, and the greatest football team of all time, I accepted a part time job at this psychiatric unit as a teacher and mental health specialist, while I completed my doctorate. 

I loved working at the hospital. It was child-centered and involved multidisciplinary problem solving, where even my opinion was sought and appreciated. It was obviously extremely difficult work, but nonetheless fulfilling. At some point during my second year there, a teen was admitted who had a complete psychotic break. He refused to drink water, due to his concerns that it was poisoned, heard voices, and would become violent unexpectedly. Apparently, he went on vacation with a family friend, where they experimented with smoking a joint and had a sexual interaction. The parents believed the joint was “laced”. The psychiatrist, who was obviously a weed smoker, theorized that between a heavy dose of THC and a complicated sexual encounter, it triggered the schizophrenia that was already hiding in the wings. What made this all so unusual was that he was a straight-A student, state-level athlete, and very popular in his sophomore class. The parents were kind, scared, involved, and heart broken. The child as they knew him, literally changed overnight. It was harrowing as a team to watch. 

So why does this story stick out? It sticks out because in the multiple years I worked there, it was the only case I can remember where biology/physiology/neurology was the sole factor in the child’s mental health emergency. He came from an extremely loving family, had every protective factor imaginable, and had no notable trauma in his past. Now keep in mind, I probably worked with hundreds of patients during my time there, so this situation was extraordinary. Did the other students have mental health challenges, yes all of them, but they also brought a suitcase full of the most despicable and heinous baggage with them. 

In the child’s unit, which was for kids that were between the ages of 5 and around 12, the majority of the kids were there for serious behavioral problems, including violence, arson, sexual deviance, etc. Many of them were currently or previously in the foster care system and the others came from broken families. Their parents were abusive, addicted, neglectful, and/or unfit to raise children. On the adolescent side, most of them were admitted for suicidal ideation or suicide attempts. Many of them came from abusive, neglectful, overbearing, and/or addicted families as well, but others’ trauma could be traced to abuse, extreme bullying, sexual violence or abuse outside of the family. All of their mental health emergencies were the outcome of their environment, except for that one teen. It was notable because it was so unusual. Several of our patients committed suicide outside of our care. It was always tragic and painful, but I won’t lie, there was always a slight feeling of relief that they were free from the pain the world had thrust upon them. 

Back to the public schools now, where I spent many additional years as a professor observing future teachers/warriors. True, the typical special education caseload isn’t quite as extreme as my caseload was in the hospital, but it’s not far off. Estimates suggest that children with disabilities are more likely to come from poverty, to have experienced abuse or neglect, to be malnourished, to have experienced sexual abuse, to be in foster care, and/or come from broken families (UNICEF). One of my favorite and most difficult students from my teaching career was living in various motel rooms with his mother, had been sexually abused by his estranged father, and was being physically abused by his older brother. Due to his mom’s physical disability and obesity, I would often bring a chair to the parking lot and meet with her from her car. This avoided the need for her to physically get into the building and to avoid the frequent screaming matches she would get into with the principal who she hated (notably, he never did the situation any favors either).

The point I am loquaciously trying to make is that there are disabilities that are biological/physiological, people are born with them or acquire them early in life (e.g. illnesses, accidents, etc.). However, there are a significant number of disabilities that have been created by an adverse environment. Whether they were born with disabilities due to a mother’s neglect or substance abuse during pregnancy or developed these disabilities through years of abuse, malnourishment or neglect, their disabilities were preventable and of no fault of their own or their genetic disposition. These are the kids that society has screwed over, and now they are paying the price. 

Many (I would say most, but don’t want to piss off any of my fellow teacher friends) teachers perpetuate the issues with disabilities. No matter how much I would try to instill a sense of empathy in my future teachers and try to convince them that yelling, shaming, or punishing difficult kids will only make the matter worse, when I’d be out observing them or the teacher that was working with them, I’d see them fall into the same trap. An angry, malnourished, neglected, and/or abused child comes to school rightfully pissed off, and the teacher thought some amount of shame, isolation, or winded diatribe would turn the situation around. When it was (always) counterproductive, they would double down on their ineffective approach, and so on, and so on. Imagine going to your doctor with a painful wound and they treated it by poking it repeatedly, and increased the intensity at the sight of more pain. No, it’s not different. 

This is the problem. Whether environmental or biological, a child’s disability is no fault of their own, whatsoever. In many cases, the disability is the result of horrendous pain or trauma. We then take these kids and put them in the “special education track” and provide them with a substandard education, punish them for the externalization of their trauma, and provide them with unqualified teachers (more than half of US districts report a special educator shortage). Even worse, we contribute to the trauma and/or create trauma by our methods of addressing it. This apparently prepares them for a life where they are more likely to live in poverty, be abused, be abusive, develop drug problems, and/or commit crimes. 

Is special education rehabilitative? Definitely not. By anyone’s standards we are failing students at a shocking rate. Keep in mind, of the minority of students with disabilities who actually attend college, only 20-30% of them will actually earn their degree. Accordingly, the poverty rate for people with disabilities is more than double that of people without disabilities. The late Thomas Dishion, studied these iatrogenic effects and published a paper titled, When Interventions Harm, which specifically examined the impact of grouping students with antisocial behavior and the resulting increase we see in these behaviors. In my famous dissertation (according to my Mom), I provided data that students with higher rates of misbehavior are more motivated by positive reinforcement and less motivated by the threat of suspension or other consequences. In fact, students with high rates of misbehavior, even rated some consequences as positive, like a badge of dishonor for fighting the school. Shocked? You shouldn’t be, look at our prisons and the old adage about jails, “enter for a crime, exit as a criminal”. 

Apparently, I need to wrap this up with the usual “what to do”, rather than just ending my rant with no resolution, which I have been tempted to do. I think people probably have a lot of various solutions to this problem, the mainstream/inclusion movement certainly had the biggest impact on the issue, although students with behavioral/emotional disabilities are still the most likely candidates for self-contained classrooms. And, grouping students together, doesn’t have to necessarily be a physical placement to develop harmful norms and expectations. I could get into all of the practices and strategies that I think could help, but again, I think it starts with a mindset that we desperately need to change. 

When a child enters our classrooms, they bring everything with them, for better or worse. Their behaviors are shaped by their environment and experiences, for better or worse. And I will die on this hill; every child, every child, every child wants to learn and be successful. Our job as educators is to meet those children where they are at and guide them forward in the way that they are willing to go. No child is at fault for their disability, and each disability comes with challenges. We can’t blame a child for not learning to read, anymore than we can blame a child for acting out. We shouldn’t be labeling a child’s trauma and expect that this scarlet letter will mitigate their struggles. We need to start with unconditional empathy and understanding and stop believing we can fight fire with fire. A school’s job is to help children to learn, and some kids require more patience and creativity than others. Per my previous posts, we have already “othered” these kids by labeling them, let’s not perpetuate the problem by punishing them for the cards they have been dealt. 

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