yeah every parent will have a different perspective of what their child needs and what issue that child may or may not cause, and then base that round what Hanson said. The simple fact is the spectrum is so varied and complex that every child and classroom will have different challenges.
My daughter is very lightly on the spectrum. Level 1. Half the time she is happy, funny and be all means, appears to no different to any other student, because at those times, she isn’t any different…
However some the time she has ‘turns’ (I wont elaborate or get technical on what that means as takes too much time), which involves at least one teacher needing to get help her through it. This can last from a few minutes to an hour or more, sometimes multiple times per day, sometimes all day. During that time all the other kids are basically reduced to one teacher if it’s bad.
Other parents have made comments to us along the lines of ‘maybe she should be in a special school’. We try to explain she 1) doesn’t qualify and 2) she from our point of view is 100% in the right place, wouldn’t want that changed for anything because it’s our child that benefits from being there… And we wouldn’t want any other Level 1 to be moved out of the classes either. Integration is the better model from our point of view in these cases.
However her teachers themselves (who are fantastic) , acknowledge that the rest of the class suffers during this time. It’s just a fact. We’ve seen it, we live it.
I know my daughter causes issues. The teachers struggle, often. Managing a classroom of 4 year year olds isn’t an easy task for one teacher.
There are other Level 1 kids in the other classes that need more attention than our daughter. Sometimes additional teacher resources come in but usually these are young girls studying child care, barely out of school themselves.
IMO Level 1 kids need to be in the normal classes, but yes they do cause issues for the teacher and by extension the rest of the class.
I’m not sure what truly motivates Pauline to say what she said. I find her more ignorant than spiteful. She mixed up a lot of issues in her usual barely coherent ramble, but they’ve been re-cut to to tell a worse story. Like that article a few posts up does quite well. Her fault sure, she leaves herself wide open for it , often. However any discussion that raises prospect of additional funding to help provide additional resources to compensate the strains teachers face would be money much needed. It’s a better outcome than any talk of Level 1 segregation. Funding is the real issue and what matters is that these teachers and schools get need more funding to alleviate the strain that is happening in some classrooms, and also to make sure the specialist autistic schools and special schools in general are getting what they need.
The QLD support network for seeing OT’s is quite good though but that is usually an observation role for an hour sometimes months apart depending on certain factors. Not sure on other states.
and BTW calling people ignorant ■■■■■ and advocating spitting on people wont advance any useful discussion.
