The+Hard+Kids


 * We've spent a lot of time thinking about technologies and strategies... but today, in groups, we're going to try to put this together. **

We're going to look at some stories, each group in a lab session will get one, and your group job - convening as an "IEP team" - will be to, by next Tuesday, assemble a plan for this student.

Consider the whole situation and your whole toolbox of solutions. Consider the current grade and the future. Then, build a page here which answers the IEP questions.

(1) //**Out**// (//emotionally impaired?//) by Ira Socol

It's 8:17. See, I can tell time. Nobody thinks I can do anything. But that's not true. It's 8:17 and I know school's only been in for seven minutes but I also know I need to be out of here in less than forty-five minutes. Yes, time and arithmetic. Because I need to be on my way by 9:00 so I can meet Derek by 9:30 so we can catch the bus to the subway and be on the way downtown by only a little after 10:00. That's the plan and I've got less than forty-five minutes.

Sam's coming past me and here's chance number one. I stick my foot between his and trip him, he falls in a wild, uncoordinated sprawl, knocking over Tina's desk, books flying. I'm not ready to be obvious yet, so I just smile.

The smile sets Mrs. Girardi off, not that this takes much. But the key here is I can't just get sent to the Resource Room. If I get sent there I'll need to start all over and besides, you know, the standards are different there. I'll need to work much harder. So when Mrs. Girardi says, "What is the matter with you? Are you so stupid you think that's funny?" I prove my growing vocabulary skills with the response, "I'm so stupid I think it's hilarious." Which of course gets this entire class of fifth graders, except Sam who's still on the floor, and Tina, who's glaring at me, into a fit of hysterical laughter.

This teacher is beyond predictable so I can stay ahead easily. She starts to scream. I start to scream back. She tells me to come up front. I tell her to come back to me. When she actually starts to come toward me (can you believe she'd fall for that), I get up and start running around the room. The fact that the class is still laughing is making her crazy. She sure doesn't like laughter. So she actually chases me for half a lap before figuring something out.

They all say I "make bad decisions." Everybody says that. But they're wrong about that too. I make decisions they don't like, but they're not bad. Sometimes they're really carefully made decisions designed to get me exactly what I need. Right now I need to get out of this school so I can run with Derek who got suspended yesterday for the rest of the week. He did it by punching out Kenny DeMuro. I'd rather not do that. Kenny looks like he's still hurting.

Now I need to make sure. I need to give the principal no choice once he gets the phone call. I need less lecture time from him and more of that "oh my God" look because that'll only take ten minutes. He'll call home. Nobody'll be there. He'll say "go straight home" in that very intense voice, as if he thinks I think he doesn't know. Really, he knows I know he knows, but he's got to sound like he's doing his job. And if he's going to do his job, I've got to do mine. I pick a book off Carrie's desk and toss it, not hard but accurately, at Mrs. Girardi, who immediately screams, in her best psycho mode, "You're out of here you little moron, you'll be gone for at least a week." And I take off right out the door, right under the clock: 8:23.

//Note: This principal has asked you what to do for this student...//

(2) //**Taare Zameen Par**// (//dyslexia?//)

media type="youtube" key="OnyBY5W97HM?fs=1" height="385" width="640"

//Note: Middle-class, high-pressure parents// //Note: What will help here? What do you say to this classroom teacher?//

(3) //**Solution**// (//child abuse? delinquency?//) by Ira Socol

David's father kicked the shit out of him at least once a week from when he was five or maybe six or, fuck, maybe three, until he was fifteen, until we were fifteen. Usually Friday or Saturday night. Usually late. Or very late. When the bars closed he would come home and something, maybe a misplaced toy at the beginning or a bike left out or a dish not washed or a jacket not hung up or finally the car not parked exactly right or parked with too many miles or, well, in the end you know it does not matter, it has nothing to do with whatever it is about at the moment, and he would climb the stairs and burst into David's room. If David was lucky just he would come only with his hands or maybe his belt wrapped around a fist, if David was not lucky then the belt would be loose with the buckle flying or there might be a hurling stick or a baseball bat.

Most Sundays I'd get high with David sitting watching the water flow by, the slow gestures of the tides as they move around the world, the call of hunting seabirds, the way the wind might shatter the surface of this arm of the ocean, and he would be black and blue, and he would have a hard time moving, and he would talk about revenge – starting with specific ideas that might melt into generalities and then fall into pointless anger which I'd watch float into the sky on our exhaled smoke.

That was not saving David though. It was poisoning me, keeping me angry about too many things that had now receded into the past. Stuff I might otherwise have put away.

And so I was ready, probably more ready than he might have ever gotten, when the plot was suggested as we watched a scratchy print of Cagney singing in Yankee Doodle Dandy at David's house late on a February Saturday night. And when David's father stumbled in and saw in the movie his target, "fucking queers!" he yelled and went after my friend. I clocked him from behind with his own hurling stick. And somehow saw myself defeating two demons for the price of one.

The concussion put him in the hospital for four days. I spent two weeks in a juvenile lock-up where I did heroin for the very first time, until David's mother made it clear that no one would be pursuing legal action.

Neither of us ever got hit by a father again.

//Note: Does violence demand expulsion? suspension? What do you do?//

(4) //**In My Mind**// (//aspergers?//) media type="youtube" key="rbgUjmeC-4o?fs=1" height="385" width="480" //Note: How do you support this student? For school? For transition?//

(5) //**Can I Stay?**// (//child abuse?//) by Ira Socol

If I don't go home now, where to go? I can drift through The Mall til nine or, hanging out by the theater, til maybe eleven or even midnight. It is too cold for the park, too cold for the dugouts at the Little League field, too cold even for the elevator lobby in the parking garage. But even midnight is not late enough. Sometimes, but rarely. He might be there now, and very angry. He might be out at McKiernan's but if he is he will come home and then. Yeah. Then he'll still be angry and he'll be very drunk, much more than he is right now. Now, if he's there, he'll pull his punches, more or less. A six-pack later he won't. It's a gamble.

But to be gone all night requires co-conspirators in this season. And that is harder than it should be. Why can't I just sleep on your floor and have you not say anything? No lectures, no calls to school, no calls to home. Why can't you just let me sleep on your floor? I won't cost you anything except maybe the water in the flush of a toilet. My body produces heat, I will not up your oil bill. I do not need to eat, there's breakfast at school in the morning or I'll take a coffee cake or two from the grocery. I do that lots of mornings. Pay when I can. If not, not. They don't chase me.

No, well, yeah, I understand. I'm on my way. Yeah, I'll be fine. No sweat.

//Note: What does school need to do for this student?//

(6) //**Ash Wednesday**// (//poverty?//) by Ira Socol

We stop at Saint Dominic's off Gun Hill Road right after loading the guy with the heart attack on Edenwald into an ambulance. "Please guys," we beg the paramedics, "sure he's dead but if he's dead here it'll take us over an hour to get this taken care of, and you can just dump him on the E/R." We kneel before the priest and take communion and are blessed with the ashes. Then, still deeply hungover from Fat Tuesday alcohol consumption, we run to the "shots fired" call where Edson ends at Strang, and find the kid dead in the tall brown grass of what was supposed to be a park.

The kid is maybe ten, well later we'll know he wasn't even, but at that moment, at the point where Colin says, "oh fuck" and I come over and see the thin body with the blood leaking from a temple, we think "ten," not knowing that he was tall for his age.

A minute later I realize there's a gun in the grass as well, a silver .22 automatic, and I reach into my pocket and pull out gloves and hand one pair to Colin who takes them without moving his eyes from the boy's frozen face and I pull them on, silently because I fully believe that noise will rob this place of the desperately needed sanctity and I kneel down and and am about to lift this weapon into my hands when its location and position scream to me and I leap to my feet and start backing away, muttering, "holy fucking shit, no."

There are no parents. No one knows where any father might be. Mom's in jail. When we finally ask enough questions we find the place Grandma lives, a basement apartment a block away, and she is dead in her bed. It seems natural, she clearly went in her sleep.

"I guess he couldn't take it no more," another third grader tells us. "He was gettin' picked on a lot at school. The teacher didn't like him neither." "Oh," I say, "did he like his Grandma?" "Loved her," the kid says, "she dead?" "I guess she must of died in her sleep," I say without thinking about who I'm talking to. "Then that's why, he must'a found her and give up."

"You ok?" I ask him. "Yo, po-leece," he says, "I'm jus' fine."

I look around. The cold winter sky. The low brick rowhouses. The projects towering over there. The abandoned, burnt cars near the edge of the park. I walk back to where the body still rests, touch the ashes on my face, bend down once again, this time making a tiny cross on that cold forehead.

//Note: What supports does this "another third grader" need?//

(7) //**This is England**// (Shaun finds friends) (//bullying?//) media type="youtube" key="ODlqSr3eG-k?fs=1" height="385" width="640" //Note: Father has died in war. Family in poverty.// //Note: What is this group supplying that the boy's school is not? how might you change that?//

(8) //**Grocery Shopping**// (//mobility impairment?//) media type="youtube" key="74uYb3HWxXE?fs=1" height="385" width="480" //Note: what technology is in use? how might the environment be improved to help? What would his IEP have looked like in school?//